07 — Church and State

Joseph of Volotsk’s developed political theology and the dominance of his party in the sixteenth-century Russian church. This section sets out his doctrine of the God-given prince — the monarch “in nature like all men, in power like God,” owed obedience as the protector of orthodoxy, yet bound by the limit that an impious ruler who commands against God “is not a tsar but a tyrant” — against its Byzantine symphonia background; and it traces how the Josephite party (iosiflyane) came to dominate the hierarchy through Metropolitans Daniel and Macarius, with the scholarly caution that “Josephite party” is in part a schematic label.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (cenobitic founder; “Possessors”)

Joseph’s most consequential and most contested legacy is in the relation of throne and altar. Two files carry the subject. The first treats his political theology proper — the inheritance of Byzantine symphonia, the scriptural grounds of obedience (Romans 13, 1 Peter 2, Matthew 22), the famous formula of the ruler’s twofold standing in nature and in power, the decisive conditional that limits obedience to the pious orthodox prince, and the shift in Joseph’s own stance from defending the Church’s autonomy under Ivan III to underwriting princely power under Vasili III. The second follows the institutional afterlife: how Volokolamsk became a seedbed of bishops, how Metropolitan Daniel consolidated Josephite power and prosecuted the Non-Possessor leaders, how Metropolitan Macarius crowned the era with the great canonizations, the Velikie Chetii-Minei, and the Stoglav council, how monastic estates were entrenched under partial restriction, and how Joseph’s own canonization in 1579 set the seal on his party’s ascendancy — all with the revisionist caution (Ostrowski, Pliguzov) about the two-party model kept in view.

Files in This Section

File	Description
Symphonia and the Autocrat	Joseph’s theology of the God-given prince: the Byzantine symphonia background (Justinian, Novella 6); the scriptural grounds of obedience (Rom. 13:1–7; 1 Pet. 2:13–17; Matt. 22:21); the formula “in nature (estestvom) like all men, in power (vlast’iu) like God”; the explicit limit that an impious ruler “is not a tsar but a tyrant”; and the shift from defending church autonomy under Ivan III to underwriting princely power under Vasili III.
The Josephite Ascendancy	How the iosiflyane came to dominate the sixteenth-century hierarchy: Volokolamsk as a seedbed of bishops; Metropolitan Daniel (1522–1539) and the trials of Maximus the Greek and Vassian Patrikeev; Metropolitan Macarius (1542–1563), the canonizing councils of 1547/1549, the Velikie Chetii-Minei, and the Stoglav of 1551; the entrenchment of monastic estates; Joseph’s canonization in 1579; and the Ostrowski / Pliguzov caution on the “Josephite party” label.

See Also

• The Prosvetitel — The Enlightener, in which Joseph’s political-theological material is embedded
• Joseph as Theologian — Joseph’s method of scriptural and patristic argument
• The Campaign and the Executions — the prince as enforcer of orthodoxy in practice
• The Case for Monastic Estates — the landholding question behind Joseph’s relations with both grand princes
• The 1503 Council and the Two Ways — the origin of the Possessor / Non-Possessor framing
• Severity and Mercy — the dispute with Nilus of Sora’s circle, whose heirs the Josephite hierarchy suppressed
• Canonization and Relics — Joseph’s 1579 canonization
• Church Governance — the canonical and symphonia framework
• The Mongol and Muscovite Periods — the political world of Ivan III and Vasili III
• Russian Orthodox Tradition — the wider tradition this church-state model shaped

References

• Fedotov, George P. The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. II: The Middle Ages, the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries. Ed. John Meyendorff. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.
• Meyendorff, John. Byzantium and the Rise of Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
• Goldfrank, David M., ed. and trans. The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky. Rev. ed. Cistercian Studies 36. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2000.
• Lurie, Ya. S. Ideologicheskaia bor’ba v russkoi publitsistike kontsa XV–nachala XVI veka. Moscow–Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1960.
• Zimin, A. A., and Ya. S. Lurie, eds. Poslaniia Iosifa Volotskogo. Moscow–Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1959.
• Kollmann, Jack E. “The Moscow Stoglav (‘Hundred Chapters’) Church Council of 1551.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1978.
• Ostrowski, Donald. “Church Polemics and Monastic Land Acquisition in Sixteenth-Century Muscovy.” Slavonic and East European Review 64, no. 3 (1986): 355–379.
• Pliguzov, Andrei. Polemika v russkoi tserkvi pervoi treti XVI stoletiia. Moscow: Indrik, 2002.
• Miller, David B. “The Velikie Minei Chetii and the Stepennaia Kniga of Metropolitan Makarii and the Origins of Russian National Consciousness.” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 26 (1979): 263–382.
• Bushkovitch, Paul. Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.