Russia under the Old regime

230

now that church properties were in danger, he became an extravagant apologist of royal absolutism. In arguing the divinity of tsars - an idea he was the first to introduce into Russia -Joseph relied on the authority of Agapetus, a sixth-century Byzantine writer. From him he borrowed the central thesis of his political theory: 'Although an Emperor in his physical being is like other men, yet in his authority [or office] he is like God.'7 To curry favour with the crown, in 1505 or 1506 he took a step for which there was no precedent in Russian history: he withdrew his abbey from the patronage of its local appanage prince (and incidentally, its generous benefactor) a younger brother of Ivan in, and placed it under the personal protection of the tsar. Thus, skilfully combining censure of heresy with eulogies of absolutism, and all the time reminding the crown of the church's utility to it, Joseph managed to turn the tables on the Transvolga Elders. The small band of hermits which strove for a spiritual church was no match for the conniving abbot. After Joseph's death (1515), the most important ecclesiastical positions went to members of his party, and many Russian monasteries were reorganized on the model of Volokolamsk. A decisive event in the conflict occurred in 1525 when Metropolitan Danil, one of his disciples, in contravention of canon law, authorized Basil in to divorce his childless wife and remarry, offering to assume the sin, if such it was, on his own conscience. Henceforth, the grateful tsar completely backed the Josephites, to the extent of allowing them to imprison their opponents, among them Maxim the Greek. The Josephite party attained the apogee of its influence under Metropolitan Macarius. It was this ecclesiastic who planted in the mind of Ivan iv the idea of crowning himself tsar.

Fear for its properties, of course, was not the only motive behind the Russian church's drive to build up a powerful and unlimited monarchy. There were also other considerations; the need for state assistance in extirpating heresy, protecting Orthodox Christians living under Muslim and Catholic rule, and reconquering those parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which had once formed part of'Holy Rus''. The threat of secularization was only the most pressing factor, the one which made collaboration with secular powers especially urgent. Traditionally partial to strong imperial authority, in the first half of the sixteenth century, under threat of expropriation, the Russian Orthodox Church placed its entire authority behind the Muscovite monarchy, filling its mind with ambitions which on its own it was incapable of conceiving. The entire ideology of royal absolutism in Russia was worked out by clergymen who felt that the interests of religion and church were best served by a monarchy with no limits to its power. This ideology consisted of the following principal ingredients: 1. The idea of the Third Rome: the Romes of Peter and Constantine