The deprivation of rights of a large part of the peasantry (around 1870 peasants made up approximately 76.6% of the total population of the country) undermined the moral foundations of the social structure, because it contradicted the very basis of the moral and legal consciousness of the Russian people, their idea of "truth". If the "noble nobility" considered their right to own serfs as a right of estates and a privilege of "support of the throne", then the concepts of the Russian peasant, despite the reforms of Peter the Great, were still rooted in the old Moscow soil. He looked at serfdom not from a legal, but exclusively from a religious and moral point of view, as a condition that contradicted the commandments of the Lord. Thus, serfdom further deepened the crack that had passed through the body of Peter's estate empire as a result of Europeanization.

However, it would be unfair to assert that the entire nobility considered serfdom to be a normal and just phenomenon. Already in the XVIII century we find among some representatives of the nobility (Radishchev and others) a clear understanding of its negative aspects and indignation at the trampling of the moral and legal foundations of the social order. In the first half of the 19th century, this protest became even stronger, it already captured not only the nobility, but also representatives of other strata of the population, especially the gradually emerging intelligentsia. In the first half of the nineteenth century, liberal-minded circles of society tried, as far as censorship conditions permitted, to stigmatize serfdom as a vice of the autocratic system in fiction, journalism, correspondence, etc. Up to 1861, this protest – being, of course, only one of the components of the liberal aspirations as a whole – stimulated the so-called liberation movement, which in turn formed the fertile ground for the revolutionary movement. The silence of the Church made it and its representatives (bishops and parish clergy) in the eyes of liberal circles responsible, along with the state power, for the shortcomings of both the social and political structure. The Church was considered not only a conservative, but also a politically reactionary force, a support and henchman of state absolutism. Due to a certain short-sightedness, which has always been inherent in Russian liberals and revolutionaries, conservatism was considered by them as a sign of a lack of culture and education. It was precisely this kind of reproach that was constantly addressed to the clergy, remaining an invariable part of the criticism directed against the Church and its representatives by liberal circles. On the other hand, since liberal sentiments were nourished by the philosophical teachings of the West, Russian liberalism and the radicalism resulting from it very easily passed from a strictly socio-political criticism to a positivist and materialist worldview, which eventually led them to atheism or even to anti-religious convictions.

Thus arose that numerous social stratum, whose representatives were formally listed as Orthodox, although in fact did not maintain any relations with the Church. The secularization of society was especially strong in the cities, while village priests usually had closer contact with their flock.

Now the Church was dealing with a split society. The methods of pastoral care in the city and in the countryside, in relation to ordinary parishioners, on the one hand, and to the indifferent or hostile masses, on the other, had to be completely different. Meanwhile, the clergy was not at all prepared to solve such a problem, and did not receive any instructions from the bishops on this matter. The work of preaching became especially difficult. It was necessary that it be perceived by secularized groups of the population, and at the same time be comprehensible to much larger strata of the people who continued to remain faithful to traditions and the Church, primarily to the peasants, as well as to the bourgeoisie and workers. Despite the fact that these strata remained closely connected with the Church throughout the synodal period up to the 20th century, sects also made themselves felt among them, in relation to which, as well as to the schismatics, well-organized missionary work was required. Now the Church had to conduct it within the framework of new relations with the government, within the framework of the state church. Here she faced great difficulties and complications. Exactly how these relations between the Church and the state developed during the synodal period, we shall see [27].

d) Let us return once again to the Muscovite period. The new relations between the Church and the state were conditioned not only by the state church. Certain prerequisites for them had already been formed in the Muscovite period, and they were rooted both in historical reality and in the psychology of church politics at that time. The specific structure of the Old Russian worldview and the psychological attitudes associated with it sometimes had a strong impact on the course of historical events, but not vice versa. The resonance that certain specific events caused among the people was often also the result of religiously conditioned views on the nature of royal power and earthly authorities in general.

In the relations between the state and the Church in Muscovite Russia, two trends crossed: the political growth of the state led to the gradual formation of the idea of tsarist power; at the same time, after the Eastern Roman Empire ceased to exist with the fall of Constantinople, state thinking became more and more imbued with the idea of the Byzantine heritage. The idea of the tsar as the heir to the rights and duties of the Byzantine emperors determined the thinking not only of the sovereigns themselves, but also of the church hierarchy, monasticism, and the entire people. The scope and content of monarchical power in the person of the tsar who represented it changed primarily under the influence of the rapid growth of the Muscovite state. In the second half of the 15th and early 16th centuries, a new Moscow state was formed in place of the fragmented principalities, this change in its main features occurred during the reign of Ivan III (1462–1505) [28]. In the eyes of the Church and the people, the Grand Duke of Moscow was the absolute head of the nation [29]. During the decades of Ivan III's reign, which were so important from a political point of view, the question of the essence of the tsarist autocracy was lively discussed in Moscow. The Moscow scribes could discuss this problem only from the point of view of those ideas about the sovereign's power and its relation to the Church, which penetrated into Russia from Byzantium along with Christianity. When Christianity came to Kiev at the end of the tenth century, the concepts of empire (imperium) and priesthood (sacerdotium) in Byzantium were already well developed and legally defined [30]. The novels of Justinian (527–565), concerning the relations between the state and the Church, were included in the Slavonic Book of the Helmsman as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries [31]. The Byzantine Eclogue (circa 750) contained definitions on the duty of the sovereign to serve justice, as well as on the Divine origin of imperial (royal) power [32]. In Moscow, the basis for the interpretation of relations between the state and the Church was mainly the Epanagoge (between 879 and 886) [33]. At the same time, the Muscovite scribes were much less interested in historical reality than in the system of concepts set forth in the Byzantine texts. Other sources on the question of the relationship between the state and the Church were the Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers. Of all this, Moscow assimilated mainly two theories, or two teachings: that the tsar's power is affirmed in the word of God, and that the diarchy, or symphony of spiritual and temporal powers.

The processing of these borrowed ideas in Moscow was influenced by special political prerequisites. First of all, the Moscow scribes were based on the ancient Kievan tradition, according to which princes and grand princes were considered as Christian sovereigns who had certain rights and duties in relation to the Church [35]. This legacy served as the foundation for the subsequent ideological evolution, after the Grand Duke refused to recognize the Union of Florence (1439). Thus, in the eyes of his contemporaries, the Grand Duke acted as a defender of the Orthodox faith, pushing into the shadows Byzantium, which had united with the "Latin heresy" [36]. The fall of Constantinople and the collapse of the empire destroyed the diarchy and symphony of secular and spiritual powers required by theory. From that time on, the election of Russian metropolitans was carried out by the Assembly of Russian Bishops (consecrated by the Council) without the approval of the candidate by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and it was stipulated that the election took place "by the Duma of my son, the Grand Duke Vasily Vasilyevich" [38]. Ten years later, at the Local Council in Moscow, it was established that the election of the Metropolitans of Moscow would henceforth take place "by the election of the Holy Spirit and according to the holy rule of the Holy Apostles and Holy Fathers," as well as "by order of our lord, the Grand Duke Vasily Vasilyevich, the Russian autocrat" [39]. The marriage of Grand Duke Ivan III to Sophia (Zoya), niece of the last Byzantine emperor, emphasized this continuity. In 1480, the dependence of the Muscovite state on the Tatars was finally destroyed, even if it was already purely formal.

All these events served as a powerful impetus for theoretical thought, at the same time directing it along a very definite channel. From now on, it was Muscovite Rus that was the guarantor who ensured the preservation of Orthodoxy in its purity and integrity. The sovereign of Moscow became the legal owner of all the rights and duties of the Byzantine tsar. Consequently, he was now the "Orthodox Tsar," without whom the entire religiously conditioned system of the Old Russian worldview would have lost its foundation. The Byzantine doctrine of symphony proved to be quite applicable to the conditions of Moscow. The Russian Church was the only one that preserved the treasure of Orthodox teaching in purity, and the Tsar was its defender and guardian. And when Ivan IV (1533-1584) officially assumed the title of tsar in 1547, it was quite a consistent step. After all, even before that, the grand dukes were called tsars in Moscow written monuments [41]. Thus, the concept of official church writing and Moscow journalism of the second half of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century became a living state and ecclesiastical-legal reality: the only Orthodox tsar in the world sat on the Moscow throne as an autocrat [42].

It is hardly possible to find another period in Russian history when the problem of relations between the state and the Church would so vividly interest minds. As a result of the intellectual work that took place at that time, a state-political concept was created, which existed for several centuries, which could not be completely destroyed by either Peter the Great's reforms, or the Europeanization that followed them. The core of this concept is the idea of the future of the Muscovite state, of "Moscow as the Third Rome"[43] – a theory that is not primarily political, but rather religious and messianic. In the journalism of that time, Moscow, the last legitimate heir to the "second Rome", or Tsargrad, was viewed not so much as a political center with imperial prospects, but as the guardian of true orthodoxy throughout the world – until the end of time. The eschatological character of the Old Russian worldview, by virtue of which everything earthly was considered from the point of view of its transience, led to the fact that the political side of the problem, i.e., the earthly, was pushed far into the background. We emphasize this point in view of the presence of other, unsubstantiated, interpretations of the idea of "Moscow is the Third Rome."

As a consequence of the idea of the "third Rome" [44], a special theory of the Orthodox tsar arose. The latter acts as a "righteous tsar", subject only to Divine justice, "truth", concerned about the preservation and maintenance of the Orthodox faith in all its forms and institutions, with its churches and monasteries. The tsar governs according to the will of God in the name of the salvation of souls, in the name of protecting his subjects from bodily and spiritual disturbances [45]. On the basis of these prerequisites, new rights of the tsar in the religious sphere were asserted. From the time of Ivan IV, the tsars viewed interference in church affairs as the fulfillment of their duty to preserve the purity and inviolability of the Orthodox Church. Neither the tsar nor the church hierarchy saw in this any "tyranny" on the part of the state power. The legal side of the matter was completely ignored. It never occurred to anyone to use individual cases of state interference as precedents for building a system of "Moscow state churchliness." Thus, for example, the fact that the tsar handed a staff to the newly ordained metropolitan, and later to the patriarch in the church, in no way signified investiture, i.e., it did not testify to the legal subordination of the Church to the tsar [46]. This was a symbol of the fact that in Muscovite Rus the state and the Church pursued a common goal. Since the absolute power of the tsar, limited only by the will of God and the responsibility of the tsar before God, was not enshrined in any law, there was no definition of royal rights in relation to the Church. Moscow did not know the norms of Roman law. More important, however, is that peculiar feature of Old Russian thinking, which left life itself to melt down the duties of the tsar in relation to the Church into norms of law [48]. Thus, the practice of the tsar nominating candidates for the episcopal and metropolitan sees, as well as the patriarchal throne, developed. The Moscow tsars, beginning with Ivan IV, who took an active part in the Council of the Hundred Chapters, began, following the example of the Byzantine emperors, to convene Local Councils of their own free will and to confirm their decisions [49]. When the correction of church books at the behest of Patriarch Nikon (1652-1667) led to a schism in the Old Believers, the state acted as a defender of orthodoxy in the struggle against the schismatics [50]. And the Old Believers, with their petition for the restoration of the "old faith," appealed precisely to the "Orthodox Tsar," and not to the Patriarch of Moscow [51].

The vagueness of legal norms, or, more precisely, the absence of such norms, led in the end to a tragic clash between Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Under the influence of the Epanagoge, which had just been translated in Moscow, which demanded a symphony of secular and spiritual powers, Nikon sought this symphony in Moscow and, not finding it, in the heat of polemics he even began to express claims to the priority of spiritual power [52]. The trial against Nikon (meeting of the Council of 1667) unfolded not in the form of a debate of the legal parties, but in the form of a purely personal conflict between the tsar and the patriarch, mired in partialities and intrigues [53]. The Tsar was victorious thanks to the diplomatic sophistication of the Eastern Patriarchs who were invited to Moscow and supported him [54]. Such an outcome could, of course, be regarded as the subordination of the Church to the state. But, assessing the matter on the merits, it is impossible not to notice that the state, which felt confident within the framework of the old traditional relations with the Church and the usual ideas about the rights of the tsars, refrained from officially formulating its position. The tsar entrusted this task to the Eastern Patriarchs, who had received in advance from Moscow very skillfully composed questions without any specific information about the essence of the conflict. The Reply (Tomos) of the patriarchs rested in part on the Epanagoge, although in its exaltation of royal power it went far beyond the theory of symphony. Thus, in the Reply (Chapter 13) it is said that the Patriarch has no right to interfere in state affairs and even to take any part in them at all, if the tsar does not wish it. Chapter 5 emphasizes the unlimited power of the tsar, but the vagueness of the wording leaves open the question to what extent it extends to the Church. Therefore, the official translation of the Answer into Russian appeared under the title: "Answers of the Four Ecumenical Patriarchs to 25 Questions Concerning the Unlimited Power of the Tsar and the Limited Power of the Patriarch" [56]. As is known, the most serious accusation brought against Nikon was the accusation of interference in the affairs of the state, allegedly committed by the patriarch. The same accusation played an important role later, for example, during the creation of the "Spiritual Regulations" by Theophan Prokopovich. In justifying the abolition of patriarchal authority, Theophan unequivocally referred to the case of Nikon. However, the latent goal of the boyars' intrigues against Nikon was not at all to obtain from the patriarchs a theoretical definition of the tsarist and patriarchal power in their relationship with each other. The decisive considerations were of a highly practical nature, proceeding from the class and economic interests of the boyars and service people in the tsar's entourage. It was about the question of increasing the patriarchal lands and the new privileges associated with it, which had been raised again under Nikon. Thus, here too one can notice an internal connection with Peter's later policy regarding church land ownership, a policy that was by no means something entirely new. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction to which these vast territories were subject was disadvantageous to the boyars, service people and Moscow officials, since the latter could not count on receiving estates here or on winning a potential litigation on certain local lands. In 1649, in the Code (Chapters 12, 13), the question of jurisdiction was resolved to the detriment of the Church [57]. After a number of vain attempts to protest against this decision, Nikon finally managed in 1657 to obtain from Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich confirmation of the right to his own administration and court in the patriarchal lands [58]. The development of Nikon's personal relations with the tsar turned out to be decisive: Nikon had such authority in the eyes of the tsar that the 23-year-old Alexei Mikhailovich himself begged him to take over the patriarchate, promising to follow his advice in everything. A little later, Nikon, like Patriarch Filaret, received the title of "great sovereign and patriarch" [59]. In the absence of the tsar during the war with the Poles and Swedes (1656-1657), Nikon, at the request of Alexei Mikhailovich, autocratically ruled the country on behalf of the sovereign. Upon his return, the tsar, not without the influence of the boyars, wished to free himself from Nikon's tutelage, but he behaved too uncompromisingly. In the summer of 1658, a rupture occurred between the tsar and the patriarch, which led to the trial of Nikon.

We have dwelt in some detail on this conflict between the two authorities for the reason that it was not least that it served as a pretext for Peter's church reform. At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, the clash between the tsar and the patriarch was still fresh in memory. Objecting to the accusations brought against him, Nikon put forward the doctrine of "two powers", which asserted the priority of the priesthood over the kingdom and destroyed the image of the "Orthodox tsar" with his duties and rights. In the event of Nikon's victory, clericalism would have triumphed in Russia. The tsar, for his part, although theoretically did not question the doctrine of Moscow as the "Third Rome", in practice ceased to be guided by it. The Church fell into actual subordination from the state, and this was already a step in the direction of Peter's reform. Peter feared the appearance of a second Nikon, which could jeopardize his plans for reforms in Russia. Peter also knew that under Patriarch Joachim (1674-1690) the Church regained part of the land it had lost under Nikon [60]. These were the very "swings" that Peter could not forget and which gave Nikon's case a very definite color in his eyes.

Summing up, it should be said that the relations between the state and church authorities in the 17th century developed in full accordance with the actual situation in the country and none of the numerous theories of the 15th-16th centuries had any significant influence on them. The power of the tsar connected with the people and the traditional (autochton) power of the patriarch created concrete prerequisites for a diarchy, which, on the condition of recognition of church authority in all spheres of public life, turned into a symphony. Without idealizing this symphony, it must nevertheless be admitted that before Peter introduced the state church, the Church had never degraded to the level of a state institution. In spite of all the conflicts between the two powers, the Church has always stood outside the state institutions. The interference of the state in church affairs and the subordination of the Church to the tsar's will in matters of government, which took place at certain moments, were never based on any legal norms that would regulate the relations between the state and the Church. The Church considered these cases as an inevitable consequence of the sinfulness of the world and man. It was all the easier for the Church to put up with this state of affairs because its ancient Christian eschatological worldview remained unshaken until the Petrine reform. Therefore, the Church did not attach primary importance to issues of state, public and social order, which in practice meant non-interference in state affairs and a passive reaction to the actions of the state in the church sphere. It was believed that it was more important not so much to improve the conditions of earthly life as to prepare for life in heaven. It can be asserted, and this will become clear from what follows, that the Russian Church did not lose her eschatological position even in the synodal period.

With such a worldview and such a perception of history, there was nothing to fear from any active resistance of the Church to state reforms. Nikon's idea of the priority of church power over secular power in the sense of practical leadership of earthly affairs on the part of the Church did not have the slightest chance of finding understanding among people of the Old Russian constitution with an eschatologically oriented consciousness. Nevertheless, Peter feared such a possibility, because he underestimated the eschatological-liturgical character of the Russian faith. Therefore, it seemed to him that it was not enough simply to benefit from the conservatism of this faith, he considered it necessary to point out to the Church its new foundation – on the basis of state legal norms.