An excursion into the history of church collaborationism

“Remember the traditional moral values ​​of the church!” I heard this remark full of dignity in one of the discussions about the fate of PussyRiot. But as a historian, what interested me most in that discussion was one thing - what kind of church are we talking about? If about today's ROC, then there must be some kind of misunderstanding. For the Russian Orthodox Church, starting from the middle of the XIII century, had no moral values. She has no such tradition. And to prove this to anyone who knows her story is not very difficult.

The date, of course, is familiar from the school bench: in the middle of the XIII century, Rus' was conquered by the Horde. What, however, they didn’t explain to us at school was that from the moment of the conquest, the ROC suddenly turned out to be the favorite of this very Horde. And therefore, as a rule, we don’t know why, in fact, the Mongolian tsar (that’s how, for the health of the tsar of the Russian land, the Horde Khan, they prayed then in Orthodox churches) endowed the Russian Orthodox Church with such generous privileges and immunities, which, perhaps, no one knew one other church in Europe.

Here is the decree of the king to his army: “They don’t need any tribute from the church, no plow, no pits, no carts, no war, no food, they don’t need all the duties, no royal duty.” Translated into modern Russian, this means that the Russian Orthodox Church was completely freed from any taxes, duties and, in general, hardships that were imposed on the rest of the population of the conquered country.

And, no less important, the ROC was given the supreme right to govern and judge in its possessions (and these possessions were huge: under the auspices of the conquerors, the monasteries seized more than a third of all arable land in the country). Another royal decree says: “But his own people know the truth and the right to judge and govern, no matter what: in robbery, and in tatba, and in all sorts of affairs, the metropolitan himself is in charge, alone or to whom he orders.”

Truly, that church stood in the middle of a devastated country, like a fabulous temple, like a stronghold of well-being. And prosperity. But…

But the conquerors were by no means philanthropists. They paid the ROC - for collaborationism . For the fact that she laid the spiritual sword of Orthodoxy at their feet. For the preaching of obedience to the Mongol king and his glorious army sounded from the ambos. For the fact that she tore away from the church the people who had risen from despair, who were drowned in blood by this ferocious army.

Of course, as soon as the power of the Horde staggered in Rus', completely different sermons sounded from the ambos: they cursed the "nasty" who enslaved the country. Without blinking an eye, the Russian Orthodox Church betrayed her yesterday's patroness. The new one was to become the winner - Moscow. It was expected, of course, that she would confirm all the Horde "labels" and would defend the corporate property of the Russian Orthodox Church as zealously as the Horde defended them.

In particular, the Russian Orthodox Church was then worried that peasants were fleeing en masse from church lands to boyars (where, as a rule, there was no corvée). What was the value of the land without the peasants working it? It was necessary to prohibit them from crossing, to fix them. In the end, the church has become accustomed to the yoke over the centuries that its private property interests are in the foreground. And also to the fact that the authorities (that is, the Horde) satisfy them on demand. But then suddenly she found a scythe on a stone.

Iosiflyane and non-tenants

Ivan III, the first builder of the Muscovite state, could not like the claims of the post-Mongolian ROC. From his point of view, the church should be a pastor of the people, and not a landowner, not a usurer, not an entrepreneur. Especially not a state within a state. Even the historian A.N., who is very loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church, Sakharov, who sees her main merit in "the fight against the Catholic aggression of the West", and he is forced to admit that "the church, with its religious influence, land wealth, and numerous benefits, sometimes began to compete with the grand duke's power."

And the sovereign decided to bring the Russian Orthodox Church to life. First of all, the Law on St. George's Day (two weeks in November) was included in the Sudebnik of 1497, when peasants could freely leave the monastery lands. From now on, there was no question of fixing them. It is clear that from that moment the Russian Orthodox Church began to hate the boyars, St. George's Day and ... the sovereign.

The power, which could not be leaned against, which not only did not endow it with ever new privileges, like the Horde tsar, was not needed by the Josephites (as the ROC called itself in the 15th-16th centuries, after the name of its main ideologist Joseph Volotsky, abbot of the Volokolamsk monastery).

But the matter was not limited to St. George's Day. Ivan III called for the help of like-minded people, revered Trans-Volga elders, who broke away from the monastic Josephism and considered church acquisition, not to mention the enslavement of peasants, a mortal sin and heresy. Very soon, these non-possessors turned into a powerful church movement, putting forward outstanding leaders Nil Sorsky and Vassian Patrikeyev.

This is what they answered Joseph: “Test and understand, who from the ages of those who shone in holiness and built monasteries took care to acquire villages? Who begged the princes for a benefit for themselves or for an insult to the peasants? Who tortured human bodies with a scourge or clothed them with shackles? As we can see, the nonpossessors appealed to the simplicity of the pre-Horde church customs. For them, the Josephite acquisition was God's punishment for betraying the ancient tradition, for desecrating "our Russian antiquity."

One by one, between the early 1480s and the mid-1560s, four generations of nonpossessors would enter the arena of history. The struggle went on with varying success. They also had “their own” bishops and even “their own” metropolitans. But the Josephites, whose heirs today's ROC considers itself to be, were richer, more cunning and, as we will soon see, more immoral. Ultimately, they won.

Their main political enemy - the Russian patrimonial aristocracy, the boyars - was defeated, non-covetousness was declared heresy and destroyed, St. George's Day was canceled, and the Russian peasantry was tightly enslaved - for three long centuries. But the Josephites achieved all this only in the final analysis.

Even in the middle of the 16th century, the outcome of this epic struggle, which decided almost the entire future fate of Russia, was unclear. “Great confusion” reigned in the monasteries. Greed ate away discipline, corruption - spiritual goals, debauchery - human decency. And it was clear to everyone. Even the young Tsar Ivan IV.

In the well-known tsarist questions to the Church Council of 1551, distrust of the monastic ROC was expressed quite unambiguously. Judge for yourself. This is what the king asked her about:

“People enter monasteries not for the sake of saving their souls, but in order to always go out and drink. Archimandrites and abbots buy their places, do not know either the service of God or the brotherhood, they buy villages for themselves and beg for land from me. Where are those profits and who profits from them? Who will pay for all this sin? And from where do worldly souls receive benefit and aversion from all evil? If in monasteries everything is not done according to God, then what good can be expected from us, worldly children? And through whom should we ask for mercy from God?

Agree, the questions were non-possessive.

Pyrrhic victory for the Josephites

For the Josephites, this was a terrible, alarming signal. Everything was complicated by the fact that the new Sudebnik of 1550 not only confirmed the law on St. George's Day, but also in its last (58th) article legally forbade the tsar to adopt new laws without the "advice and consent" of the boyars. In this situation, nothing but a coup d'état, annulling all the laws of the Muscovite state, could save the situation. And the Josephites mobilized all their resources to organize such a coup. And they had a lot of resources.

First of all, they were lucky: the metropolitan at that time was "their own". Macarius was also the tutor of the young king and was well aware of his weaknesses. Ivan IV did not at all resemble his great grandfather, the first builder. He was an easily suggestible, pathologically cruel and desperately ambitious young man. On this, it was decided to play. The coup plan consisted of three points. Firstly, the king was inspired that he was the heir in the direct line of the “Augustus Caesar” himself and that he had no equal in Europe, except for the “Caesar” of the Holy Roman Empire.

Secondly, since the entire crowned European petty - Polish, Swedish or Danish - refused to recognize Ivan IV as king, they should have been taught a lesson, having won, in spite of it, the lands of the decaying Livonian Order (the Baltic states), which the government categorically opposed.

Thirdly, the tempting example of the Turkish Sultan Mehmet was offered to the king, who not only disobeyed his government, but also “ordered them to be killed alive and rivers like this: if they become overgrown with a body again, otherwise wine will be given to them. And he ordered the papers to be stuffed into their skins and he ordered them to be written on their skins - without such a thunderstorm, it is not possible to introduce truth into the kingdom. Like a horse under a king without a bridle, so is a kingdom without a thunderstorm.

It is hard to imagine that the most far-sighted of the Josephite hierarchs did not understand the risks of the coming upheaval. After all, it was obvious that they were creating a monster - a power that does not recognize any laws and restrictions, capable of “beating alive” anyone who contradicts it, arbitrary, autocratic power. But the desire inherited from the times of the yoke to cling to the chest of “their” power, if you like, the “Horde syndrome”, has already entered so deeply into the flesh and blood of the majority of the hierarchy that they preferred to take a chance.

Anyway, the plan worked. And as soon as the coup d'état broke out (known as the oprichnina), the Turkish "thunderstorm" broke out over the Russian land, Ivan IV turned into Ivan the Terrible - and heads flew, including those of Joseph.

Since then, the ROC loves to present itself as a victim. And Metropolitan Philip was strangled by the oprichnik Malyuta Skuratov. And Lenin's repressions will be remembered, and Khrushchev's. But not a word about the fact that they themselves created “Tsar Mad, who bathed in the blood of his subjects for 24 years,” in the words of Mikhail Lunin, one of the brightest minds of Decembrism. And they won’t tell about how they contributed to the Bolsheviks, finger on finger without hitting to help the Provisional Government - even though it was it that returned the Patriarchate to them.

Be that as it may, the insidious attempt of the Josephites to save their privileges through a coup d'état ended for them in the 16th century and really badly. Terrible made them pay three times with unparalleled fear and humiliation. For the first time, he forced them by the whole Council to participate in the disgusting comedy of the trial of their own metropolitan. Secondly, when he robbed their Pskov and Novgorod monasteries to the bone. And for the third time, when the clownish “king” Tatar Simeon, appointed by him for a while in his place, took away from the monasteries all the preferential letters issued to them by the Horde, and demanded a ruinous bribe for their return. Such was the terrible royal joke.

Far worse, however, was the peasantry who paid for their "Horde syndrome". Of course, as we remember from the time of the yoke, the fate of their own people was the last thing that interested the Russian Orthodox Church. Especially if her earthly riches were at stake. But the fact that, while defending these riches, they for the second time (Nikolai Karamzin was the first to equate the reign of Ivan the Terrible with the Mongol invasion), should not be forgotten. inflicted incredible suffering on their people

There is no sadder reading than a completely clerical description of the disasters of the people in official acts of the times of the oprichnina, which continued mechanically, like empty millstones, spinning and spinning, describing what is no longer in the world. “In a village in Küleksha,” we read in one of these acts, “Ignatka Lukyanov’s bow became empty from the oprichnina — the guardsmen robbed the stomach, and the cattle was spotted, and he himself died, the children ran away without a trace. The bow of Yeremeyka Afanasov became empty from the oprichnina - the oprichniki robbed his stomach, and killed himself, but he has no children. Melenteyka's bow became empty from the oprichnina - the oprichniki robbed the stomach, spotted the cattle, escaped without a trace ... "

And stretch and stretch endless, like Russian expanses, paper versts of this chronicle of human misfortune. Again the bow (plot) was deserted, again the stomach (property) was robbed, again he himself disappeared without a trace. And it’s not the boyars, after all, all these Ignatki, Yeremeiki and Melenteyka, not the sovereign’s enemies, just peasants who had a “belly” that could be robbed, had wives and daughters who could be raped, there was a “bow” that could be taken away .. .

Unrepentant

Here ends my competence as a historian of the Russian Orthodox Church. From now on, my only advantage over the reader is a historical retrospective. Alas, it testifies indisputably - for three and a half centuries, the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church cared exclusively about its earthly wealth. For their sake, she was ready not only to faithfully cooperate with the foreign conqueror, but also to inspire, according to Karamzin, "the second Mongol invasion." What kind of moral values ​​are there! When the nonpossessors reminded her of them, she declared them heretics, Judaizers, and destroyed them. So where does she get the “tradition of moral values” in this case?

Theoretically, she could, of course, acquire it in subsequent centuries. She could, if she sincerely repented of those grave terrible sins that we spoke about. But have you heard even a word of repentance from the lips of the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church? On the contrary, they hired a whole army of writing servants, called to justify all her sins. And most importantly, she continued to sin - in the same spirit in which she began in the XIII century. The same "Horde syndrome" in 1943, when she clung to Stalin's chest, as once to the chest of the Mongolian king, and faithfully cooperated with his special services. And in 2012, when she tries to reinforce the ideological emptiness of the KGB authorities with her medieval canons.

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I know that even today's Josephites failed to kill the tradition of pre-Horde Orthodoxy and non-acquisitiveness. It is carefully kept in the hearts of thousands of priests and laity. Yes, their parishes are poor. Yes, their voices are barely audible over the noise of official propaganda. But they are, these parishes. And the very presence of this alternative is a guarantee that the moral values ​​of Orthodoxy have a future. For these values ​​begin with overcoming the "Horde syndrome", with independence.