Joseph Volotsky — also known as Joseph of Volotsk or Joseph of Volokolamsk (Russian: Ио́сиф Во́лоцкий); secular name Ivan Sanin (Russian: Ива́н Са́нин) (1439 or 1440 – September 9, 1515) — was a prominent caesaropapist ideologist of the Russian Orthodox Church who led the party defending monastic landownership.
He is a saint (as is his most prominent opponent, Nil Sorsky); his memory is celebrated on 9 September and 18 October (dates in the Julian Calendar).
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Joseph Volotsky came from a family of a rich votchinnik and owner of the Yazvishche village in Volokolamsk Principality. He learned to read and write at the local monastery and then took the tonsure at the Borovsk Monastery in 1459. Upon the death of its abbot St. Paphnutius of Borovsk, Joseph Volotsky took his place and attempted to introduce a strict monastic charter.[1] The monks, however, rebuffed his idea, and he had to leave the monastery for good. After having lived in a few other monasteries, Joseph got disappointed with their lax morals and founded his own cloister in 1479 near Volokolamsk, which would become known as Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery. According to Joseph's charter, a monk's chief virtue was absolute obedience to his abbot. All aspects of a monk's life at the monastery were regulated and controlled.
Initially, Joseph Volotsky was connected with the appanage princes of Volokolamsk (brothers of Ivan III) and defended the right of local ecclesiastical and secular feudals to oppose the authority of the grand prince. Later in his life, he severed his relations with the opposition and took the side of the grand prince, sealing this alliance by transferring Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery to the patronage of Vasili III in 1507.
During the Church Sobor of 1503, Joseph Volotsky and his supporters (Josephites) managed to scrap the project of elimination of monastic landownership, proposed by the nestiazhateli, or non-possessors (those who opposed monastic landownership), in the persons of the so-called Transvolgan elders led by Nil Sorsky and Vassian Patrikeyev. Joseph Volotsky addressed a number of epistles to the nestyazhateli, in which he tried to prove the legality of monastic landownership and justify the rich décor of churches. Eventually, Joseph Volotsky gained the upper hand and the monasteries preserved their landholdings.
The triumph of the possessor party went hand in hand with Joseph's efforts to bolster the position of Russia's grand princes, who were now increasingly referred to as tsars, succeeding to the title of universal emperors of Byzantium. Joseph Volotsky restated the formula of an early Byzantine ecclesiastical writer Agapetus that the tsar was a "man in essence, but his power is that of God" and that he was God’s deputy on Earth. According to Joseph, however, since the main duty of the tsar is to care for the well-being of the Christian Church, he is legitimate only as long as he adheres to Church rules and moral obligations.
Joseph Volotsky is also known to have been a staunch opponent of the heresy which was spreading in Russia at that time (Judaizers). During the Church Sobor of 1504, he demanded that all heretics be executed.
In his major work, called The Enlightener (Просветитель), which consisted of 16 chapters, he tried to prove the wrongfulness of the "new teaching" in order to be able to prosecute the heretics and convince people not to believe in the sincerity of their repentance. He called for an all-out search for heretics and their imprisonment and execution.
Joseph's doctrines became a part of the official theology of the Russian Orthodox Church following his local canonization in 1579 and national canonization in 1591.