17th Century Russian Orthodox Iconography
In the centuries between its arrival among the Rus people in the 10th century and the rise of Peter the Great in the 18th century, the Russian Orthodox church grew from a lesser branch of the Byzantine Catholic Church to a fully independent and self-governing Church. After what the Russians perceived as apostasy by the Greek Church of Constantinople when it united with the Church of Rome in Florence (later repudiated by Constantinople), the Russian Church now viewed herself as the primary, if not sole guardian of the purity of the Orthodox Christian faith. [The word "orthodox" comes from the Greek for "right".]
By the 17th century, the Church had its own Patriarch and was centered in Moscow. In spite of its growing strength and hold over the souls of the Russian populace, the Church did not have as much success with its relationship to the Emperor. While the Byzantine Church had what it called a "symphony" or "harmonious" (equal) standing with the rulers of its member states, Russia's Emperors (now called Tsars) refused to allow a headstrong Church hierarchy to gain ascendancy over them. Many early Emperors were Christian in only a political sense, later ones actively looked toward the West for political guidance. Ivan the Terrible had the Patriarch Philip put to death for speaking out against Ivan's cruel tyranny.
By the seventeenth century the tension between Tsar and Patriarch erupted into open hostility as the Patriarch Nikon began calling himself "Sovereign", and introduced several reforms to the worship service. Earlier attempts at reform had affected the traditionally rich Byzantine rituals which survived the break with Constantinople, but now the church's traditionalists were irate. The changes were minor, but had been modeled from recent Greek liturgy, published in Venice, and that led to a schism between the official Orthodoxy in Moscow and the Old Believers. The schism between the Old Believers and the official Church exists even today, with over 5 million Old Believers now sharing a "eucharistic communion" with the Russian Orthodox churches in modern Russia. After the schism of 1666, The Old Believers saw the rise of Tsar Peter the Great as the beginning of the reign of the Antichrist, and refused to surrender their right to worship as they had before Nikon's reforms. Evidence of the break with the Byzantine past extended to the beloved symbols of the liturgy as the official Church bowed to Western ideals of ecclesiastical art and iconography, abandoning the ancient Russian traditions.
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