The traditionalism of the Old Believers

The paper considers the problem of the Russian population’s traditionalism in the 17th - 18th centuries. Opponents of the church reform started by Patriarch Nikon declared themselves the guardians of the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church. Attention is drawn to the fact that the direction of the Old Believers’ search for arguments for their viewpoint on innovations was determined by their opponents’ claims that all changes to the new books had been made after comparing them with ancient Greek and Russian manuscripts. The defenders of the Old Rites undertook enormous efforts to find the text fragments from authoritative sources that could testify to the discrepancies between new liturgical texts and ancient manuscripts or old-printed books. They interpreted all the innovations as a departure from tradition and deviations from the true faith. In the 18th century, when formulating the ideology of communities, the leaders relied on this description of the Russian Church traditions perceived by the Old Believers as an actual practice violated by the reformers. The historical scheme of including single communities in universal Christian history made it possible to recognize the community as the only place in the world where the true faith is preserved despite the reign of the Antichrist. A conclusion is made that this approach formed the peculiarity of the traditionalism of the Old Believers: they moved to a conscious description of their community as a continuation of the Russian Church traditions.

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