The Mayan calendar’s abrupt end on December 21, 2012 may be the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, but it is far from the only premonition of a world cataclysm. For its part, the medieval Russian Orthodox Church was certain that Judgment Day would arrive in March of 1492.
When the end failed to arrive on schedule, a feeling that doom was imminent pervaded Muscovy, reigniting fears of heresy while eventually justifying, promoting and reinforcing the notion of Moscow as the “Third Rome.”
To understand the Church’s apocalyptic reasoning, one must first understand the difference between the Anno Mundi and Anno Domini calendars.
Anno Mundi, which was in use in Russia up until the time of Peter the Great,* marked time from the creation of the world. By adding up the time between the “begats” in the book of Genesis and comparing the time elapsed between major events in ancient history, Orthodox churchmen concluded that the world was created 5,508 years before the birth of Christ. This “Alexandrian” calculation dominated in Russia, although several others, most differing by only a few years, were also used at different times in the Orthodox Christian world.
Anno Domini, devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus, counted from rather inexact calculations of the year of Christ’s birth. Thus, Anno Domini 01 corresponds to Anno Mundi 5509. And the year Anno Domini 1492 corresponds to Anno Mundi 7000.
The year 7000 was considered portentous for several reasons. The biblical book of Revelation contains repeated references to the number seven: seven seals, seven angels, etc.; it also mentions seven kings: “five have already fallen, one is now reigning, and the other has yet to come…. As for the beast… he is an eighth — and yet he is one of the seven….” (Rev.17: 10-11). Additional support for millenarian thinking came from II Peter 3:8: “one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.” Situated amid prophecies of Judgment Day and immediately after a brief reference to the foundation of the world, this verse seemed to express a parallel between the seven days of creation and seven millennia of human history.
One more factor lent credence to this interpretation: one of the methods for determining the age of the world had put Christ’s birth at the year 5,500, at the center-point of the sixth millennium. Since God had rested on the seventh day, early Christians predicted that the corresponding seventh millennium would be the “Age of Christ.” When this Apocalypse failed to happen 500 years after Christ’s estimated birth year, a revision of the prophecy predicted that the seventh millennium would be another thousand years of normal human existence, followed by the End Times.
The numerical speculation was bolstered by palpable signs of tribulation. The Russian historian V. Sakharov wrote that fifteenth-century “famine, black death, drought, conflagrations,” were all seen as indi----cations of impending doom. But the event that loomed largest in the medieval Russian religious view was the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
the seat of Orthodox Christianity and capital of Byzantium had officially split from Roman Catholicism over matters of doctrine and authority in 1054. The grandeur of Constantinople rivaled, and at times even surpassed, that of Rome. By the mid-fifteenth century, however, Byzantium was under dire threat from the Islamic Ottoman Turks.
The Byzantines then sought to reconcile with Rome in order to acquire desperately needed military and political assistance. In 1439, representatives of the Orthodox Church signed the Union of Florence, which acknowledged papal authority while maintaining eastern traditions, such as allowing marriage in the priesthood. (Most Eastern Church leaders later rejected the accord; nevertheless, Florence became a model for the 1596 Union of Brest, which led to the existence of the “Uniate Catholics” found in western Ukraine, Eastern Poland, etc.)
Contrary to expectations, the agreement gained for Byzantium no assistance against the Ottomans other than a feeble, belated and ill-fated crusade launched from Hungary in 1458. Worse still, according to historian Joseph Gill, at Florence Constantinople had capitulated to Rome on every major point of disagreement. So, in the eyes of the Russian Orthodox, defeat by the Turks was God’s punishment for conceding to Roman heresies.
After Byzantium’s fall in 1453, the Danilovich princes in power in Muscovy began to argue for their role as successors to the Byzantine emperors. It is at this time that we begin to find a renewed emphasis on the family’s descent from Vladimir Monomakh, the eleventh-century grand prince of Kievan Rus’ whose mother Anastasia was the daughter of Byzantine Emperor Constantine Monomachos. Indeed, a vita of Dmitry Donskoy* underscoring this pedigree, written in the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, is typically dated to 1454 or 1455, just one or two years after the demise of Byzantium. Nevertheless, it took another 40-50 years for the idea of Moscow as heir of Constantinople to become fully rooted in the Russian worldview.
The capture of the Christian capital on the Bosporus by the Turks in 1453 signaled the end of the world as the Russians knew it. Predrag Matejic, a specialist in medieval Cyrillic manuscripts at Ohio State University’s Hilandar Research Library, said that the fall of Byzantium, an empire which had lasted a thousand years, was at the time seen as a clear “foreshadowing of the end of the world,” indicating that “something significant was already happening” in God’s plan. It was thus incumbent on Russia to keep its faith pure, and this meant avoiding heresy at all costs.
At this point, a group of religious dissenters known as “Judaizers” entered the picture. The Judaizers were apparently not converts to Judaism, nor did they have any contacts with Jews, although some scholars have recently argued that members of the sect were familiar with translations of Hebrew mystical works. In any event, the Judaizers did represent a renewed emphasis on the Hebrew Scriptures.
Eve Levin, a specialist in the history of pre-modern Russia at the University of Kansas, said that the Judaizers largely rejected ecclesiastic institutions and the sacraments and had some support in aristocratic circles, making them even more dangerous to Church authorities. What is more, the Judaizers were critical of the Church’s wealth, which likely resonated with secular rulers covetous of monastic lands.
The Judaizers’ dissent was regarded by Church leaders as a “spiritual impurity” that made Russia susceptible to collapse, potentially triggering the end of the world. According to historian Janet Martin (Medieval Russia: 980-1584), “In 1487, the archbishop of Novgorod Gennady launched an aggressive campaign to root out the heresy,” and a church council was convened that eventually excommunicated them, banishing or imprisoning many. Thus was the Church, and Russia, “purified” of a dangerous heresy on the eve of the forecasted Apocalypse.
Religious intolerance aside, there were no signs of mass hysteria at the approach of the eighth millennium. Levin said that “as far as we can tell from the records, most people went on with their daily lives.” Yet a feeling of uneasiness was still in the air; Levin stressed that medieval Russians did not believe in a “Rapture,” in which the righteous would be assumed into heaven and spared the horrors of the Last Days. Orthodox doctrine had it that the Christian faithful would remain on earth, and many of them would be sorely tested.
Apocryphal legends had determined the year 1489 as the beginning of the three-year reign of the Antichrist. The end, in 1492, would come in March, a month which held special significance in popular legend as the month of the creation of Adam, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the death of Christ. March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, marked the beginning of the new year. (Christian civilization has varied considerably over the centuries in terms of when the New Year begins; historically it has been celebrated on different dates, including September 1, the beginning of the Orthodox liturgical year.) On the eve of March 25, 1492, some simple people “awaited with trembling and fear the worldwide sounding of the trumpets of the archangels Michael and Gabriel,” according to historian Sakharov.
The Russian Church leadership was so convinced of the imminent end that it did not trouble itself with producing Easter tables for any year after 7000. Easter and other “movable feasts” are determined by a lunar calendar and thus may fall on various dates in the solar year; they are typically put into tables showing the dates of the holidays for many years in advance. When the world did not end, the Metropolitan Zosima hastened to publish a new paschal calendar with the dates of Easter for subsequent years. Interestingly, he included in his introduction the idea of Moscow and Ivan III as successors to Constantinople and the Byzantine emperor.
While the Judaizers were quick to point out Church officials’ miscalculation of the apocalypse, the hierarchy remained insistent that the end was imminent. And since Russia was painted as the last remaining stronghold of “true” Christianity, it was even more incumbent on her to maintain her spiritual and doctrinal purity. This led to even greater intolerance of religious dissent in the early sixteenth century. A new church council was convened in 1504, and, in Martin’s words, “it again condemned the Judaizers as heretics and convinced Ivan III to burn their leaders at the stake.”
This profound sense of Russia’s religious responsibility was deepened by the newly evolving concept of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” following Rome and Con-stan-tinople (the “Second Rome”). The idea of the transfer of spiritual authority from Constantinople to Russia found its initial literary expression in the Tale of the White Cowl, generally attributed to Archbishop of Novgorod Ge-n-nady (who also oversaw the first full biblical translation into Slavic, as well as the persecution of the Judaizers) and his assistant Dmitry Gerasimov. The tale describes the cowl as a symbol of the Resurrection and a gift from the Roman Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester. After the “Latin heresy” of the ninth century, the cowl miraculously ended up in the possession of the patriarch of Constantinople, who then sent it to the archbishop of Novgorod. Despite the Novgorodian associations of the legend, it became instrumental in the development of the idea of a Muscovite Third Rome. The notion was immortalized in the words of the sixteenth-century monk Filofei: “Two Romes have fallen, a third stands, and a fourth there will never be” (Dva Rima padosha, tretii stoit, a chetvertomu ne byt’).
The Third Rome notion, as some experts on the period have argued, was perhaps not as important at the time as the idea of Muscovy as the “New Israel.” Daniel Rowland, in an article in The Russian Review, noted the predominance of Old Testament imagery in the writings of late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth century Rus. Among the numerous stark parallels: Ivan III liberating the Russians from the Tatar yoke is compared with Moses leading the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage. Religious painting and architecture also suggests the strength of the New Jerusalem idea. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Patriarch Nikon had a New Jerusalem monastery built in the vicinity of Moscow, with a cathedral closely following the design of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
The New Jerusalem and Third Rome concepts were not likely in conflict; indeed, as Rowland wrote, “Muscovites would have seen the Third Rome and New Israel images as complementary rather than contradictory; indeed, they are both part of the same idea of a series of Christian empires succeeding each other as prefiguration and fulfillment down to the Apocalypse.”
The Third Rome idea has ultimately had more staying power — or at least it has captured the modern imagination. It is widely cited in history textbooks, for instance. In Sergei Eisenstein’s film, Ivan the Terrible, Part I, the cinematic Ivan played by Nikolai Cherkasov repeats Filofei’s formulation, albeit in modern Russian. Moreover, he does so in his coronation speech asserting his authority over both the Church hierarchy and the boyars. Ivan’s clash with clergy and nobility notwithstanding, this dramatization is not historically accurate. Church leaders actually used the Third Rome idea to warn the secular powers not to pursue policies that would undermine the Church and true Orthodoxy, practically the opposite of Eisenstein’s representation. Indeed, the Third Rome idea was never meant to glorify Russia as a militant, expansionist state, although that interpretation has become common among Russians and Westerners alike.
Russian apocalyptic fears subsided as the sixteenth century progressed, and then resurfaced when struggles over royal succession and foreign invasions all but destroyed the Russian state during the Time of Troubles (1598-1613). They receded and then peaked again in the 1660s, when the forerunners of the Old Believers refused to accept liturgical reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon. The Old Believers regarded Nikon’s changes as corruptions which could precipitate the Apocalypse; many considered either Nikon or Tsar Alexei – the ruler at the time – to be the Antichrist. (A later generation of the sect gave that distinction to Peter the Great.)
Of course, Levin said, apocalyptic movements were not limited to Russia, but were fairly common in Europe in the years leading up to 1666, a number that suggested the “mark of the beast” from the book of Revelation. “A false Messiah even appeared among the Jewish community of the Ottoman empire at the same time,” she said, “showing that end-of-the-world notions transcended religious and political borders.” RL
* After Peter returned from his “Great Embassy” to Europe, he changed New Year’s Day from September 1 (a legacy of the Roman and Byzantine empires) to January 1 (as used in the West), and adopted the Anno Domini system. Thus did January 1, 7208 become January 1, 1700. Peter did not, however, adopt the Gregorian calendar, but retained the Julian calendar, which was still widely in use throughout Europe, which confounds historians to this day.
* dmitry donskoy: Ruler of Muscovy from 1359-1389 and first Muscovy prince to openly challenge the Mongols, defeating them in 1380 at the Battle of Kulikovo Field.
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
