The Russian Church — Nikon to the Holy Synod

Patriarch Nikon, elected in 1652, set out to correct Russian service books against Greek models and to assert the priesthood's authority over the tsar's. And lost both fights: the corrections split the church permanently, and Nikon himself was deposed by the council of 1666-67 that condemned his opponents. Half a century later Peter the Great settled the second argument the other way. When the patriarch died in 1700 Peter simply left the office empty, and in 1721 he abolished it, replacing it with a Holy Synod of clergy, watched over by a lay official the tsar appointed. The church became, in effect, a department of the imperial government and stayed one for two hundred years. Catherine II completed the process in 1764 by confiscating the monastic estates. Yet the same church produced Tikhon of Zadonsk's gentle devotional writing, a serious seminary system, and in 1794 sent monks from Valaam across the Pacific to Alaska.