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Avvakum Petrov (November 20, 1620 or 1621 - April 14, 1682) was a Russian archpriest of 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, Boyarynya Morozova and other Old Believers are considered masterpieces of 17th-century Russian literature.
Starting in 1652 Nikon, as Patriarch of the Russian Church, initiated a wide range of reforms in Russian liturgy and theology. These reforms were mostly intended to bring the Russian Church into line with the other Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe. 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 and Avvakum argued that Constantinople fell to the Turks because of these heretical beliefs.
For his opposition to the reforms Avvakum was repeatedly imprisoned and finally burned at the stake in Pustozyorsk, where he had been exiled by the government. The spot where he was burned is now marked by an ornate wooden cross. Groups rejecting the changes continued, however, and they became referred to as the Old Believers. Avvakum's colourful autobiography memorably recounts hardships of his imprisonment and exile to the Far East of Russia, the story of his friendship and rupture with the tsar Alexis, his practice of exorcising demons and devils, and his boundless admiration for nature and other works of God.
Excerpts from his Life
And when I was still a priest, in those first days when I had just turned to my labors in Christ, a devil scared me this way. My wife was grievously ill, and her confessor had come to her. Deep in the night I left our place for the church, to get the book for her confession. And when I came to the church porch, till then a little table had been standing there, but when I came up that table started hopping about in its place, acted on by a devil. But I wasn't frightened, and after praying before the icon I signed the table with my hand, and going over I set it down, and it cut short its capers. When I entered the narthex, in a coffin on a bench, and acted on by that devil on board on top opened and the shroud started to stir, frightening me. But I prayed to God I signed the corpse with my hand, and everything was as before. When I entered the sanctuary, sure enough the chasubles and dalmatics were flying from place to place, frightening me again. But I prayed and kissed the communion table, and I blessed the vestments with my hand, and drawing close I touched them, and they hung there as always. Then I got the book and left the church. There you have the kind of devilish devices used against us!
In Siberia the mountains were high, the forests dense, the cliffs of stone, standing like a wall—you'd crick your neck looking up! In those mountains are found great snakes; geese and ducklings with red plumage, black ravens, and grey jackdaws also live there. In those mountains are eagles and falcons and gerfalcons and mountain pheasants and pelicans and swans and other wild fowl, an endless abundance, birds of many kinds. In those mountains wander many wild beasts, goats and deer, Siberian stags and elk, wild boars, wolves, wild sheep—you'll lay your eyes on them but never your hands! Pashkov drove me out into those mountains to live with the beasts and the snakes and the birds.
Then we moved to Lake Irgen. A portage is there and during the winter we started hauling. He took away my workers but wouldn't order others hired in their places. And the children were little—many to eat but no one to work. All alone this poor, miserable old Archpriest made a dogsled, and the winter long he dragged himself over the portage. In the spring we floated down the Ingoda river on rafts. It was the fourth summer of my voyage from Tobol'sk. We were herding logs for houses and forts. Soon there was nothing to eat; people started dying off from hunger and from tramping about and working in water. The river was shallow, the rafts heavy, the guards merciless, the cudgels big, the clubs knotty, the knouts cutting, the tortures savage—fire and rack!—people were starving, they’d only start torturing someone and he’d die! Ah, what a time! I don't know why he went off his head like that! The Archpriestess had an overdress from Moscow that hadn't rotted. In Russia it'd be worth more than twenty-five rubles, but here, he gave us four sacks of rye for it. And we dragged on for another year or two, living on the Nertcha River and eating grass to keep body and soul together. He was killing everyone with hunger. He wouldn't let anyone leave to get a living, keeping us in a small area. People would roam across the steppes and fields and dig up grasses and roots, and we right there with them. In the winter it was pine bark, and sometimes God gave us horse meat; we found the bones of beasts brought down by wolves, and what the wolf hadn’t eaten, we did. And some of those near frozen to death even ate wolves, and foxes, and whatever came their way, all sorts of corruption. A mare would foal and on the sly the starving would eat the foal and the foul afterbirth. And when Pashkov found out, he would flog them half to death with a knout. And a mare died. Everything went to waste because the foal had been dragged out of her against nature; she only showed his head and they jerked him out, yes and even started eating the foul blood. Ah, what a time!
And in these privations two of my little sons died, and with the others we somehow suffered on, roaming naked and barefoot through the mountains and over the sharp rocks, keeping body and soul together with grasses and roots. And I myself, sinner that I am, I both willingly and unwillingly partook on the flesh of mares and the carrion of beasts and birds. Alas for my sinful soul! "Who will give my head water and a fountain of tears that I might weep for my poor soul," which I wickedly sullied with worldly pleasures? But we were helped in the name of Christ by the Boyarina, the Commander's daughter-in-law Eudoxia Kirillovna, yes and by Athanasy’s wife Thekla Simeonovna too. They gave us relief against starvation secretly, without his knowing. Sometimes they sent a little piece of meat, sometimes a small round loaf, sometimes a bit of flour and oats, as much as could be scraped together, a quarter pound and maybe a pound or two more, sometimes she saved up a good half pound and sent it over, and sometimes she raked feed out of the chicken trough. My daughter Agrafena, the poor little love, on the sly she would wander over under the Boyarina’s window. And we didn't know whether to laugh or to cry! Sometimes they'd drive the little child away from the window without the Boyarina’s knowing, but sometimes she'd drag back a good bit. She was a little girl then, but now she's twenty-seven and still unmarried. My poor, dear daughter, now she lives in tears at Mezen with her younger sisters, keeping body and soul together somehow. And her mother and brothers sit locked up, buried in the earth. But what's to be done? Let those broken hearts suffer for the sake of Christ. So be it, with God's help. For it is ordained that we must suffer, we must suffer for the sake of the Christian faith. You loved, Archpriest, of the famed to be friend; love then to endure, poor wretch, to the end! It is written: "Blessed is not he that begins, but he that has finished."