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Articles on the Orthodox Medievalist
Fr. Matthew Raphael Johnson is an Orthodox priest in the Milan Synod, who also has a Ph.d. in Political Science from the University of Nebraska, and who has written a few good articles on the Old Faith on his website, "The Orthodox Medievalist" at http://www.rusjournal.com/.
None of these articles bear a copyright notice. Nevertheless, some of these may have been published in his copyrighted book "Sobornosti: Essays on the Old Faith", available at http://www.lulu.com/content/5415349. I have emailed Fr. Raphael asking for permission to repost these articles here, but he prefers that people buy a copy of his book. He said that most of the proceeds from the book are going to a sick monk at Holy Name Abbey in NJ.
Disclaimer: Fr. Raphael correctly understands the history and theological positions of the Old Faith as far as I can tell; however, he himself does not accept it, preferring to praise it from the outside.
The following are links to the articles with excerpts of up to 150 words:
St. Maxim, the Prophet of Old Russia
"St. Maxim came to Russia from Athos in 1518. His purpose was to assist in the translation of service books from both the Greek and the Latin. Since St. Maxim was a student in the oligarchy of Florence, he was aware of all Latin and western liturgical forms, as well as an expert translator from Greek into Latin. St. Maxim is one of the sources of liturgical renewal in Russia since he brought with him the only vaguely understood notions of the Roman liturgical canon and the Gregorian tradition."
Letter on the Liturgy of St. Peter
"I think it proper to clarify the nature of the western rite liturgy in its Russian context, commonly called the Liturgy of St. Peter. This name is not due to authorship, but that the Roman canon was said in Old, i.e. pre-Petrine Russia, on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, as well as on the feasts of all saints of western background, such as Pope St. Clement, Benedict and especially, Gregory the Dialogist. In the centralizing reforms of Peter, such liturgical ecumenism was eliminated, though it was retained by the Old Belief."
Sobornosti: The View of the Old Faith
"On of the great Gifts of God to the church is sobornost. It is the interpenetrating unity of the members of the church with each other via the faith itself, embodied in the saints, and unembodied, within the canons and sacred writings. All of this is brought together in liturgy; the united hope. Christ Himself prayed for this unity in the famous passage: so that they would be united, as We. Christians form the eternal sobor through the identity of ideas, love and devotion, each together, each reinforcing the other."
Random Thoughts on the Old Ritual
"The Old Ritual can never be reduced to slogans about “two fingers” or “two alleluias,” as its opponents have regularly done. The Old Ritual was counter-revolutionary, both deeply religious and–as all religious dissent is–deeply political. For the zealots surrounding the court, open revolution against Old Russia was in order, assisted by the Greeks, and brought to fruition by peter I. By the beginning of Peter’s reign, church governance was completely altered. The synod ran parish life and appointed priests. Seminaries on the Swedish model were built throughout Russia, and the chief language of instruction was Latin."
Royalism and Revolution: The Old Faith and the Legacy of Petrinism
The Romanov dynasty paid a very high price for its persecution of the Old Ritualists. By its very nature, the Old Ritualist phenomenon was conservative, deeply patriotic and traditionalist–the very stuff of which monarchies are made. Thus the policies of repression and persecution deprived the monarchy in Russia of its potentially most reliable base of support and turned a force of national stability into an antagonized and destabilizing agent.
2005 Interview with Metropolitan Andrian (1951-2005)
Why was Nikon’s reform treated as so extreme. Why the intense resistance? What is wrong with correcting books?
Real corrections of Russian prayer books have occurred throughout Russian history. We never thought of that as a problem. Nikon was different. He sought to destroy the old books. He used the powerful uniates as the basis of his manipulations. It was a revolution, and was meant as such. The resistance to Nikon was national, the people overwhelmingly supported it. Little was left unchanged, unmanipulated. So many prayers were changed not just in form, but also in content.
On the Truth of the Old Faith
During 1666-1667, the ancient piety was rejected by Nikon and his cohorts, and many were forced to sign oaths upholding this new faith. Bishop Pavel, the only remaining bishop who refused to sign, was burnt at the stake. The Old Faith was then forced to run to the wilderness, all the while canonically upholding the ancient Orthodox traditions. We accepted priests who had fled from the Nikonians, so at least some of our communities had the sacraments. Only in 1846 was it possible to restore the hierarchy through Metropolitan +AMBROSE (1791-1863).
Our Dealings with the Heretics According to the Gospel
For the first time in a long time there is freedom from persecutions against Old Believers. It is now possible to widely state our faith on various issues without fear of oppression. Many are listening to us, these same people also are interested in dialogue with us, particularly over the spiritual crisis of our times. Nevertheless, while we respond to this invitation, “dialogue” can never mean the mixing of the true and the false faith. We must be clear, the false faiths of our world are pagan and heretical, and compromise with them will destroy the unity of the church.
Brief Description of the Old Faith Community in Kazakhastan, from the Patriarchal Website
Catherine II and her senate, in 1762, sought a return of the Old Believers to Russia from Poland. She promised to settle the Old faith in Siberia in exchange for our labor. To this extent, many Old Believers then moved in large numbers to Southern Siberia. In 1764, Catherine, under her General Maslov, expelled the Old Faith to other parts of Siberia, particularly to Irkutsk. Roughly 20,000 were so sent. This began the settlement of the Old Faith, again, in the Altai.
A Political Apologia for the Old Belief
To hold the view that the Old Belief concerns itself with the mode of making the sign of the cross is to be vulgar and ignorant. The Old Belief centers around the “Struggle for the Russian Mind,” as +CORNELIUS or the Moscow Metropolia of the Old Faith has written. It presents a medievalist, monastic and decentralized agrarian vision of Israel, the seamless mix of religion, morality and high politics, as opposed to the centralized, secular, European vision of the Petrine system and its Bolshevik successor. The Old Belief stands for Russia as the Third Rome, while the Petrine idea holds Russia as merely another European empire, albeit one with a peculiar religious bent.
Our Mission: The Struggle for the Russian Mind
All of this created a people who were holy and law abiding, a people capable of adjusting to any milieu. Old Ritualists lived all over the world in peace, considered hard workers and loyal citizens. In Australia, for example, contracts concerning labor for ship-building made a point to prefer Old Believers for labor. This sort of integrity found in the ancient legends and traditions I always a part of the Old Rite. Their love of tradition is able to adjust to the different aspects of life in other countries that never developed to the detriment of the faith itself.
The Merchants of the Old Belief
Old Faith communities existed in large numbers in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Nizhni Novgorod and in many other cities. Their representatives dominated trade and enterprise. It is difficult to determine the portion occupied by the Old Believers among the merchant class. If we take the Moscow industrial elite of the end of the 19th century, then the adherents of the Old Faith comprised in it more than 70%.
National Anarchism, the Old Faith and Rebellion
Old Russia was and is represented by the Old Faith and the Cossack uprisings under Bulavin and Pugachev. In short, their programs were identical: a popular monarchy, the free peasant commune and the Old Faith: the three ancient pillars of justice. In opposition is the “Egyptian” rule of technology, centralization and oligarchy, the three pillars of injustice. Such as view is echoed in early medieval Ireland and medieval Serbia. Society was divided up into self governing communes, who elected their clergy and were loyal to local custom. Local monastics offered spiritual guidance and sainthood, not to mention education and social welfare. The state, if it can be called such, was represented by a monarch with a tiny retinue of supporters. His role was purely to defend the faith from outside influences ...
Lecture XVIII: The Old Belief
"One of the issues that Razin made central was that of the Old Belief. Under Tsar Alexis, the patriarch Nikon (1605-1681) had implemented certain reforms of the Church that irritated rural traditionalists. Many seem minor, such as the number of particles cut during the proskomede, the number of Alleluias, the direction of processions, etc., but some were more major: the open imitation of the Greeks (using books printed in Italian), the mixing of the genders during services, introducing a “top-down” sort of administration, alteration in church music, etc. The life and struggle of the Old Belief is one of the most interesting aspects of Old Russia, and one that I have studied most intently."
None of these articles bear a copyright notice. Nevertheless, some of these may have been published in his copyrighted book "Sobornosti: Essays on the Old Faith", available at http://www.lulu.com/content/5415349. I have emailed Fr. Raphael asking for permission to repost these articles here, but he prefers that people buy a copy of his book. He said that most of the proceeds from the book are going to a sick monk at Holy Name Abbey in NJ.
Disclaimer: Fr. Raphael correctly understands the history and theological positions of the Old Faith as far as I can tell; however, he himself does not accept it, preferring to praise it from the outside.
The following are links to the articles with excerpts of up to 150 words:
St. Maxim, the Prophet of Old Russia
"St. Maxim came to Russia from Athos in 1518. His purpose was to assist in the translation of service books from both the Greek and the Latin. Since St. Maxim was a student in the oligarchy of Florence, he was aware of all Latin and western liturgical forms, as well as an expert translator from Greek into Latin. St. Maxim is one of the sources of liturgical renewal in Russia since he brought with him the only vaguely understood notions of the Roman liturgical canon and the Gregorian tradition."
Letter on the Liturgy of St. Peter
"I think it proper to clarify the nature of the western rite liturgy in its Russian context, commonly called the Liturgy of St. Peter. This name is not due to authorship, but that the Roman canon was said in Old, i.e. pre-Petrine Russia, on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, as well as on the feasts of all saints of western background, such as Pope St. Clement, Benedict and especially, Gregory the Dialogist. In the centralizing reforms of Peter, such liturgical ecumenism was eliminated, though it was retained by the Old Belief."
Sobornosti: The View of the Old Faith
"On of the great Gifts of God to the church is sobornost. It is the interpenetrating unity of the members of the church with each other via the faith itself, embodied in the saints, and unembodied, within the canons and sacred writings. All of this is brought together in liturgy; the united hope. Christ Himself prayed for this unity in the famous passage: so that they would be united, as We. Christians form the eternal sobor through the identity of ideas, love and devotion, each together, each reinforcing the other."
Random Thoughts on the Old Ritual
"The Old Ritual can never be reduced to slogans about “two fingers” or “two alleluias,” as its opponents have regularly done. The Old Ritual was counter-revolutionary, both deeply religious and–as all religious dissent is–deeply political. For the zealots surrounding the court, open revolution against Old Russia was in order, assisted by the Greeks, and brought to fruition by peter I. By the beginning of Peter’s reign, church governance was completely altered. The synod ran parish life and appointed priests. Seminaries on the Swedish model were built throughout Russia, and the chief language of instruction was Latin."
Royalism and Revolution: The Old Faith and the Legacy of Petrinism
The Romanov dynasty paid a very high price for its persecution of the Old Ritualists. By its very nature, the Old Ritualist phenomenon was conservative, deeply patriotic and traditionalist–the very stuff of which monarchies are made. Thus the policies of repression and persecution deprived the monarchy in Russia of its potentially most reliable base of support and turned a force of national stability into an antagonized and destabilizing agent.
2005 Interview with Metropolitan Andrian (1951-2005)
Why was Nikon’s reform treated as so extreme. Why the intense resistance? What is wrong with correcting books?
Real corrections of Russian prayer books have occurred throughout Russian history. We never thought of that as a problem. Nikon was different. He sought to destroy the old books. He used the powerful uniates as the basis of his manipulations. It was a revolution, and was meant as such. The resistance to Nikon was national, the people overwhelmingly supported it. Little was left unchanged, unmanipulated. So many prayers were changed not just in form, but also in content.
On the Truth of the Old Faith
During 1666-1667, the ancient piety was rejected by Nikon and his cohorts, and many were forced to sign oaths upholding this new faith. Bishop Pavel, the only remaining bishop who refused to sign, was burnt at the stake. The Old Faith was then forced to run to the wilderness, all the while canonically upholding the ancient Orthodox traditions. We accepted priests who had fled from the Nikonians, so at least some of our communities had the sacraments. Only in 1846 was it possible to restore the hierarchy through Metropolitan +AMBROSE (1791-1863).
Our Dealings with the Heretics According to the Gospel
For the first time in a long time there is freedom from persecutions against Old Believers. It is now possible to widely state our faith on various issues without fear of oppression. Many are listening to us, these same people also are interested in dialogue with us, particularly over the spiritual crisis of our times. Nevertheless, while we respond to this invitation, “dialogue” can never mean the mixing of the true and the false faith. We must be clear, the false faiths of our world are pagan and heretical, and compromise with them will destroy the unity of the church.
Brief Description of the Old Faith Community in Kazakhastan, from the Patriarchal Website
Catherine II and her senate, in 1762, sought a return of the Old Believers to Russia from Poland. She promised to settle the Old faith in Siberia in exchange for our labor. To this extent, many Old Believers then moved in large numbers to Southern Siberia. In 1764, Catherine, under her General Maslov, expelled the Old Faith to other parts of Siberia, particularly to Irkutsk. Roughly 20,000 were so sent. This began the settlement of the Old Faith, again, in the Altai.
A Political Apologia for the Old Belief
To hold the view that the Old Belief concerns itself with the mode of making the sign of the cross is to be vulgar and ignorant. The Old Belief centers around the “Struggle for the Russian Mind,” as +CORNELIUS or the Moscow Metropolia of the Old Faith has written. It presents a medievalist, monastic and decentralized agrarian vision of Israel, the seamless mix of religion, morality and high politics, as opposed to the centralized, secular, European vision of the Petrine system and its Bolshevik successor. The Old Belief stands for Russia as the Third Rome, while the Petrine idea holds Russia as merely another European empire, albeit one with a peculiar religious bent.
Our Mission: The Struggle for the Russian Mind
All of this created a people who were holy and law abiding, a people capable of adjusting to any milieu. Old Ritualists lived all over the world in peace, considered hard workers and loyal citizens. In Australia, for example, contracts concerning labor for ship-building made a point to prefer Old Believers for labor. This sort of integrity found in the ancient legends and traditions I always a part of the Old Rite. Their love of tradition is able to adjust to the different aspects of life in other countries that never developed to the detriment of the faith itself.
The Merchants of the Old Belief
Old Faith communities existed in large numbers in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Nizhni Novgorod and in many other cities. Their representatives dominated trade and enterprise. It is difficult to determine the portion occupied by the Old Believers among the merchant class. If we take the Moscow industrial elite of the end of the 19th century, then the adherents of the Old Faith comprised in it more than 70%.
National Anarchism, the Old Faith and Rebellion
Old Russia was and is represented by the Old Faith and the Cossack uprisings under Bulavin and Pugachev. In short, their programs were identical: a popular monarchy, the free peasant commune and the Old Faith: the three ancient pillars of justice. In opposition is the “Egyptian” rule of technology, centralization and oligarchy, the three pillars of injustice. Such as view is echoed in early medieval Ireland and medieval Serbia. Society was divided up into self governing communes, who elected their clergy and were loyal to local custom. Local monastics offered spiritual guidance and sainthood, not to mention education and social welfare. The state, if it can be called such, was represented by a monarch with a tiny retinue of supporters. His role was purely to defend the faith from outside influences ...
Lecture XVIII: The Old Belief
"One of the issues that Razin made central was that of the Old Belief. Under Tsar Alexis, the patriarch Nikon (1605-1681) had implemented certain reforms of the Church that irritated rural traditionalists. Many seem minor, such as the number of particles cut during the proskomede, the number of Alleluias, the direction of processions, etc., but some were more major: the open imitation of the Greeks (using books printed in Italian), the mixing of the genders during services, introducing a “top-down” sort of administration, alteration in church music, etc. The life and struggle of the Old Belief is one of the most interesting aspects of Old Russia, and one that I have studied most intently."
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| Anonymous | simony | 1 | Jan 28 2009, 3:27 AM EST by Anonymous | ||
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Thread started: Jan 27 2009, 4:58 PM EST
Watch
Dear John: Have any evidence of simony? Pleae provide or take your comment off this thread. . . Raphael Johnsojn
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| John_Alden | The Milan Synod | 3 | Jan 16 2009, 12:59 PM EST by John_Alden | ||
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Thread started: Jan 15 2009, 12:27 AM EST
Watch
I have been in contact with Fr Johnson and a couple other people in the Milan Synod. I do not agree with a lot of what they say. I believe the Merchants of Old Belief do not accurately show what Old Belief stands for. Most of the Old Believers are strict and do not allow association with hard liquor as that article explains. So I do not believe such Old Believers to be authentic. We all make our choices as to what we believe. I am sure that even Fr Johnson does not agree of making use of hard liquor, but it is not good to present Old Belief in this manner either. I am sure the Milan Synod gets a few things right, but for many reasons I do not accept them as a very good example. There are many violations of Old Faith there, be careful. I do realize my own position as I type these words, there are degrees and at least I do not claim to be part of any Synod. If you ask me I think we all have a lot of repenting to be doing. Time will tell how we each do in the end.
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