Edinoverie

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Edinoverie (Russian: Единоверие; occasionally also transcribed as Yedinoverie or Yedinoveriye) is an arrangement between certain Russian Old Believer communities and the official Russian Orthodox Church, whereby an the Old Believer's church is treated as part of the Orthodox Church system, while maintaining its own traditional rites.

[edit] Meaning of the term

The Russian word Edinoverie may be a back-formation of Edinovertsy (единоверцы; sometimes also transcribed Yedinovertsy), i.e 'coreligionists' (literally, 'one's of the same faith'; the word is also used to refer to members of Edinoverie community). It may be interpreted as 'Unity in Faith',^[1] although perhaps a more precise meaning would be 'Accepting [the Old-Rite Christians] as people of the same faith [by the Established Church]'. More open-minded established church hierarchs saw in Edinoverie a mutual acceptance. In the words of Filaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, addressed to the Edinovertsy at the consecrsation of St Nicholas Church for them at Rogozhskoye Cemetery (1854), «Вы единоверцы нам, а мы единоверцы вам» ("You are people of our faith, and we are people of your faith").^[2]

[edit] History

Edinoverie arrangements started to appear in the last quarter of the 18th century, after more than a century of struggle between Russia's established Orthodox Church and various Old Believer groups, who did not recognize the changes to the church rituals and the official translations of the Scripture made under the leadership of Patriarch Nikon in the 1660s. On the side of the established church, the initiators of Edinoverie are said to be Platon, the Metropolitan of Moscow and thus Russian Orthodox Church's senior bishop, and Nikifor, the Archbishop first of Sloviansk and Kherson and later of Astrakhan and Stavropol in South Russia.

Nikifor, then based in Poltava (the headquarters of the then Diocese of Sloviansk and Kherson, covering much of eastern Ukraine; it was to became later the Diocese of Ekaterinoslav) started reaching out to Old Believers in 1780. When he visited a chapel of Popovtsy Old Believer in Elisavetgrad in July of that year he offered the local Old Believers to legalize their chapel as an official church, with a priest selected by Old Believers, pre-Nikonian service books and rites. At the time, the Old Believers of Elisavetgrad refused the legalization offer.

But later that month, many Old Believers of the village of Bolshaya Znamenka (in Melitopol uyezd) accepted a similar arrangement; in February 1781, an archbishop issued a letter, authorizing them to legally set up a church and carry out their a service in accordance to their rules. That was indeed done, by consecrating as a church a wooden chapel that the Old Believers of Znamenka had built in 1776.

Nikifor's legalization initiative turned out to be so popular that soon enough not only Popovtsy (Old Believers who already had priests of their own, not recognized by the official church) started requesting legalization, but also Bespopovtsy (the priest-less faction) started asking Nikifor to provide them with priests. (The village of Zlynka, 1782). ^[3]

Outside of Ukraine, in the same 1780, the Old Believer merchants of Moscow and the Volga arranged similar legalization of the Upper-Isaac Skete (compound) in the Irgiz Rivers area of Saratov Governorate.^[3]

On the Old Believers side, the moving force of the Edinoverie compromise were Hieromonk Michael Kalmykov and the Old Believer monk Nikodim.^{[3] [4]} Having learned of Nikifor's experiments in the south and the Irgiz legalization, Nikodim, with an agreement of many Popovtsy of the Starodub area, started contacted civil and ecclesiastical authorities in regard to the possibility of "legalizing" Popovtsy's priests. After a number of rejections, he got some support of Count Peter Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky in 1783. Same year, his petition to Empress Catherine II of Russia was forwarded to Holy Synod. In April 1784 - by which time Kalmykov had died already - the Empress issued a rescript, granting priests to Old Believers and allowing them to officiate according to the "Old Rites", but not providing for any bishops. Disappointed, Nikodim fell sick and died, at the age of 39.

In August 1785, a government decree was promulgated, providing for the organization of "Old Believers"' church with the established Orthodox Church, although they still won't have their own bishops or national denominational center. Still, it is this point that is considered the start of the Edinoverie church.^[3]

Catherine successor, Paul I, was perhaps more interested than Catherine in integrating the Old Believers into the established church on acceptable terms. In 1796, legal priests were granted to the Old Believers of Kazan, in 1797 to those of Nizhny Novgorod. On March 12, 1798, the Emperor issued a decree, requiring all bishops to ordain priests for the Old Believers (using the "old" rite of ordination, acceptable to the flock), and permitting construction of Old Believer churches. The chief bishop of the established church, Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, wrote the "Eleven Articles of Edinoverie" (Russian: «11 пунктов единоверия»), the document regulating the "union" between the official church and the Old Believers. Although the Metropolian's rules satisfied some of the Old Believers' wishes, the Edinoverie parishioners still remained somewhat of second-class citizens within the church: for example, the Old Rite priests were still normally not supposed to administer sacraments to the mainstream orthodox believers.^[2]

Throughout the 19th century, the attitude of the established church toward the Edinoverie can be perhaps described as that of tolerating it as a "necessary evil": a tool to bring the "dissenters" into the fold of Mother Church. On occasions, the church authorities were quite forceful in converting Old Believer communities into the Edinoverie, and the government would usually treat those within the arrangement preferentially compared to those who did not join the compromise. For example, in 1818 the government prohibited printing Old Believer religious books other than by the Edinoverie printing houses.^[1] At the same time, parishioners of "regular" Orthodox churches would be discouraged by the authorities from joining Edionoverie parishes.^[2]

Before the Revolution of 1917, there have been around 300 Edinoverie parishes in Russia.^[1]

In the capital of the Empire, Saint Petersburg, the first Edinoverie church was set up in 1799. In 1917, the Edinovertsy of Saint Petersburg got the first bishop (Bishop Simon of Okhta) of their own, but in 1932 their churches were closed by the Communist authorities, not to be revived until 1990.^[4] Moscow community of Edinovertsy, based in Lefortovo District, were allowed to erect their churches after the Fire of 1812; two extant churches, completed in 1819 and 1825, were shut down in 1931, and are now operated by the Russian Orthodox Church.

[edit] References