Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/78

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ESTABLISHMENT OF RUSSIAN PATRIARCHATE.
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stantinople for his complicity with these serious changes in the constitution of the Church. His presence at Moscow was, however, yet necessary to add to the dignity and sacredness of the event, and he was detained, sorely against his will, to officiate at the ceremony of installation. As the elder and first of the pastors of the Eastern Church, he solemnly imposed hands and blessed Job as "Chief of Bishops, Father of Fathers, and Patriarch of all the Countries to the North, by the grace of God and the will of the Tsar."

A formal record of the proceedings was subscribed to by the tsar, with the great seal of the State, by all the Russian bishops and dignitaries present, by Jeremiah and the Greek prelates who accompanied him. It was therein set forth that ancient Rome had fallen into heresy, and the Western Church was polluted by false doctrines; that new Rome was in the hands of the infidel Turk, and henceforth a third Rome had arisen at Moscow; that the first œcumenical prelate of the Church was the patriarch of Constantinople, the second the patriarch of Alexandria, the third the patriarch of Moscow, the fourth the patriarch of Antioch, the fifth the patriarch of Jerusalem. It was further declared that the patriarch of Moscow should be elected and consecrated by the clergy of Russia, without any necessity of reference to other authorities of the Greek Church.

In order to complete the hierarchy of the Russian establishment four metropolitan sees were instituted—at Novgorod, Kasan, Rostov, and Kroutitsk—and six archbishops, with eight bishops, were added to the ranks of the clergy.

The reorganization of the Church thus completed, Jeremiah, loaded with presents, was dismissed, with all possible honors, in the spring of 1589.