The career of the Moscow patriarch Nikon has developed very rapidly. In a rather short period of time, the son of a peasant who had been tonsured a monk in the Solovetsky Islands became the abbot of a local monastery. Then, having made friends with Alexei Mikhailovich, the ruling king, he becomes the hegumen of the Moscow Novospassky monastery. After a two-year stay as Novgorod Metropolitan, he was elected the Moscow Patriarch.
His aspirations were aimed at turning the Russian church into a center of Orthodoxy for the whole world. The reforms of Patriarch Nikon primarily concerned the unification of rites and the establishment of the same church service in all churches. Nikon took the rites and rules of the Greek church as a model. Innovations were accompanied by massive discontent among the people. As a result, there was a church schism of the 17th century.
Opponents of Nikon - the Old Believers - did not want to accept the new rules, they called for a return to the rules adopted before the reform. Among the adherents of the former foundation, Protopop Avvakum was especially distinguished. The disagreements that led to the church schism of the 17th century lay in the debate about unifying official church books according to the Greek or Russian model. Also, they could not come to a consensus on whether to baptize with three or two fingers, on a sunny passage or to make a procession against him. But these are only external causes of the church schism. The main obstacle for Nikon was the intrigues of Orthodox hierarchs and boyars, who were worried that the changes would entail a decline among the population of the authority of the church, and therefore their authority and power. With passionate sermons, schismatic teachers carried along a considerable number of peasants. They fled to Siberia, the Urals, the North, and there they formed settlements of Old Believers. Ordinary people associated the deterioration of their lives with Nikon's transformations. Thus, the church schism of the 17th century became a peculiar form of popular protest.
Its most powerful wave swept in the years 1668-1676, when the Solovetsky Uprising took place . This monastery had thick walls and a large supply of food, which attracted opponents of reform. They flocked here from all over Russia. Razintsy hid here too. For eight years, 600 people stayed in the fortress. And yet there was a traitor who let the king's troops into the monastery through a secret hole. As a result, only 50 of the monastery’s defenders remained alive.
Protopope Avvakum and his associates were exiled to Pustozersk. There they spent 14 years in an earthen prison, and then were burned alive. Since then, the Old Believers began to subject themselves to self-immolation in disagreement with the reforms of the Antichrist, the new patriarch.
Nikon himself, through whose fault the 17th century church schism occurred, had an equally tragic fate. And all because he took too much on himself, allowed himself too much. Nikon finally received the coveted title of "great sovereign" and, declaring that he wanted to be the patriarch of all Russia, not Moscow, defiantly left the capital in 1658. Eight years later, in 1666, at a church council with the participation of the Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria, who also had all the powers of the patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople, they were removed from the post of Patriarch Nikon. He was sent to the Ferapontov monastery, near Vologda, in exile. Nikon returned from there after the death of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The former patriarch died in 1681 near Yaroslavl, and was buried in the city of Istra in the Voskresensky New Jerusalem Monastery, according to his plan, once built.
The religious crisis in the country, as well as the discontent of the people on other issues, demanded immediate changes corresponding to the challenge of the time. And the answer to these requirements was the transformation of Peter I in the early 18th century.