The Diocese of Novgorod (Russian: Новгородская епархия) is one of the oldest offices in the Russian Orthodox Church. The medieval archbishops of Novgorod were among the most important figures in medieval Russian history and culture and their successors (as bishops, archbishops, or metropolitans) have continued to play significant roles in Russian history up to the present day. They patronized a significant number of churches in and around the city, (several of which can still be seen today), and their artistic and architectural embellishments influenced later Russian art and architecture; they also patronized chronicle-writing, a crucial source on medieval Russian history.[1]
The office of bishop of Novgorod was created around the time of the Christianization of Rus' (988), although the chronicles give conflicting dates for its establishment ranging anywhere from 989 to 992. The first bishop, Joachim of Korsun (ca. 989-1030), built the first (wooden) Cathedral of Holy Wisdom (also called St. Sofia's) "with thirteen tops" around the time of his arrival in Novgorod. That cathedral burned in 1045, and the current, stone, cathedral, the oldest building still in use in Russia today, was built between 1045 and 1050 by Prince Vladimir Iaroslavich. It was consecrated by Bishop Luka Zhidiata (1035–1060) on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, September 14, 1052 (an eleventh-century fresco just inside the south door depicts Sts. Constantine and his mother Helena who found the True Cross in the fourth century).[2]
The office remained a bishopric until it 1165 when Metropolitan Kirill raised Ilya to the archiepiscopal dignity. Formally, though the status of the Novgorodian church remained unchanged and was still part of the Province of Kiev. While a number of archbishoprics in the Orthodox Church were autocephalous, answerable to the regional patriarch rather than the local metropolitan, Novgorod's was merely a titular archbishopric and always remained subordinate to the Province of Kiev and later Moscow. Indeed, in letters from the Patriarch of Constantinople, it was always referred to as a bishopric, and there are a number of letters reminding sometimes recalcitrant archbishops of their subservience to the Russian metropolitan.[3] Around 1400, the archbishops began referring to themselves as "Archbishop of Novgorod the Great and Pskov." In 1156, Bishop Arkadii (1156–1165) was elected by the veche (public assembly) because the metropolitan throne in Kiev was vacant at that time. Over the next several centuries, a process of local election either by the veche, by the local clergy, or by the drawing of lots developed.[4] It was last used in the election of Archbishop Sergei in 1483, the first Muscovite archbishop of Novgorod. This local election gave the archbishops considerable autonomy in church matters, although they were consecrated by the local metropolitan and maintained ties to the Russian church throughout this period.
While some Russian chronicles refer to all Novgorodian prelates as archbishops, the office was not formally raised to the archiepiscopal status until 1165. There is evidence, however, that suggests that Nifont (r. 1130-1156) held the archiepiscopal title personally even before that. An antimins (embroidered communion cloth) from the St. Nicholas Cathedral on the Market bears an inscription referring to Nifont as archbishop. After the creation of the archiepiscopate, Martirii appears to have been the only one (before the creation of the metropolitanate in 1589) not to have been an archbishop, as none of his seals found in archaeological excavations speak of him as anything other than "bishop."[5]
Novgorod the Great's Coat of Arms, depicting the archiepiscopal throne and staffs.
Politically the archbishop of Novgorod grew in power during Novgorod's period of independence, traditionally 1136 to 1478, until just before the Mongol Invasion (1237–1240) and then fell into decline until about the archiepiscopate of Vasilii Kalika (1330–1352). It then continued to grow in power into the early fifteenth century.[6] During this time, the archbishops carried out a number of important political functions: they headed embassies to bring peace and ransom captives, they patronized civil (as opposed to ecclesiastical) construction projects such as the Detinets (Kremlin) in Novgorod, the fortress at Orekhov (also known as Oreshek) that was rebuilt in stone by Vasilii Kalika in 1352, the city walls built around Novgorod in the 1330s, and so forth. They administered the ecclesiastical courts, which in Novgorod adjudicated cases that elsewhere in the Orthodox world were left to secular courts; they signed treaties on behalf of the city; they oversaw standards of weights and measures in the city marketplace; their vicars may have administered outlying districts, such as Staraya Ladoga; and they generally shared decision-making with the boyars who ran the city.[7]
The Muscovite period
After the Muscovite conquest in 1470–1478, the office fell somewhat into decline. The first three Muscovite archbishops were removed in disgrace, although the second one, Gennady (1484–1504), successfully suppressed the Judaizer Heresy (called the Zhidovstvuyuschiye in Russian) and compiled the first complete corpus of the Bible in Slavonic (the Gennady Bible, now housed in the State Historical Museum). His successor, Serapion was removed from office after only three years and the see sat vacant for seventeen years (1509–1526).[8]
The office revived somewhat under Makarii (archbishop 1526-1542; Metropolitan of Moscow and All Rus' 1542-1563), who built a number of churches in the city, patronized the writing of saints' lives, and began a number of important literary works in Novgorod, which he completed in Moscow. Most notably among these are the Velikie Mineia Chet'ii (The Great Menion Reader), a twelve volume series of saint's lives and prayers divide up by months; and the Stepennaia Kniga (The Book of Degrees of Royal Genealogy), a genealogy of the tsar and his ancestors linking them to the Romans.[9]
Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, who prior to his metropolitanate, was archbishop of Novgorod.
Like the rest of Russia, the archiepiscopal office suffered hardship during the reign of Ivan the Terrible and the subsequent Time of Troubles. Novgorod seems to have suffered more than most, as the oprichniks killed many citizens in 1570 and looted the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom and other places in the city (Massacre of Novgorod). At around the time of the massacre, Tsar Ivan the Terrible removed Archbishop Pimen from office and sent him to Aleksandrov where he was apparently tortured. Pimen died in 1572 under uncertain circumstances in the Monastery of St. Nicholas in Tula. His successor, Archbishop Leonid, was beheaded in Moscow on Cathedral Square in the Kremlin on the orders of the Tsar in October 1575.[10] Leonid's successor, Aleksandr, was elevated to the metropolitan rank in 1589, becoming the "Metropolitan of Novgorod the Great and Velikie Luki". (Pskov became its own eparchy in 1589, hence Pskov could no longer be part of the Novgorodian archbishop's title.)
During the Time of Troubles, Novgorod was occupied by the Swedes, and Novgorodian Metropolitan Isidor played a key role in negotiating the city's hand over to the Swedes in 1611 and in administering the city under Swedish occupation. The city was not returned to Russia until several years after the establishment of the Romanov Dynasty, and Tsar Mikhail is said to have distrusted Isidor for his role in the city under Swedish control.
The Imperial Period
The office remained a metropolitanate until 1720 when it was again reduced to an archiepiscopate. It was elevated to the metropolitan level again in 1762, and the title changed as the eparchy was included with St. Petersburg and later Finland and Estonia. It was separated from St. Petersburg in 1892.
The new city of St. Petersburg, when it was founded in late spring 1703, was initially in the Novgorodian Eparchy, and Metropolitan Iov consecrated the first wooden Peter and Paul Cathedral in the Peter and Paul Fortress (the current cathedral is, of course, a later construction) in April 1704.
Feofan Prokopovich, who authored the Spiritual Regulations and helped set up the Holy Governing Synod, was later Archbishop of Novgorod.
Iov's vicar, Feofan Prokopovich, became one of Peter the Great's key advisors on religion and helped establish the Spiritual Regulations and the Holy Governing Synod (which governed the church from 1721 to 1917.) Prokopovich was named Archbishop of Novgorod in 1725, after Peter's death.
Archbishop Dmitry (r. 1757-1767), served as Catherine the Great's spiritual advisor for the first few years of her reign and crowned her Empress in 1762.
Soviet and Post-Soviet Period
The Novgorodian Eparchy was combined again with Leningrad after the re-legalization of the church in 1943. It was briefly separated in the 1950s and combined with Leningrad, again, in the 1960s. It was last separated in 1990, when it was recreated as a bishopric. It was raised to archiepiscopal level again in 1995. The current title is "Archbishop of Novgorod the Great and Staraya Russa."
From 1922-1936, thirteen bishops of Novgorod were named by the Living Church, or Renovationist Church, a movement (now deemed schismatic) that was sponsored by the Soviet authorities to split and thus weaken the Russian Church. The last of these, Veniamin Molchanov, was later Archbishop of Alma Ata, but nothing further is known of him after October 1936. He is thought to have been shot. The Renovationists fought with the patriarchal or main Orthodox Church before they were suppressed when the patriarchal church was legalized in 1943.[11]
In the patriarchal church, Archbishop Arsenius (Stadnitsky) was one of the candidates for Patriarch in the 1917 Moscow Council, when Tikhon was elected. He, like many of the hierarchs of the church, suffered repeated arrest in the 1920s. He was exiled to Central Asia in 1926 and made Bishop of Tashkent in 1933, where he died in 1936. A plaque on the old bishop's palace in Novgorod commemorates him and there is a festival in his honor in Novgorod today. During his long, absentee tenure as Archbishop and Metropolitan of Novgorod, the eparchy was administered by a number of vicars, including Alexius Simansky, who held the title of Archbishop of Khutyn. Alexius was briefly Metropolitan of Novgorod in 1933, and was succeeded by Venedikt, who was shot in 1937 either in Kazan or in Leningrad, although the sources conflict. After Venedict, Alexius was made Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod in 1943. He was one of the three bishops (of four still alive) who met with Stalin on September 4, 1943, a meeting which led to the re-legaliziation of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1945, Alexius was elected Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus and served in that post (the longest-serving Moscow patriarch) until his death in 1970.
Patriarch Alexius II, the most recent Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus was Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod immediately before his election as Patriarch in 1990. As patriarch, Alexius II presided over the reestablishment of Novgorod as an eparchy independent of Leningrad/St. Petersburg and of the reconsecration of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom.
The current bishop is Metropolitan Lev. He was transferred from Tashkent in 1990 to be bishop of Novgorod and raised to archiepiscopal dignity in 1995, and to the metropolitan dignity in 2012. He has overseen the reopening of a number of churches in Novgorod and the eparchy, the return of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom to the Russian Orthodox Church, the opening of a seminary at the Zverin Monastery just north of the old city walls on the left bank of the Volkhov River, the reestablishment of a library in the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, and other activities in the aftermath of the Soviet persecution of the church. He has received several awards from the church and the Russian government for his activities.
The Novgorod Republic was a medieval state that existed from the 12th to 15th centuries in northern Russia, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east. Its capital was the city of Novgorod. The republic prospered as the easternmost trading post of the Hanseatic League, and its people were much influenced by the culture of the Byzantines, with the Novgorod school of icon painting producing many fine works.
Cyprian was a prelate of Bulgarian origin, who served as the Metropolitan of Kiev, Rus' and Lithuania and the Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus' in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. During both periods, he was opposed by rival hierarchs and by the Grand Prince of Moscow. He was known as a bright opinion writer, editor, translator, and book copyist. He is commemorated by the Russian Orthodox Church on May 27 and September 16.
The Chudov Monastery was founded in the Moscow Kremlin in 1358 by Metropolitan Alexius of Moscow. The monastery was dedicated to the miracle of the Archangel Michael at Chonae. The Monastery was closed in 1918 and dismantled in 1929 by the Soviet government.
The Cathedral of Saint Sophia, the Holy Wisdom of God in Veliky Novgorod, Russia, is the cathedral church of the Metropolitan of Novgorod and the mother church of the Novgorodian Eparchy.
Khutyn Monastery of Saviour's Transfiguration and of St. Varlaam is an Orthodox monastery situated on the right bank of the Volkhov River some 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) north northeast of Novgorod, in the village of Khutyn. It used to be one of the main Christian shrines of the medieval Novgorod Republic.
The Battle of Shelon was a decisive battle between the forces of the Grand Principality of Moscow under Ivan III and the army of the Novgorod Republic, which took place on the Shelon River on 14 July 1471. Novgorod suffered a major defeat and ended with the de facto unconditional surrender of the city. Novgorod was absorbed by Muscovy in 1478.
Macarius was the Metropolitan of Moscow and all Rus' from 1542 until 1563. He was the tenth metropolitan in Moscow to be appointed without the approval of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople as had been the norm.
The St. George's (Yuriev) Monastery is usually cited as Russia's oldest monastery. It stands in 5 kilometers south of Novgorod on the left bank of the Volkhov River near where it flows out of Lake Ilmen. The monastery used to be the most important in the medieval Novgorod Republic. It is part of the World Heritage Site named Historic Monuments of Novgorod and Surroundings.
Vasily Kalika was Archbishop of Novgorod the Great and Pskov from 1330 to 1352. He is in large part responsible for reinvigorating the office after it had fallen into decline to some extent following the Mongol invasion. He was canonized as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Ioann was Archbishop of Novgorod the Great and Pskov from 1388 until his retirement in 1415. He is not to be confused with Archbishop Ilya, who ruled in the twelfth century, and who is often referred to as Ioann in hagiographic literature but was apparently called Ilya during his archiepiscopate.
Gennadius was Archbishop of Novgorod the Great and Pskov from 1484 to 1504.
Metropolitan Leo is the current Metropolitan of Novgorod and Staraya Russa. He was named Bishop of Novgorod the Great and Staraya Russa on July 20, 1990, and elevated to the archiepiscopal dignity on February 25, 1995, and to the metropolitan dignity in January 2012.
Euthymius II of Novgorod was Archbishop of Novgorod from 1429 to 1458. He was one of the most prolific patrons of the arts and architecture of all the Novgorodian archbishops.
Pachomius the Serb, also known as Pachomius Logothetes, was a 15th-century Serbian hagiographer who, after taking monastic vows, was schooled on Mount Athos and mastered the ornate style of medieval Serbian literature. He is credited by the Russian Early Texts Society for the Serbian version of Barlaam and Josaphat from Old Greek.
The Vyazhishchi Convent of St. Nicholas is an Orthodox convent located in the village of Vyazhishchi, 7 miles (12 km) NNW of Veliky Novgorod. Its surviving buildings date from the period between 1681 and 1708. They are famous for having the richest maiolica decorations in Northwest Russia.
Serapion was Archbishop of Novgorod the Great and Pskov from 1506 to 1509. He is a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church; his feast day is March 16 by the Julian calendar.
Ilya of Novgorod, also known as Ioann (John) of Novgorod, was Archbishop of Novgorod from 1165 to his death in 1186.
Nifont was Archbishop of Novgorod from 1130 to 1156, the first prelate of Novgorod the Great to hold that title, though it appears the title was held personally and did not extend to the office until 1165. During his tenure, the prince of Novgorod was first dismissed and "shown the road," beginning Novgorod's period of independence in 1136 which was to last until 1478.
Battle of the Novgorodians with the Suzdalians is a Novgorodian icon from the mid-15th century, depicting the Siege of Novgorod (1170).
References
↑ Aleksandr S. Khoroshev, "Sofiiskii patron po novgorodskoi pervoi letopisi." Novgorod i Novgorodskaia Zemlia: Istoriia i Arkheologiia 11 (1997): 205-212.
↑ Tatiana Iu. Tsarevskaia, St. Sofia's Cathedral in Novgorod. D. G. Fedosov, trans. (Moscow: Severnyi Palomnik, 2005.) English translation of T. Iu. (Tatiana Iur’evna) Tsarevskaia. Sofiiskii sobor v Novgorode. 2nd ed. (Moscow: Severnyi palomnik, 2005).
↑ Iaroslav Shchapov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ drevnei Rusi X-XIII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), 68-69; Michael C. Paul, "Secular Power and the Archbishops of Novgorod Before the Muscovite Conquest", Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 8, No. 2 (Spr. 2007):233-234.
↑ Michael C. Paul, "Episcopal Election in Novgorod Russia 1156-1478", Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 72 No. 2 (2003): 251-275
↑ Michael C. Paul, "A Man Chosen by God": The Office of Archbishop in Novgorod, Russia 1165-1478. Ph.D. Dissertation University of Miami 2003; Paul, "Secular Power and the Archbishops of Novgorod", 231-270.
↑ Paul, "Secular Power and the Archbishops of Novgorod", 343, 249, 253.
↑ Paul, "Secular Power and the Archbishops of Novgorod", 243-253. For the traditional view, see A. I. Nikitskii, Ocherk" vnutrennei istorii tserkvi v" Novgorode (St. Petersburg: Tipografii V. S. Valasheva, 1879). For a Marxist perspective, see Aleksandr Khoroshev, Tserkov' v sotsial'no-politicheskoi sisteme Novgorodskoi feodal'noi respubliki (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 1989).
↑ Michael C. Paul, “Continuity and Change in the Novgorodian Archiepiscopal Office, 1478-1591," Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2009) pp. 273-317.
↑ David B. Miller, "The Velikie Minei Chetii and the Stepennaia Kniga of Metropolitan Makarii and the Origins of Russian National Consciousness." Forschungen zur Osteuropaischen Geschicte 26 (1979): 263-382; Paul, "Continuity and Change."
↑ Jack Culpepper, "The Kremlin Executions of 1575 and the Enthronement of Simeon Bekbulatovich", Slavic Review 24, No. 3 (September 1965): 503-506; Paul, "Continuity and Change."
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