"I don't care if I hear your confession," Trubetskoy snapped, "it's none of my business!" He hurried to the palace, but soon returned. By the tsar's decree, Prince Alexei Nikitich ordered the cathedral gates to be opened and returned his letter to Nikon.

"The great Emperor has told you," Trubetskoy announced, "that you should not leave the patriarchate and remain as before. And there are many cells in the Patriarchal courtyard, in which you want to live!

"I will not change my word," replied Nikon, offended by such indifference of the Tsar, "I have long had a promise that I will not be Patriarch!" And he went out of the cathedral church.

Opposition

The world did not recognize Nikon, and he decided to renounce the world, secluding himself in the Resurrection Monastery. When soon a royal envoy, the same Prince Trubetskoy, came to him from Moscow, he saw Nikon in coarse rags and iron chains, mortifying his flesh by abstinence, fasting, prayer and great labors. "I was afraid," Nikon explained his departure from Moscow, "lest I, a sick man, die among the patriarchs; and henceforth I do not want to be a patriarch — if I want to be a patriarch, let me be cursed and anathematized!" Nikon ordered another patriarch to be chosen in his place, and in the meantime he blessed Metropolitan Pitirim of Krutitsa to be in charge of the church.

Nikon began to work according to the monastic custom: he himself carried bricks on his shoulders for the construction of a great church in New Jerusalem, began to dig ponds around the monastery and breed fish in them, also to build mills, vegetable gardens and gardens, to cut down forests and clear fields for arable land, to dig ditches in the swamps for the arrangement of hayfields in drained places, to work with a scythe and rake. sweep hay into stacks. In all his works, Nikon set an example for the monks, being the first to get up and the last to proceed from his labors.

Nikon's humility bore not only spiritual fruits. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, seeing him not claiming power and being touched by his ascetic labors, agreed to leave Nikon his possessions: the Resurrection, Iveron and Cross monasteries with all the attached monasteries, deserts, churches, lands and industries, where more than six thousand peasants worked at that time. In order to have enough income for the construction of the temple in New Jerusalem, the autocrat refused to collect state taxes and tributes from them. He himself now and then sent alms to Nikon in the amount of one thousand and two rubles, granted the brethren food from his table, and made deductions from the Kama salt pans in favor of the New Jerusalem Church.

About a year after leaving the throne, Nikon recalled, the tsar sent a messenger to warn him about the Tatar raid and asked him to take refuge in the Makariev Kalyazin Monastery, which had strong walls. Knowing the temper of the Quietest, the disgraced patriarch suspected a trap and replied sharply: "Rather than go to Kalyazin, it is better for me to be in the Conception Monastery, which is in the corner of Kitay-Gorod!"

- About which His Holiness the Patriarch of the Zachateya Monastery says that it is better than the Kalyazin Monastery? asked the king's envoy.

"The one," Nikon answered, "is on the Barbarian Sacrum under the mountain at the Conception.

"Well, it's a prison, not a monastery," the messenger objected.

"So tell the great sovereign," said Nikon, "that I am going to the Conception Monastery to report on my needs.

Hastily arriving at Moscow, he stopped at the Iberian metochion and informed the tsar that he wished to talk with him, give his blessing and go back as soon as the Tatar danger ended. Then the tsar and the boyars were frightened, began to hold a council among themselves, and on the first day Nikon was not allowed into the palace. On the second day, after consulting, they sent the Duma clerk Almaz Ivanov to the Patriarch to ask what he wanted to talk about with the Emperor. Nikon refused to answer the clerk and did not give his blessing to the tsar in absentia; He was very anxious and did not eat anything until the evening of the third day, when, after stormy disputes in the palace, he was nevertheless invited to the Emperor.

Accompanied by crowds of people rejoicing over the return of the archpastor and the retreat of the Crimean Tatars, Nikon marched into the palace. The Tsar met him on the front porch and escorted him to the chamber, where they talked about the sovereign's family, military affairs and soul-saving things, as before. Then Nikon went to the Tsarina and the children of Alexei Mikhailovich, lingering on the women's side until four in the morning in prayers. Not a single word was said about his return. Refusing to come to the morning feast in the palace, Nikon left the capital at dawn, where he imagined conspiracies at every step.