Church as of the Roman—perhaps more so. Advised by Nicon, Alexis convoked a solemn synod in honour of the three dead prelates—Job, Hermogenes, and Philip—with the object of bringing their remains to the church of the Assumption. Nicon himself went to the remote Solovetsky Monastery to fetch the body of the martyred Philip, who was addressed as though living, in an appeal from the tsar that he would come to Moscow and absolve the spirit of Ivan who was buried there. A more curious embassy was never despatched. It was directed to the spirit of the saint which was thought to be accessible at the place where his bones were lying; he was requested to grant permission for their removal; with them he would come himself. The spirit of the old mad tsar was also supposed to haunt his own mouldering remains. Therefore, of course, the martyr could bring relief to the lost soul by the coming of his body into the place where Ivan's body was buried. This is an application of the ideas of relic worship that exceeds all precedents. It illustrates the character of the Russian religion of the seventeenth century in the person of one of the most enlightened of rulers. Then what must that religion have meant to ignorant peasants, villagers living in remote regions of the vast empire, cut off from the metropolis by wolf-scoured forests?
In the year 1653, after long resisting the entreaties of Alexis, Nicon accepted the position of patriarch of Moscow, which had been vacant for some time, since the death of his predecessor Joseph. We cannot always penetrate to the motives which lie behind the traditional nolo episcopari; but in the present case we can see that, quite apart from any ascetic abnegation of ambition, Nicon would perceive the serious difficulties of the position offered to him. Two sections of the community were already opposed to him—the ecclesiastics who resented his disciplinary reforms, and the boyars who were jealous of the imperial favouritism that he enjoyed. But no sooner were his objections overborne by the entreaties of his friend and master the tsar, than Nicon threw himself into the duties
