The Josephite Ascendancy

How the Josephite party (iosiflyane) came to dominate the Russian church hierarchy in the sixteenth century after Joseph of Volotsk’s death in 1515: the Volokolamsk monastery as a seedbed of bishops; Metropolitan Daniel (1522–1539), Joseph’s disciple, who consolidated Josephite power and presided over the trials of Vassian Patrikeev and Maximus the Greek; Metropolitan Macarius (Makarii, 1542–1563), the great Josephite hierarch who canonized many Russian saints at the councils of 1547 and 1549, compiled the Great Menaion Reader (Velikie Chetii-Minei), and presided over the Stoglav council of 1551; the suppression of the Non-Possessor / Trans-Volga current; the entrenchment of monastic estates until the partial restrictions of mid-century; and Joseph’s own canonization in 1579 as a Josephite triumph. It also registers the scholarly caution (Ostrowski, Pliguzov) that “Josephite party” is in part a schematic label rather than a tidy, self-conscious bloc.

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

A Seedbed of Bishops

Joseph of Volotsk died on 9 September 1515, but his influence on the Russian church grew rather than waned in the decades that followed, because the institution he built became a nursery of hierarchs. The Dormition Monastery at Volokolamsk, with its strict cenobitic discipline, its disciplined and literate brotherhood, and its powerful network of princely and aristocratic patrons, produced an unusual number of bishops and abbots in the first half of the sixteenth century — men formed in Joseph’s rule, loyal to his program of monastic landholding, doctrinal rigor, and the magnification of the orthodox prince (Fedotov 1966, II; Goldfrank 2000; Lurie 1960). The monastery’s wealth, its scriptorium and library, and its connections to the court made it a place from which careers in the hierarchy were launched, and the men it sent up carried Joseph’s outlook with them. This is the institutional fact underneath the phrase “Josephite party”: not in the first place a doctrinal faction but a network of men trained at, or aligned with, Volokolamsk and the houses like it, who came to occupy the commanding heights of the church (Ostrowski 1986; Pliguzov 2002; on the cenobitic background, Russian Monasticism).

Before going further it is right to register the scholarly caution that disciplines this whole subject. [Disputed: whether the "Josephite party" (*iosiflyane*) was a real, self-conscious ecclesiastical bloc or a partly schematic label imposed by later historiography — much traditional and Soviet writing treats the *iosiflyane* and *nestyazhateli* ("non-possessors") as two organized, opposed parties contending across the sixteenth century; revisionist scholarship (Ostrowski 1986; Pliguzov 2002) argues that this binary is overdrawn, that allegiances were more fluid and the issues less neatly aligned than the two-party model suggests, and that "Josephite" is better used as a loose descriptor of an outlook and a network than as the name of a card-carrying party. This file uses the term in the looser sense and flags the binary where it is least secure]

Metropolitan Daniel (1522–1539): Consolidation

The first Josephite to hold the highest office was Daniel, Joseph’s own disciple, who had succeeded him as abbot of Volokolamsk and was raised to the metropolitanate of Moscow in 1522, holding it until 1539 (Fedotov 1966, II; Lurie 1960). Daniel’s tenure consolidated the Josephite position at the head of the church. A vigorous and worldly administrator, closely tied to Grand Prince Vasili III, he embodied the alliance of the Josephite hierarchy with the autocracy that Joseph’s later theology had underwritten (see Symphonia and the Autocrat). It was Daniel, notoriously, who gave the church’s sanction to Vasili III’s uncanonical divorce from his barren wife Solomonia Saburova and his remarriage to Elena Glinskaya in 1525 — a service to the throne that opposed churchmen, including the Trans-Volga circle, condemned, and that has colored Daniel’s reputation ever since (Fedotov 1966, II; Lurie 1960).

Under Daniel the suppression of the Non-Possessor current passed from polemic to prosecution. Two trials, in particular, broke the leadership of the Trans-Volga party:

Maximus the Greek (Maksim Grek, the learned Athonite monk-scholar invited to Moscow to correct the service books) was tried and condemned at a council in 1525, and again in 1531, on charges that mixed accusations of doctrinal and translational error with his association with the Non-Possessor critique of monastic wealth and with politically suspect circles; he was confined for long years in monastic imprisonment (Fedotov 1966, II; Lurie 1960; Pliguzov 2002).
Vassian Patrikeev (Vassian Kosoy, the tonsured prince who had become the foremost literary champion of the Non-Possessors and an editor of canon law along Trans-Volga lines, the heir of St. Nilus of Sora’s circle) was tried and condemned at a council in 1531, under Daniel’s presidency, and likewise confined — fittingly and bitterly, to Joseph’s own Volokolamsk monastery, where he is reported to have died (Fedotov 1966, II; Lurie 1960; Pliguzov 2002).

With these two condemnations the articulate leadership of the Non-Possessor / Trans-Volga current was silenced, and the Josephite line on monastic estates and on the prosecution of dissent prevailed at the level of the hierarchy. [Disputed: how far the trials of Maximus the Greek and Vassian Patrikeev were a "Josephite" suppression of "Non-Possessors" as such, and how far they were driven by court politics and by specific charges (errors in Maximus's corrections; Vassian's canonical editing and his links to disgraced boyar factions) — the traditional reading (Fedotov 1966, II) frames them squarely as the Josephite party crushing its rivals; revisionist work (Pliguzov 2002; Ostrowski 1986) stresses the entanglement with dynastic and factional politics and the mixed, partly technical nature of the charges, cautioning against reducing the affairs to a clean party victory]

Metropolitan Macarius (1542–1563): The Great Josephite Hierarch

The high-water mark of the Josephite ascendancy was the metropolitanate of Macarius (Makarii), who occupied the see of Moscow from 1542 to 1563, having previously been archbishop of Novgorod. Macarius is one of the towering figures of the sixteenth-century Russian church, and his program — the gathering, ordering, and glorification of the whole inheritance of Russian sanctity and Russian devotion — represents the constructive face of the Josephite outlook at its most impressive (Fedotov 1966, II; Miller 1979; Bushkovitch 1992). Three of his works define the era:

The councils of 1547 and 1549 and the canonization of the Russian saints. Under Macarius’s leadership the church councils of 1547 and 1549 carried out an unprecedented general canonization of Russian saints — formally glorifying for veneration across the whole church a large number of local and hitherto uncanonized holy men and women of Rus’ (Fedotov 1966, II; Miller 1979). This great act of canonization gave the Russian church a unified calendar of its own saints and expressed, in liturgical form, the conviction that the Russian land was a land of saints — a conviction wholly congenial to the Josephite vision of Muscovy as the bastion of orthodoxy. [Disputed: the exact number of saints canonized at the 1547 and 1549 councils — the figures given in the literature vary (older accounts speak of some thirty-nine new canonizations across the two councils, and the precise tally and the division between the two councils are not uniformly reported), so no single firm number should be asserted; the magnitude and significance of the event, however, are not in doubt (Miller 1979; Fedotov 1966, II)]

The Great Menaion Reader (Velikie Chetii-Minei). Over decades, beginning in his Novgorod years, Macarius compiled the Velikie Chetii-Minei — the “Great Menaion Reader,” a vast encyclopedic collection arranged by the calendar, gathering the lives of saints, patristic homilies, and the edifying reading appointed for each day of the church year into an enormous corpus meant to assemble “all the holy books” read in the Russian land (Fedotov 1966, II; Miller 1979). It is one of the monumental literary undertakings of medieval Russia and the supreme expression of the Josephite impulse to collect, standardize, and consecrate the whole devotional inheritance.

The Stoglav council of 1551. In 1551 Macarius presided over the great reforming council known, from the hundred chapters of its decisions, as the Stoglav (“Hundred Chapters”). Convened with the young Tsar Ivan IV, the Stoglav legislated across the whole field of church life — liturgical practice, the conduct and education of clergy, iconography (it is a key source on the norms of icon-painting; see Icons and Iconoclasm), morals, and church administration — and stands as the most comprehensive monument of the mid-century Russian church (Kollmann 1978; Fedotov 1966, II). On the burning question of monastic landholding the Stoglav and the surrounding legislation reached a compromise: rather than the wholesale secularization the Non-Possessors and, at times, the crown had contemplated, the church retained its estates but accepted partial restrictions on the further acquisition of land — bishops’ and monasteries’ new purchases were made subject to the tsar’s consent, and some grants were reviewed (Kollmann 1978; Ostrowski 1986; Pliguzov 2002). The Josephite principle that the Church might rightly hold land thus survived, hedged but intact, which is the practical measure of the party’s ascendancy.

It must nonetheless be said that calling Macarius simply a “Josephite” is itself contestable. [Disputed: the degree of Macarius's "Josephism" — the traditional picture (Fedotov 1966, II) presents Macarius as the crowning Josephite hierarch, heir to Joseph's program of a wealthy, learned, and politically allied church; other scholarship (Miller 1979; Bushkovitch 1992) emphasizes that Macarius's vast cultural and canonizing program had its own character and aims, drew on currents wider than the Josephite network, and is not reducible to partisanship in the Possessor / Non-Possessor quarrel, so that "Josephite" captures his alignment on the estates question and his institutional lineage better than the whole of his churchmanship]

The Entrenchment of the Estates

The thread that most clearly marks the Josephite ascendancy is the survival of monastic landholding. Joseph’s central practical contention — that the monasteries should hold estates as the material basis of charity, hospitality, and a learned clergy (see The Case for Monastic Estates) — was the position that prevailed. Despite repeated pressure from the crown’s fiscal interest and from the Non-Possessor critique, and despite the partial restrictions accepted at mid-century, the church entered the later sixteenth century still a great landowner, its estates entrenched until far later reforms touched them (Ostrowski 1986; Pliguzov 2002; Fedotov 1966, II). The mid-century legislation that subjected new acquisitions to the tsar’s approval was, in this light, less a defeat than a managed settlement: the principle of possession was conceded, its further expansion curbed. The revisionist caution applies here too — Ostrowski in particular argues that the land question was driven as much by the practical economics of land transfer and the crown’s needs as by a doctrinal contest between two parties, so that the “Josephite victory” on estates is better described as the persistence of monastic landholding under increasing state regulation than as the triumph of a program (Ostrowski 1986).

Joseph’s Canonization (1579) as a Josephite Triumph

The seal on the ascendancy of Joseph’s party was the canonization of Joseph himself. Local veneration at Volokolamsk began soon after his death, and Joseph was glorified as a saint of the whole Russian church in 1579 — within a Russian church whose hierarchy his own party had shaped, whose church-state model he had articulated, and whose chief monuments (the great canonizations, the Chetii-Minei, the Stoglav) bore the Josephite stamp (Fedotov 1966, II; Goldfrank 2000). That the church which canonized him was so thoroughly the church his disciples had built gives the canonization its character as a Josephite triumph as well as an act of veneration — the formal recognition, by an institution he had done so much to form, of the holiness of its founder (the canonization and its later history belong to the veneration section; see Canonization and Relics and The Josephite Legacy).

Two things should be held together in assessing this ascendancy. On one side stands a real and constructive achievement: a disciplined and literate monasticism, a great work of canonization that gave the Russian church its own communion of saints, the encyclopedic Chetii-Minei, the comprehensive ordering of church life at the Stoglav, and a coherent theology of the Christian realm. On the other stands the cost: the silencing of the Trans-Volga critics — among them men and a tradition the Church has also come to honor, above all St. Nilus of Sora — and the binding of the Church ever more closely to the autocracy, with the long ambivalence that bequeathed (Fedotov 1966, II; Meyendorff 1981; see Severity and Mercy and The 1503 Council and the Two Ways). A fair account credits the achievement, names the cost, and respects the scholarly warning that the tidy story of two parties — one victorious, one suppressed — is a simplification of a more tangled history (Ostrowski 1986; Pliguzov 2002).

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. (The Josephite hierarchy; Daniel and the trials of Maximus and Vassian; Macarius and the canonizations, the Chetii-Minei, and the Stoglav; the suppression of the Trans-Volga current.)
Kollmann, Jack E. “The Moscow Stoglav (‘Hundred Chapters’) Church Council of 1551.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1978. (The Stoglav council under Macarius and Ivan IV; its legislation, including on icons and on the church estates settlement.)
Ostrowski, Donald. “Church Polemics and Monastic Land Acquisition in Sixteenth-Century Muscovy.” Slavonic and East European Review 64, no. 3 (1986): 355–379. (The revisionist case against the two-party model; the economics of monastic landholding and the mid-century restrictions.)
Pliguzov, Andrei. Polemika v russkoi tserkvi pervoi treti XVI stoletiia [Polemics in the Russian Church of the First Third of the Sixteenth Century]. Moscow: Indrik, 2002. (The trials of Maximus the Greek and Vassian Patrikeev in their political context; caution on the “Josephite party” label; the polemical literature.)
Lurie, Ya. S. Ideologicheskaia bor’ba v russkoi publitsistike kontsa XV–nachala XVI veka [The Ideological Struggle in Russian Publicistic Writing of the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries]. Moscow–Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1960. (Daniel and the Josephite hierarchy; the publicistics of the Possessor / Non-Possessor controversy and its prosecutions.)
Goldfrank, David M., ed. and trans. The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky. Rev. ed. Cistercian Studies 36. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2000. (Volokolamsk as a seedbed of hierarchs; Joseph’s program and its institutional afterlife; the canonization.)
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. (Macarius’s compilations and the canonizing councils; the cultural program of his metropolitanate.)
Bushkovitch, Paul. Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. (The character of Macarian devotion and its wider currents; caution against reducing Macarius to party.)
Meyendorff, John. Byzantium and the Rise of Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. (The church-state inheritance and its long ambivalence in the Russian church.)