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Ivan Neronov: A Priest Who Lost His Mind
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Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2008, 269–85. Ivan Neronov: A Priest Who Lost His Mind? Georg Michels On January 31, 1632, Patriarch Filaret, the ruler of the Russian Orthodox Church, gave orders to arrest Ivan Neronov, parish priest of the Resurrection Church in Nizhnii Novgorod on the Volga River. Now accused of having “lost his mind and … not [being] in complete control of his thinking” (v istu-‐‑ plenii uma byst’… i ne v sovershennom razume), Neronov had previously en-‐‑ joyed the enthusiastic support of the patriarch; in fact, he had been one of Pa-‐‑ triarch Filaret’s protégés since the early 1620s. Filaret had ordained Neronov and then assigned him to important parish positions in the patriarchal epar-‐‑ chy.1 Filaret had also invited Neronov to the Kremlin and introduced him to Tsar Mikhail Romanov (who was Filaret’s son), as well as to Muscovy’s most powerful boyars. For nearly ten years, Filaret had sung Neronov’s praises for teaching peasants the religious and moral principals of Russian Orthodoxy, and had endorsed him in all his endeavors. Why, then, did the patriarch sud-‐‑ denly withdraw his support in 1632 and declare Neronov insane?2 This episode was only one in a series of confrontations between Neronov and Muscovy’s upper clergy that continued for more than 50 years of Nero-‐‑ nov’s long life and led to his repeated arrest and exile. Only in 1667, when Neronov was raised to the rank of archimandrite at the age of 73, did he finally make his peace with the church hierarchy. As I will demonstrate, Neronov was supported by Patriarch Filaret—and later patriarchs—because they wanted him to spread the basic tenets of Russian Orthodoxy to ordinary Muscovites. But Neronov’s preaching turned in other directions with explo-‐‑ 1 The towns of Lyskovo and Nizhnii Novgorod, where Neronov acted as parish priest, figured prominently among the 55 towns that belonged to the patriarchal see under Filaret. The village of Sobolevo (also known as Nikol’skoe Sobolevo) was located near Iurevets, another important patriarchal town, and most likely was also under direct patriarchal jurisdiction. Cf. Ivan I. Shimko, Patriarshii kazennyi prikaz: Ego vneshniaia istoriia i deiatel’nost’ (Moscow: Tipo-‐‑litografiia T-‐‑va I. N. Kushnerev i Ko., 1894), 113, 115, 117, 119–21; Pavel F. Nikolaevskii, Patriarshaia oblast’ i russkie eparkhii v XVII v. (St. Petersburg: Tip. F. Eleonskogo, 1888), 3–6, 17, 22–23. 2 Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi imperii Arkheograficheskoiu ekspeditsi-‐‑ eiu Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, 4 vols. (St. Petersburg: V Tip. 2. otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E. I. V. Kantseliarii, 1836) (hereafter AAE), 3: 284–85. 270 GEORG MICHELS sive consequences, and his behavior could be neither controlled nor predicted by the church. When Neronov first came to the attention of Patriarch Filaret in the early 1620s, his actions seemed to conform entirely to Filaret’s own stated ideals of religious reform and discipline.3 As a psalmist (psalmopevets) and church reader in the village of Sobolevo near Iurevets on the Volga River, Neronov was then engaged in a vicious conflict with the parish priest and with a num-‐‑ ber of other unofficial priests who had found shelter in the village after be-‐‑ coming widowed, losing episcopal ordination charters, or suffering expulsion from their home parishes.4 These unemployed priests were not much inter-‐‑ ested in performing the liturgy, and spent their time quarreling with each other and with the parish priest over the spoils of the parish. Since they had little to do, they were often drunk and got involved in all kinds of “illegal acts” (bezzakonnye deianiia) and “unruly behavior” (bezchinstvo). When Ne-‐‑ ronov accused these priests of “not living according to their calling” and of neglecting their divine duties, all hell broke lose and Neronov narrowly es-‐‑ caped a mob attack.5 Neronov fled the village to seek refuge at the Trinity Monastery, where his religious fervor brought him to the attention of the reform-‐‑oriented Archi-‐‑ mandrite Dionisii, one of Patriarch Filaret’s closest associates.6 At Dionisii’s 3 Cf. “Pouchenie velikogo gospodina sviateishego Filareta patriarkha Moskovskogo i vseia Rusi, na postavlenie mitropolitom, i arkhiepiskom, i episkopom,” in Filaret Gumilevskii, Obzor russkoi dukhovnoi literatury (St. Petersburg: Izd. knigoprodavtsa I. L. Tuzova, 1884), no. 220; “Pouchenie na postavleniia arkhimandritam, igumenam, i svia-‐‑ shchennikam,” in Archimandrite...
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