Az orosz egyházszakadás és helye a 17. századi orosz történelemben
The place of the schism in Russia in 17thcentury Russian history

Summary/Abstract: 1. The schism can be regarded as a peculiar „destruction” of medieval Russian philosophy of istory, resting on the conceptions of the passing on of power (translatio imperii ) and the preservation of the true faith till the coming of the latter days („Moscow – third Rome”). The victory of the followers of Nikon meant the triumph of political pragmatism over forms of religious thinking regarded as traditional in the Russia of the 15th to 17th centuries. In that respect, Nikon's Greek-style reforms directly prepared the Western-style reforms of Peter I since the demolition of eschatological barriers, the rationalization of the historical process made significantly easier the movement towards the first Rome of the empire, i.e. towards Western Europe. 2. Along with the passing of traditional eschatology, the traditional refusal of scientific knowledge, of „external wisdom” also disappeared from Russian „high” culture. In the context of Filofey's general eschatological conception, salvation was to be achieved not by science but by the preservation of the true faith. The possibility of cultural evolution or cultural borrowing was ruled out by the system of values, of 15th-17th-century Russian society, permeated with eschatologism. What was desirable was simply the preservation of already established religious, cultural and behavioral norms. The Greek, Southern and Western Russian Orthodox theologians around Nikon claimed to be the representatives of scholarship, and consistently accused the Muscovite Orthodox of ignorance. In their efforts to prove that adherence to traditions to ignorance, the followers of Nikon, regardless of their original motifs, asserted the value of knowledge in itself, thereby again proving to be the forerunners of the reformers of the era of Peter. 3. Although the first half of the 17th century saw the century saw the efforts is equal to strengthen the Church and its educational role in the state, by the end of the century the Church would be the greatest loser through the events of the schism. On the one hand, a significant part of believers, indeed, that adhering most strongly to religious traditions, having become schismatic, the resistance of Pravoslavism against non-Pravoslav or secularizing influences had been weakened. On the other hand, after the deposition of Nikon, the Church was forced into a completely subordinate position to the state. This predetermined the ecclesiastical policies of Peter I, who even deprived the Church of its formal independence, and the priesthood of all ecclesiastical authority.[...]

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