Deacon Alexander (of Kerzhenets) was the leader of the Old Believers of the Trans-Volga region known as the Deaconites, founder of the "Deacon's Concord," and one of the principal authors of the "Deacon's Answers" (1719). He was executed in Nizhny Novgorod on March 21, 1720, on the personal orders of Peter I.[1]
Activities and the "Deacon's Answers"
Deacon Alexander headed the Old Believer community on the Kerzhenets and was the acknowledged leader of Zavolzhye. In 1716, the Nizhny Novgorod missionary Bishop Pitirim, himself a former Old Believer, sent him 130 questions about the faith along with a proposal for a public disputation. Instead of a direct reply, the Deaconites composed and sent the missionary 240 counter-questions about the Orthodox Church and its traditions.[2]
In May 1719, the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers submitted to the authorities a final apologetic work — answers to Pitirim's 130 questions, which entered history as the "Deacon's Answers," or the "Kerzhenets Answers." A group of writers and scholars of scripture from various concords was drawn into its composition: on the side of the priestly Old Believers (popovtsy), Deacon Alexander himself, with a considerable portion of the drafts written by the scripture scholar T. M. Lysenin; the priestless Vyg Old Believers (bespopovtsy) were represented by Andrey Denisov, Semyon Denisov, and Daniil Matveev. Because it was Deacon Alexander who conducted the correspondence with Bishop Pitirim and performed the representative functions, the work took his name.[1]
The Answers covered the main points of contention in the liturgical reform of the mid-17th century: the form of the finger-position in making the sign of the cross, the double or triple alleluia, the shape of the cross, the versions of the Creed and the Jesus Prayer, the number of prosphora loaves at the Liturgy, and processing "against the sun" versus "with the sun" (posolon). The Vyg authors paid particular attention to exposing a forgery of the new-rite party, the "Conciliar Act against the Heretic Martin," later enshrined in the "Pomorian Answers." To the provocative question of a possible reunification with the "dominant church," the authors replied that they were ready for it on one condition only: "Restore the Great Russian Church as it was before."[1]
Arrest and execution
Bishop Pitirim, unable to refute the Answers on the merits, sent Peter I a denunciation accusing Deacon Alexander of seeking "to stir up the common people against His Tsarist Majesty and into disobedience to the Holy Church." On February 8, 1720, Deacon Alexander was arrested. On February 22, Peter I personally ordered Andrey Ushakov, a member of the Secret Chancellery: "Torture the deacon… and after severe tortures send him with a good officer and soldiers of the Guards… to Nizhny and execute him there for his villainy."[1]
On March 21, 1720, the Nizhny Novgorod vice-governor Yu. Rzhevsky reported to P. A. Tolstoy in St. Petersburg that "the said elder Alexander, by the personal decree of His Tsarist Most Serene Majesty, was put to death in Nizhny before a public assembly: his head was cut off and his body burned."[1]
Significance
The "Deacon's Answers" entered the history of the Old Believer movement as the first major apologetic document to apply an analytical, source-critical approach to the polemic over church reform. The publishers of the journal Staroobryadets noted in 1906 that even almost two centuries later, the reader is struck by the "vast erudition" of its authors. The work became a model for later apologetic literature, above all for the "Pomorian Answers."[1]
Sources
- ruvera.ru — 300 Years of the Most Important Apologetic Work in Defense of the Old Faith — Russian Faith (archive)
- pravenc.ru — PITIRIM (archive)