Patriarch Nikon: Power, Vera, Image

The book is dedicated to the analysis of the image of Patriarch Nikon (1605-1681), which has developed for several centuries and eventually imprinted in historical memory. The influence of the ideology of both the imperial and Soviet times determined the formation of a number of historiographic stereotypes in relation to events and individual acting persons of church-state relations of the 17th century. Such cliches are firmly established in relation to the figure of Patriarch Nikon. The image of the church and the priesthood in public consciousness is one of the most important for understanding the essence of the split. Around him, all other historiographic stories of the 17th century were refracted: the causes of the split, its characteristic features and ideas, the eschatological component, the consequences of the “disputes about faith” for the life of the church and the state. Most of the works devoted to the consideration of the personality and acts of the patriarch are focused on the so -called "Nikon’s case" and events closely related to him. On the contrary, the biographical side is less represented by the necessary archival data and, accordingly, developed. As for the assessment of the activities of Patriarch Nikon, the literature of the issue is divided into two directly opposite directions, reflecting sympathy/antipathy, fed to the planes of the patriarch, as well as the means that he put them into life.
The book is addressed to historians, philologists, political scientists and culturalists, as well as all those who are interested in the phenomenon of Patriarch Nikon’s personality and the history of church-state relations in Russia of the 17th century