RUSSIAN CHURCH, the community of Christians subject to the emperor of Russia, using the Slavonic liturgy, and following the Russian rite. Christianity was introduced into Russia in the 9th c. (see OLGA); but it was not till the end of the 10th that the foundation was regularly laid. In the great schism between the churches of Constan tinople and Rome, the Russian church naturally followed silently in the train of Con sUuninople, yet, at the time of the council of Florence (1439), the adherents of the Roman church throughout Russia were as numerous as those of the Greek party. The complete separation of the Russian church from Rome was effected in the latter part of the same century.
For more than a century from this date the Russian church continued directly subject to the patriarch of Constantinople; but in the year 1588 the patriarch Jeremias, being in Russia, held a synod of the Russian bishops, and erected the see of Moscow into a patriarchate, with jurisdiction over the entire territory; this decree being afterward confirmed by a synod held nt Constantinople. This dignity, however, was subordinate to the patriarch of Constantinople, and the subordination was acquiesced in down to reign of Alexis Michaelowitz, father of Peter the great, when the patriarch of Moscow, Nikon, refused to acknowledge it further. The pretensions of this prelate, and of his successors, however, gave offense to the czar, and one of the first among the great schemes for the reorganization of his empire, conceived by Peter the great, was the sup pression of the patriarchate, and the direct subordination of the church to the headship of the emperor. He took his measures, nevertheless, with great deliberation, and on the death of the patriarch Adrian, in 1700, he contented himself with not filling up the vacant dignity, appointing in the mean time, as acting director of ecclesiastical affairs, a bishop with the title of exarch, by whom all matters of importance were to be referred, either directly to the czar, or to a council of bishops, who held their sittings at Moscow. After an interval of 20 years, the public mind having been taught to forget the patri archate, that office was formally abolished in 1721; and the permanent administration of church affairs was placed under the direction of a council called the "holy synod," or " permanent synod," consisting of archbishop, bishops, and archimandrites, all named by the emperor. Under the direction of this council, a series of official acts and formu
laries, and catechetical, doctrinal, and disciplinary treatises was drawn up, by which the whole scheme of the doctrine, discipline, and church government of the Russian church was settled in detail, and to which all members of the clergy, and all officials and digni taries, are required to subsCribe. The leading principle of. the new constitution thus imposed in the Russian church is the absolute supremacy of the czar; and in order to mark still more signally the principle that the crown is the source of all church dignity and of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the arrangement of provinces, archbishoprics, and bishoprics underwent a complete revision; the old metropolitan sees, as they became vacant, were filled up with simple bishops, and not with archbishops as before; and a new arrangement of archbishoprics was established, partly by the act of the czar him self, partly by the interposition of the permanent svuod.
The constitution of the Russian church established by Peter has been maintained in substance to the present time. The holy synod ;.; regarded as one of the great depart ments of the government, the minister of public worship being ex officio a member. One of the most cherished objects of the traditional imperial policy of Russia has been to effect a uniformity of religious profession throughout the empire. Dissent, in all its forms, has not only been discouraged, hut in many cases rigorously and even cruelly repressed; and as the Roman Catholic dissentients from the Russian church form the most numerous and the most formidable class, they have generally, but more particu larly under the late czar Nicholas, been the object of especial severity.