Avvakum

Avvakum Petrov
Great Martyr
Born	20 November 1620/21 Grigorovo, Nizhny Novgorod
Died	14 April 1682 (aged 60 or 61) Pustozyorsk
Venerated in	Old Believers (Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church)
Major shrine	Pustozyorsk, Russia
Feast	Repose: 14 April
Attributes	Dressed in a priest's robes, holding the two-fingered sign of the cross
Patronage	Russia

For the Russian first name, see Avvakum (given name).

Burning of Archpriest Avvakum (Old Believer icon)

Avvakum Petrov (Russian: Аввакум Петров; 20 November 1620/21 – 14 April 1682; also spelled Awakum) was a Russian Old Believer and protopope of the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square who led the opposition to Patriarch Nikon's reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church. His autobiography and letters to the tsar and other Old Believers such as Boyarynya Morozova are considered masterpieces of 17th-century Russian literature.

Life and writings

He was born in Grigorovo, in present-day Nizhny Novgorod. Starting in 1652 Nikon, as Patriarch of the Russian Church, initiated a wide range of reforms in Russian liturgy and theology. These reforms were intended mostly to bring the Russian Church into line with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Avvakum and others strongly rejected these changes. They saw them as a corruption of the Russian Church, which they considered to be the true Church of God. The other Churches were more closely related to Constantinople in their liturgies. Avvakum argued that Constantinople fell to the Turks because of these heretical beliefs and practices.

Avvakum's Exile in Siberia (1898), by Sergey Miloradovich

For his opposition to the reforms, Avvakum was repeatedly imprisoned. First, he was exiled to Siberia, to the city of Tobolsk, and partook in an exploration expedition under Afanasii Pashkov to the Chinese border. In 1664, after Nikon was no longer patriarch he was allowed to return to Moscow, then exiled again to Mezen, then allowed to return to Moscow again for the Church Council of 1666–67, but due to continued opposition to the reforms, he was exiled to Pustozyorsk, above the Arctic Circle, in 1667. For the last fourteen years of his life, he was imprisoned there in a pit or dugout (a sunken, log-framed hut). He and his accomplices were finally executed by being burned in a log house. The spot where he was burned has been commemorated by an ornate wooden cross.

Avvakum's autobiography recounts hardships of his imprisonment and exile to the Russian Far East, the story of his friendship and fallout with the Tsar Alexis, his practice of exorcising demons and devils, and his boundless admiration for nature and other works of God. Numerous manuscript copies of the text circulated for nearly two centuries before it was first printed in 1861.

The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum

The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, originally titled The Life Written By Himself (Russian: Житие́ протопопа́ Авваку́ма, им сами́м напи́санное) is a hagiography and autobiography written by the Old Believer and prototope (archpriest) Avvakum Petrovich. The text discusses Avvakum’s struggle against Patriarch Nikon’s reforms during the Schism of the Russian Church and extensively details the trials he experienced during various exiles in Siberia. The text is remarkable for its style, which blends high Old Church Slavonic with low Russian vernacular and profanity. The Life is considered “one of medieval Russia’s finest literary works” and was regarded highly by both Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Historical Background

Schism of the Russian Church

In the late 17th century, the Russian Church underwent significant reforms spearheaded by Patriarch Nikon and supported by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The resulting split in the Russian Church between supporters of the reforms and their opponents, who came to be known as the Old Believers, is known as the Schism of the Russian Church.

Historian Georg Bernhard Michels writes that “the Russian Orthodox Church became a significant target of popular hostility during the second half of the seventeenth century.”  Having survived the destabilizing Time of Troubles, the Church had developed into a “powerful bureaucracy” by the 1630s.  As the Time of Troubles was seen as a punishment for impiety, the Church was “intensely conservative” and “aspired to restore the ‘ancient piety’ in its fullness.”

This drive for strengthening and purification was further influenced by the Ruthenian Orthodox revival led by Petro Mohyla in Kyiv in the 1630s-40s, who, likewise, sought to strengthen Orthodox religiosity and spirituality in Ruthenia.  In Kyiv and Lviv, “Orthodox brotherhoods set up schools under the direct patronage of the patriarch of Constantinople.”

In the late 1640s, both Patriarch Nikon and Avvakum had been members of the Zealots of Piety (known also as bogolyubtsy, i.e. “lovers of God”), a circle of both ecclesiastical and secular figures who aimed to improve religious and civilian life and to purify and strengthen the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church.  

Gradually, a split appeared in this circle: while certain Zealots echoed the centralized sentiments of the Ruthenian revival, other members, most notably Avvakum, “felt that homespun truths were sufficient and suspected foreigners of [cunning], which would adulterate the simple, strong native faith”.  When Nikon became the Patriarch of Muscovy and All Rus’ in 1652, he initiated ambitious reforms, entrusting “Jesuit-trained scholars from Ukraine and White Russia with a critical review of the forms of Russian worship.”  This exacerbated tensions with and within the movement of the Zealots, who’d “wanted to create a church which was morally pure and close to the ordinary Russian people”.

Tsar Alexei and Patriarch Nikon, instead, had imperial aspirations. Nikon’s vision of ecclesiastical restoration assumed the “continued dominance of the church over state” and stretched beyond Muscovy to the “entire Eastern Christian ecumene.”  Nikon’s plans of ecclesiastical restoration and reform were further strengthened by his “contact with Greek and Ukrainian churchmen” and by the annexation of Ukraine in the Russo-Polish War of 1654-1667.  After the Ruthenian revival,  Southwestern Slavic Orthodox tradition had become closer to the practices of Greek Orthodoxy than the Russian tradition, which had found itself increasingly isolated from the Greek Orthodox Church throughout the past several centuries.   Nikon sought to, likewise, bring the Russian church nearer to Greek Orthodoxy.  Russian linguist Alexander Komchatnov further emphasizes that the push for centralized, normativized, and generalized Orthodoxy was in line with Muscovy’s newly-developed Imperial aims, allowing Russia to position itself at the center of the whole Orthodox world instead of remaining a marginal religious entity.

From 1653-1656, Nikon’s reforms changed the manner of making the sign of the cross (from the dvoeperstie, the two-fingered cross, to the troeperstie, the three-fingered cross), introduced new liturgical vestments modeled in the Greek style, and imposed a normalized revision of liturgical books.

The central opposition to Nikon’s reforms, headed, among others, by Archpriest Avvakum, would come to be known as the Old Believers. Old Believer texts painted the Schism as an apocalyptic division between the forces of “good and evil”, envisioning themselves as “God’s ‘chosen flock’” and Nikon as the Antichrist. They were continually repressed, arrested, and exiled from the onset of Nikon’s reforms.

Nikon and Tsar Alexei soon fell out, and Nikon was placed in confinement, but the Tsar continued the enforcement of his reforms. In 1666, the Great Moscow Synod called together by Tsar Alexei pronounced an anathema on all those who refused to put Nikon’s liturgical and textual amendments into effect. A trial of the Zealots was held and leading members of the Old Believers, Avvakum among them, were exiled to a prison camp beyond the Arctic Circle in Pustozersk on the Pechora River, in today’s Nenets-Autonomous Okrug, 27 km from Naryan-Mar.  Overall, Nikon’s reforms prompted a series of protests, and, with the announcement and enforcement of the council’s anathema, outright rebellions that swept the next several decades of Russia’s history.  

Persecution of Avvakum and the Old Believers

From 1953 onward, the movement of the Zealots was suppressed, and prominent Zealots were arrested or sent into exile. Avvakum and his family were exiled to Tobolsk, Siberia, in 1953, moved to Yeniseysk prison in 1955, where Avvakum partook in A.F. Pashkov’s military colonizing excursion to the Chinese border of Dauria, traveling past Lake Baikal to Nerchinsk. In 1664, Avvakum returned to Tobolsk, where he remained for two years before being permitted to return to Moscow in 1664, though several months later he was once more exiled with his family to Mezen. He was permitted to return to Moscow for the Great Moscow Synod of 1666-1667, but was, finally, exiled to Pustozersk alongside his fellow Old Believers Lazar, Fyodor, and Epifany. From 1670 onward, they were condemned to life “on bread and water” in a ground prison (a prison consisting, essentially, of a dug-out hole in the ground), where they lived until they were burned at the stake on April 14th, 1682.  During his imprisonment, Avvakum wrote his autobiography: the first version of The Life was drafted in 1669-1672, and the subsequent three redactions from 1672-1675.  The trials suffered by him during his numerous exiles are largely the subject of this text.

Genre

The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum is a hagiography (Russian: житие). Many have noted that Avvakum’s description of this text as a hagiography exhibits audacity, because by writing his own hagiography he characterizes himself a saint. However, a hagiography was also the only genre known to Avvakum that would textually accommodate his autobiography, which was not yet an explicitly practiced genre. Scholars like Alan Wood consider The Life to be a prototype of Siberian prison literature — a tradition that would most famously be continued by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from the House of the Dead) in the 19th century and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago) in the 20th.  

Content

Early Life

Avvakum’s account largely follows his biography. He was born circa 1620 in Grigorevo, in present-day Nizhny Novgorod Oblast to an alcoholic priest named Pyotr, who died while Avvakum was a child, and a nun, Maria. Avvakum married a merchant’s daughter, Nastasya Markovna, at age 17, became a deacon at 21, a priest at 23, and an Archpriest in Yurevyets at 28. By his own account, Avvakum appears to be a passionate, faithful man, who was nonetheless often harsh and unforgiving in his religious zeal. Before the Nikonian reforms, he dealt harshly with harlequins (skomorokhi), lechery, and unbelievers. His zeal causes continuous conflicts with local boyars and officials. Eventually, Avvakum flees to Moscow, where he encounters Nikon as the latter is rising in prominence, although the two are initially friends. Soon after, however, Nikon begins his reforms, forcing several dissenting members of the clergy to undergo shearings, makings, and exile. Avvakum himself is also seized, and is exiled with his family to Siberia.

Exile in Siberia and Expedition to Dauria

Avvakum extensively describes his first exile to Tobolsk and his experience on the forced expedition to Dauria, the border with China, which was led by Afanasy Pashkov.  A disagreement with Pashkov about two widows, whom Pashkov wanted to give away in marriage despite it being discouraged in the Canons. Pashkov orders Avvakum to be beaten, yet Avvakum’s prayer alleviates his pain: “When they were beating, it didn’t hurt then, what with the prayers….Water splashed in my mouth, so I sighed and repented before God.  The Lord our Light is merciful; he does not recall against us our former transgressions, rewarding repentance. And again nothing was hurting.” Avvakum also writes of the difficulty of the journey, describing hunger so great that the travelers would eat a newborn foal, along with its blood and afterbirth, as well as the death of two of his sons. Throughout these trials, Avvakum nonetheless heals the mad and the ill by anointing them with holy oil and blessing them with the cross. In doing so, he either combats the devil, who, or channels their repentance to beseech the mercy of God.

Avvakum also speaks about the false faith of the shamans.  In one episode, Pashkov sends his son Eremej to battle in Mongolian territory, but first asks a shaman to predict the outcome of the war. The shaman predicts victory. Avvakum is angered, knowing him to be channeling devils, and prays for the demise of Pashkov’s men. However, recalling the previous kindness of Eremej, he is overcome by pity, and asks the Lord to pardon him. Pashkov’s men are decimated but Eremej is spared, and a vision of Avvakum appears to him to lead him back home from the wilderness. Pashkov is nonetheless angry with Avvakum for his malignant prayers.  Avvakum concludes his description of Pashkov’s military expedition thus: “Ten years he tormented me, or I him — I don’t know. It will be sorted out on Judgement Day.” Avvakum also extensively describes the beautiful nature and plentiful lands he witnessed during his expedition to Dauria.

In the middle of The Life — during an episode wherein Avvakum describes how he and his family saved a man by lying about his whereabouts and asks whether he deserves to be forgiven or moved to penance for the sin of lying and “playing the thief” —  there is a written-in absolution by Epifany, Avvakum’s confessors who is named in the epigraph of The Life. This absolution reads:

”God doth forgive and bless thee in this age and that to come, together why thy helpmate Anastasia and thy daughter, and all they house. Ye have acted rightly and justly. Amen.”

Return to Moscow and Imprisonment in Pustozersk  

Returning from exile, he is very well received in Moscow by the boyars and the Tsar, whom Avvakum describes charitably despite the oppression he himself faced under his regime. “How can I help but feel sorry for that Tsar and those boyars!” he writes. “It’s a pity, yes it is! You can see how good they are.”

However, due to Avvakum’s continued condemnation of the reforms, the Tsar eventually orders him to exile once more, this time to Mezen, where Avvakum spends a year and half with his family. He is brought to Moscow again during the Great Moscow Synod of 1666-67, though this time he received poorly and is alternatingly kept imprisoned in Pafnut’yev monastery and in a cell in St. Nikola’s, where he is visited by the Tsar, who appears to be sorry for him, by Prince Ivan Vorotinsky, and by the holy fool Fyodor.   He publically denounces the Nikonian reforms  before the Eucemenical Council of Patriarchs. (92-93). After this, he and Lazar, Fyodor, and Epifany are banished to Pustozersk.  During this time, many of Avvakum’s followers are punished executed: some hanged, some buried alive, some elinguated. Though Avvakum’s fellows in Pustozersk are physically mutilated by their guards and their tongues, fingers, or hands cut off, God grants them all supernatural healing. Soon after, they are imprisoned in a ground prison.

Exorcisms of Devils

Avvakum concludes The Life with several accounts of exorcisms performed by him, culminating in the attempted exorcism of a woman named Anna in Tobolsk, who Avvakum writes was led astray by devils in wanting to marry her master, Elizar, who had taken her virginity. During the protracted struggle between Avvakum and her devils, Anna dies for four days. When she wakes, she tells Avvakum she had been led by angels to a beautiful mansion which they told her belonged to her confessor, Archpriest Avvakum. Though she marries Elizar, Avvakum eventually heals her and sh e becomes a nun named Agafya. Avvakum ends by beseeching his confessor Epifany to write down his own life story, and to speak not for himself, but for the love of Christ.

Themes

Protest of Nikonian Heresy

Avvakum describes the schism in apocalyptic terms: “God poured forth the vials of his wrath upon the kingdom! And still those poor souls didn’t come to their senses, and kept right on stirring up the Church. Then Neronov spoke, and he told the Tsar the three pestilences that come of the schism in the Church: the plague, the sword, and division.” He often refers to the Nikonian as foxes, and to Nikon as a wolf; together, he calls them the army of the Antichrist. Nonetheless, he describes his deliberations about speaking out against Nikon’s reforms, knowing that his wife and children bear the punishment as a consequence of his dissent, but also writes of his wife’s insistence that he remain true to the faith.  In response to his doubt, the Archpriestess Nastasya Markova hardens his resolve:

“Now stand up and preach the Word of God like you used to and don’t grieve over us….Now go on, get to the church, Petrovič, unmask the whoredom of heresy!’ Well, sir, I bowed low to her for that, and shaking off the blindness of a heavy heart, I began to preach and teach the Word of God about the tows and everywhere, and yet again did I unmask the Nikonian heresy with boldness.”

Endurance of Physical Violence

The Life is full of accounts of violent beatings and trials that Avvakum endures with and without aggression and with acceptance. This theme is further extended to Avvakum’s endurance of his fate. Avvakum describes how he his barge was swept away on the Khilok River, but expressed no bitterness: “Everything was smashed to bits! But what could be done if Christ and the most immaculate Mother of God deigned it so? I was laughing coming out of the water, but the people there were oh’ing and ah’ing as they hung my clothes around on bushes.” An episode with Avvakum’s wife Nastasya Markovna further emphasizes the theme of endurance:

“The poor Archpriestess tottered and trudged along, and then she’d fall in a heap — fearful slippery it was! Once she was trudging along and she caved in, and another just as weary up into her right into her and right there caved in himself. They were both shouting, but they couldn’t get up. The peasant was shouting “Little mother, my Lady, forgive me!” But the Archpriestess was shouting, “Why’d you crush me, father?”  I came up, and the poor dear started in on me, saying, “Will these sufferings go on a long time, Archpriest?” And I said, “Markovna, right up to our very death.” And so she sighed and answered, “Good enough, Petrovič, then let’s be getting on.”

Holy and Supernatural Elements

Avvakum frequently relies on prayer and God’s grace to survive the many trials he is put through, and in order to conquer the unclean forces he encounters.  For instance, Avvakum and his family are saved from a storm on the Tunguska river by God’s grace in response to his prayer.

In an episode in which he heals two madwomen, Avvakum describes at length how to drive the devil out of the body: “The devil’s no peasant, he’s not afraid of a club. He’s afraid of the Cross of Christ, and of holy water, and of holy oil, and of plain cuts and runs before the Body of Christ.” The madwomen are only rid of their madness when they live with Avvakum, becoming mad again the moment they are sent away.  Avvakum is also able to sense the devils summoned by the shaman invited by Pashkov:

“That evening this peasant sorcerer brought out a live ram close by my shelter and started over conjuring it, twisting it this way and that, and he twisted its head off and tossed it aside. Then he started galloping around and dancing and summoning devils, and after considerable shouting he slammed himself against the ground and foam ran out of his mouth.  The devils were crushing him, but he asked of them, ‘Will the expedition be successful?’ And the devils said, “You will come back with a greatly victory and with much wealth.”

Avvakum also describes how once, during winter in Dauria, he had to travel across a great stretch of ice but fell from weariness and thirst. In his response to his prayer for water, God splintered and parted the ice, leaving him a small hole to drink out of.  Avvakum draws a parallel between this episode and God’s mercy to the Israelites wandering in the Sinai desert, when He caused water to gush out of the rock struck by Moses in Exodus. The scene is also reminiscent of the Parting of the Red Sea.

In another instance, Avvakum’s spiritual son, the holy fool Fyodor, is imprisoned in chains but “by God’s will” the chains on his legs and arms fall to pieces. (85). Avvakum also describes how his follower Lazar was punished by the Nikonians, but granted supernatural healing by God.  Lazar’s tongue is cut out, but he does not bleed or feel pain and is able to speak; in two years his tongue grows back. The same miracle occurs in the case of Elder Epifany and with Deacon Fyodor.

Avvakum also describes how his “brother” Evfimey was possessed by devils because he neglected his office in favor of caring for a horse Avvakum had traded for a book by St. Efren given to him by Archpriest Stefan Vonifatyev. Through ardent prayer and by sprinkling holy water, Avvakum chases the devils out of Evfimey and out of the house, warding them off for three weeks; Evfimey is only cleansed of the devils after Avvakum purchases the book again. Throughout the text, Avvakum describes many possessions. Similar episodes of exorcism occur with madmen Filipp in Moscow, Fyodor in Tobolsk, and the widow Afimya, and Anna in Tobolsk.  

Material Detail

Avvakum’s The Life is rife with accounts of bodily and material elements, which he often described using profane terms. Avvakum also extensively discusses animals, and often speaks of food in gentle and colloquial diminutive terms. Such instances often evoke surprisingly tender images of kindness.  During the expedition to Dauria, Avvakum shares food with Cossacks: “I cooked the Cossacks some porridge, and I fed them. The poor souls, they both ate and trembled.” Later, he writes of the kindness of several women on the expedition, such as the Boyarina Evdokiya Kirilovna and Pashkov’s wife Fekla Simyonovna: “Sometimes they sent us a little piece of meat, sometimes a small round loaf, sometimes a bit of flour and oats.”   He extends this tenderness to domestic animals: “We had a good little black hen. By God’s will she laid two eggs a day for our little ones’ food, easing our need.”

Depiction of Siberian Nature

Valerie Kivelson remarks that Avvakum’s depictions of Siberia present an image of “excessive, luxuriant bounty.”  On the journey to Dauria, Avvakum writes of the extremes of nature that he encountered:

“Around it mountains were high and the cliffs of rock, fearfully high; twenty-thousand verses and more I’ve dragged myself, and I’ve never seen their like anywhere.  Along their summits are halls and turrets, gates and pillars, stone walls and courtyards, all made by God. Onions grow there and garlic, bigger than the Romanov onion and uncommonly sweet.”

Avvakum describes the beautiful flowers of this region and insists that there is “no end of to the birds, geese and swans.” He recounts the many different kinds of fish that live in the lake alongside seals and sea lions, commenting that the fish are so fat that “you can’t cook them in a pan —there’d be nothing but fat left!”

Bruce T. Holl notes that Avvakum depicted Siberia both as hell and as heaven.  In The Life, the horrific struggle against vast Siberian distances, the harsh cold and the ensuing hunger and thirst — which prompt hellish instances of eating infant foals and carrion — are interposed with rhapsodies waxing poetic about the beautiful Siberian landscape and the God-given bountiful excess it keeps as its treasure.

Style

Avvakum’s The Life has been greatly valued for its unique style. Russian linguist Viktor Vinogradov observed that The Life uniquely combined two entirely different linguistic registers, mixing high literary language with low vernacular, colloquialisms, and profanity.

When discussing matters of faith, Avvakum uses Church Slavonic and literary language, often exhibiting tendencies typical of the stylistic changes that arose as a result of the Second South Slavic influence on Russian literary language that linguists have observed occurred in the 14th-16th centuries. In such literary passages, Avvakum especially echoes the style of “weaving words” (Russian: плетение словес) with elements such as parallelism, paraphrase, metaphorical language, and rhetorical exclamation.

This high register is offset by the low imagery and Russian vernacular and profanity that Avvakum intermittently employs, writing, for, instance:  “As for that interdict of the apostates, I trample it in Christ’s name, and that anathema — to put it crudely — I wipe my ass with it!” Describing the state of his soul, Avvakum writes:

“I am excrement and pus, an accursed man — just plain shit! I stink all over, in body and soul! It would be good for me to live with dogs and hogs in their pens; they stink just like my soul, with an evil-smelling stench. But hogs and hounds stink by their nature, while I stink from my sins like a dead dog cast out into a city street.”

Sometimes Avvakum combines colloquial profanity with colloquial tenderness.  Of the madman Kirilushko, he says: ”He used to shit and piss on himself, the poor dear soul.” At times, Avvakum combined both the high and the low style in one sentence. Vinogradov further remarks that this mixture of linguistic forms is simultaneously present on the level of imagery, as Avvakum combines high, exalted imagery with the low, bodily, and material.  This combination of high and low often emerges in a single unity throughout the text, for instance in his description of the stench of his soul.

Legacy

Despite his persecution and death, groups rejecting the liturgical changes persisted. They came to be referred to as Old Believers.

English translations

• The Life Written by Himself, Columbia University Press, 2021 (The Russian Library). Translated by Kenneth N. Brostrom.

Further reading

• P. Hunt, Russia’s 17th century Crisis of Modernization: The Autobiographical Saint’s Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, The Seventeenth Century, 38:1, 155-171. A Review Article of Kenneth Brostrom’s Translation of the “Life.”
• P. Hunt, The Theology in Avvakum’s “Life” and His Polemic with the Nikonians, The New Muscovite Cultural History, eds. M. Flier, V. Kivelson, N. S. Kollman, K. Petrone (Bloomington, In: Slavica, 2009), 125-140.
• P. Hunt, The Holy Foolishness in the “Life” of the Archpriest Avvakum and the Problem of Innovation, Russian History, ed. L. Langer, P. Brown, 35:3-4 (2008), 275-309.
• Priscilla Hunt, Avvakum’s “Fifth Petition” to the Tsar and the Ritual Process, Slavic and East European Journal, 46.3 (2003), 483-510

External links

• Life of Avvakum, academic edition with commentary (in Russian)
• Avvakum's letters to the Tzar and Old Believers (pub. Paris, 1951, in Russian)
• Parallel text version of Life of Avvakum Archived 9 November 2004 at the Wayback Machine
• English and Russian Articles on Avvakum by P. Hunt