The life of the protopope Avvakum
The life of the protopope Avvakum , in the German transliteration "Žitie protopopa Avvakuma", ( Cyrillic : житие протопопа Аввакума) is the title of an auto hagiography from the Moscow Empire in the 17th century . The text, written in Old Church Slavonic , is one of the most important works of late Old Russian literature .
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Avakum describes his life in chronological order. Born in Novgorod, he grew up the son of a priest and a nun. Due to the early death of the father, the family loses their home and henceforth lives in poverty. Through pious prayer and fasting, Avvakum can change fate for the better. He married a virtuous girl from the village and was ordained a priest at the age of 23. In the ministry he resists innumerable temptations and is able to overcome all obstacles until Metropolitan Nikon is appointed patriarch and reforms the Orthodox Church from the ground up. Avvakum feels that he has a divine mandate to stop the reforms. His refusal to recognize the innovations leads to multiple arrests and exiles, the last one with his wife and children to Siberia, from which he is only allowed to return after Nikon's death. Even under the new patriarch, Avvakum can no longer save the old faith . Together with other adherents of the old faith, he is arrested again and dies a martyr at the stake.
Today's relevance
As documentation of internal church conflicts was Avvakums car hagiographie hidden in the church archives more than 200 years. A copy from the 19th century could not be published until 1861. A sensational feature of the sacred text was the mixture of Church Slavonic with vernacular elements. Avvakum's autohagiography influenced Russian literature well into the 19th century.
Avvakum - a hagiography?
Despite the formal parallels to hagiography, The Life of the Protopope Avvakum cannot be seen as a generic example of a classical hagiography. As the author of the first auto-hagiography in Russian literature, Avvakum violated the principle of autocracy in hagiography by writing about himself. He also breaks a taboo in orthodox literature by addressing church conflicts.
Historical background
In the 17th century, the Patriach Nikon pushed through the reform of the Orthodox faith against the opposition of innumerable believers. One reform was the so-called "book corrections" of the holy scriptures that were previously handwritten. Translation and transcription errors should be corrected and collected in a new printed form. Altering centuries-old works was a sacrilege in the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the scriptures; in the Old Russian understanding of literature, a connection to God could be achieved by copying and reading original texts by hand. Further reforms concerned ceremonial traditions such as the three-finger cross for the Trinity instead of the two-finger cross for the two natures Christ or the spelling Iisus (Iисусъ) for Jesus, instead of the old spelling Isus (Iсусс).
Avvakum was the head of the believers who opposed these reforms and later also spoke out against other social grievances such as serfdom . From the break between opponents of the reforms and supporters emerged in the split in the church Raskol , the line of Old Believers who are still represented in large parts of Russia today.
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- The life of the Protopope Avvakum written down by himself. Translated from the Old Russian by Gerhard Hildebrandt, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1965