Awwakum

Avwakum at the stake (painting by Pyotr Evgenyevich Myassoyedov)

Avakum Petrow ( Russian Аввакум Петров ; * November 20, 1620 or 1621 in Grigorowo , southeast of Nizhny Novgorod ; † April 14, 1682 in Pustosersk on the Pechora , today the Nenets Autonomous Okrug ) was a protopope and one of the leading figures of the Old Believers' movement , as well as an important representative of Old Russian literature . The name corresponds to the Hebrew Habakkuk .

Life

Avakum was the son of a village clergyman. He was raised in a strictly religious manner and had a tendency to asceticism from an early age. In 1640 he married, in 1642 he was ordained a deacon, in 1644 a clergyman in Lopatitschi. Here Avakum introduced a very strict form of orthodox worship that made him hateful among the population: z. B. before and during the vespers, 300 bows down to the ground, 600 Jesus prayers and 100 prayers to the Blessed Mother, or a form of worship that lasted seven hours instead of the usual four hours. He also drove jugglers and bear drivers from the village.

Icon from the 6th century from St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai . Christ is shown here blessing: He puts his index and middle fingers together, as an indication that the crucified one is God and man in one person; the other three fingers touch the tips to represent the Trinity. The Old Believers regard this sign as the only correct sign of the cross.

In 1646 he was therefore expelled and went with his family to Moscow , where he received an imperial certificate through the tsar's confessor and returned to his village. But already in 1648 he was driven out again by the residents, so that he stayed in Moscow until 1652. Avakum became protopope in the small town of Jurjewez-Powolschski , after another flight after eight months he went to Moscow to the Cathedral of the Icon of Our Lady of Kazan near Red Square. When Nikon became patriarch and head of the Russian Church in 1652 , a conflict and a dispute between him and Avvakum soon arose. Patriarch Nikon introduced reforms in the area of ​​rites and texts with the aim of establishing a unified practice with the other Orthodox churches abroad. However, many believers viewed these changes as heresy and fought the reform by all means. Especially the sign of the cross with three fingers perceived Avakum and the opponents of these church reforms as a dogmatic step backwards; They saw in it a sign of another trinity, namely the one described in the Apocalypse of John of the serpent, the false prophet and the beast (devil, unbelieving patriarch, evil tsar) and held on to the sign of the cross with two fingers, as has been practiced so far was. For many at the time, this question was by no means a mere external problem; it concealed important theological differences. Two fingers symbolized the duality of Christ, where three fingers symbolized the Holy Trinity; Since it was Christ and not the Trinity who had been crucified, the opponents of the reforms considered a sign of the cross with two fingers to be more suitable theologically. In the old Russian ritual, symbol and content, sign and teaching are an indissoluble unit.

Awwakun and his family had to leave Moscow. When he continued to perform relentlessly against Nikon and the Tsar Alexis I Mikhailovich could not even even Avvakum, he was sent to Siberia exile, where he Tobolsk and Yeniseisk until after Nertschinsk move with his wife and children had (1653-1664). Avakum returned to Moscow in 1664 and was exiled to Mesen that same year . The great Synod of the Russian Church declared a 1666/67 on Avvakum and his followers excommunication . Still unyielding, he was eventually exiled to the far north of Russia, to Pustosersk on the Arctic coast beyond the Arctic Circle. Here he wrote his biography in 1672/73. Eventually Avvakum was burned at the stake on April 14, 1682 , and died a martyr for his belief.

plant

Apart from its religious importance, Avakum plays an important role as a writer for Old Russian literature. In exile on the Arctic Coast, locked in a hut, he wrote his autobiography The Life of the Protopope Avvakum himself at the suggestion of his confessor in 1672/73 . It is the first ever Russian autobiography, for which Avakum only saint legends were available as models. The language of his report is Church Slavonic with elements of vernacular. Avakum describes his ordeal and his struggle for true faith in artless, realistic language. However, there are also extremely humorous descriptions, such as the description of a black hen, whose eggs provided the family with food in Siberia and are among the most beautiful animal descriptions in literature. According to general opinion, the life story of the protopope Avakum is seen as a literary work of art of the highest order, which had an influence on Russian literature up to the 19th century. For a long time only distributed by hand, the first printing did not take place until 1861, as the influence of the Orthodox state church was still too great until then - for them, Avakum was considered a heretic. In the 20th century the work was translated into several European languages, including German in 1930. Avvakum also wrote letters to the tsar and his followers, which are also an important testimony to the literature of ancient Russia. The Book of Interpretations (Kniga tolkowanij) was written in the 1670s .

Afterlife

Avakum was of great religious importance in Russia, as he gathered a large number of supporters behind him through his uncompromising attitude towards the reforms of the Patriarch Nikon. This group, separated from the main church, continued to live after Avakum's death. They were later referred to as Old Believers , i.e. believers who lived according to the old faith, as it was practiced before Nikon's reform. They saw themselves as the actual true Orthodox, while the Russian state church saw the old rites and books as heretical and their followers as raskolniki (split-offs). The Old Believers (also called "Old ritualists" since the 18th century) formed numerous congregations, often in remote areas of Russia, where they have survived all repression to this day. For them, the protopope Avvakum is considered a saint, he is depicted on icons with a halo. In 1971 the Russian Orthodox Church lifted the curse against the ancient ritualists. Today there are Old Believers in Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and the United States.

literature

• Avvakum, Petrowitsch: The life of the protopope Avvakum, written down by himself, Göttingen 1965
• Peter Hauptmann : Old Russian belief. The struggle of the Protopope Avvakum against the church reforms of the 17th century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1963.
• Reinhold Schneider : Old Russian Faith , essay in “Power and Grace”, published in 1940 and again in 1946, Insel Verlag

Web links

Wikiquote: Awwakum  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Avakum in the catalog of the German National Library
• Russian text of the autobiography of Avakum (PDF; 227 kB)
• Russian text of the letters of Avakum (PDF; 5.17 MB)
• Excerpts from the autobiography in English ( Memento from December 21, 2005 in the Internet Archive )