Muscovites," as they are called by Syrian travellers, now gave way to the sweet chants of the Cossack chor- isters, brought partly from Poland, partlj' from Greece, and constitute the first beginnings of that vocal music which lias since been " the glory of the Russian worship" (Stanley). But chief of all ecclesiastical changes was the revival of preaching. From his lips was fifst heard, after many centuries, the sound of a living, practical ser- mon. Nikon was guilt}', too, of many missteps, conse- quent perhaps on his zeal and anxiety for reform. Thus he spent much time and effort foolishly on unimportant questions of discipline and ritual. As one has said, "He was constantly asking questions from Oriental Christian strangers to set his own ceremonial straight" (Macarius, ii, 173). "Benedictions with three fingers instead of two, a white altar-cloth instead of an embroid- ered one, pictures kissed only twice a year, the cross signed the wrong way, wrong inflections in pronouncing the creed — these were the points to which he devoted his gigantic energy, and on which, as we shall see, he encountered the most frantic opposition" (Stanley, East. Ck. p. 467). But though the Church was greatly agi- tated by Nikon's changes, the czar himself remained unchanged in his devotion to the patriarch, and hon-> ored him not onh' with a most agreeable and friendly correspondence, but evinced his confidence more clearly when he went to join the army in a campaign by in- trusting to Nikon the care of the whole royal family ; for whom the patriarch displayed the greatest attention and anxiety in the time of the plague, which desolated Moscow in 1653 and 1654. In 1658, however, some of Nikon's enemies contrived to inspire into the mind of the czar a feeling of jealousy or dislike towards him. Nikon, who remarked this, was incensed at it, and retired to the monastery of the Resurrection of Christ, which he had himself built about forty versts from Moscow. The misunderstanding between the czar and the patriarch increased continually. Nikon persisted in refusing to return to Moscow. In 1667 a council was therefore convened to deliberate on his case, under the presidency of the Eastern patriarch ; and on December 12 of the same year Nikon was deprived of the patriarchal dig- nity, and banished as a common monk to the Bielvo- zersky Therapontic monastery. (For full details of this trial in an English version, see Stanley, p. 482 sq.) Ac- cording to Kulczynki, the real cause of Nikon's disgrace was that he clandestinely embraced Romanism, but the evidence for this assertion has been generally questioned. The czar Feodor Alexievich allowed him to remove into the monastery of the Resurrection of Christ ; but on his journey thither he died at Yaroslav, Aug. 17, 1681. His body was buried in the last-mentioned mon- aster}' in the presence of the monarch, and there the deceased was again honored with the title of patriarch. His absolution was next obtained from the Eastern pa- triarch, and he was then properly enrolled among the list of Russian patriarchs. "Nikon," says Stanley, " rests all but canonized, in spite of his many faults, and in spite of his solemn condemnation and degrada- tion by the nearest approach to a general council which the Eastern Church has witnessed since the second Council of Nicsea. He rests far enough removed from the ideal of a saintly character, but yet having left be- hind him to his own Church the example, which it still so much needs, of a resolute, active, onward leader; to the world at large the example, never without a touch- mg lesson, of a sincere reformer recognised and honored when honor and recognition are too late" {East. Ch. p. 490). Mr. Palmer, who has recently brought out two bulky volumes (Triibner & Co. London, 1873) contain- ing documents illustrative of the history of Nikon (the first containing extracts from the travels of Macarius, the patriarch of Antioch, who attended Nikon's trial, and the second Paisius Ligurides's History of the Dejiosition of Nikon, from manuscripts in the synodal library at jMoscow), pays more glowing tributes to Nikon than any other writer had previously bestowed on him. Mr.
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Palmer makes out that the Russian state during Nikon's rule was erastian, its courtiers tyrannical, Greek patri- archs venal, and that Nikon had not a fair trial, and was in the right in the special points in dispute. Those who judge Nikon more critically question whether the patriarch should not have accepted the situation in which he found himself, and saved the Russian Church from a schism which has continued to this day, and that he lacked that wisdom and policy which men need in high places of trust, both in civil and ecclesiastic stations.
Nikon's most important literary labor was the im- provement of the Sclavonic Church books, and setting them in accordance with the original Greek. In 1664 he despatched the hieromonach, Arsmj Suchanoff, into the East, and purchased through him more than five hundred manuscripts of Greek books dating from the 11th to the 17th century. He also made provision for the translation of a number of historical and geograph- ical works from foreign languages into the Russian. Some of these signed by his own hand are still preserved in the sj^nodal library'. He also drew up a collation of the Russian chronicles, the Stufen books, and the Greek chronologists, which reaches to the year 1630, and is well known by the name of The Chronicle of Nikon. Of this codex the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg published a fine edition in eight volumes, 1767-1792. He also wrote several dogmatical and theological pieces, which were printed in his lifetime. Among them we notice a Table (Skrijal) of Dogmatic Studies (Moscow, 1656, 4to) :— .S'e/7no«s (ibid, no date [1654]; reprinted in Novikoff in the "Ancient Russian Library," 2d ed. vol. vi) : — The Intellectual Paradise, which contains a description of the monasteries of Mount Athos and of Valdai (Valdai, 4to) : — .1 Canon, or hook of prayers to attract the Raskolniks to the Church (no name of place, no date, 4to). See Ivan Choucherin, Vie du tr'es-saint patriarche Nikon (St. Petersb. 1817) ; Backmeister, Bei- triige z. Lehensgesch. d. Patriarchen Nikon (Riga, 1788) ; Strahl, Beitrdge z. i~ass. Kirchengesch. (Halle, 1827), p. 287; Apollos, Vie du Patriarche Nikon {IS'i'i); Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar (Loud. 1873), vols, ii and iii ; Cox's Otto, IJisf. Russian Lit. p. 308 sq. ; Stanlev, Hist. East. Ch. p. 457, 459-471, 489; Eckardt, Modern Russia (Lond. 1870, 8vo), p. 254 sq. ; London Review, 1862, April, art. vii; Christ. Remembrancer, Jul\-, 1853, p. 95 sq.