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The Apostolic SuccessionfromThe Russian Orthodox Church
( 
 Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov)
The Episcopate of Aftimios OfiescArchbishop of Brooklyn, N.Y., USA
Edition Eucharist and Devotion© 1993 – 2009 + Ph. L. De Coster
 
Latin Old Roman Catholic Church of Flanders (Belgium) – Independent Apostolic Community© 2006 – 2009 Archbishop Philippe Laurent De Coster, B.Th., D.D.
2
Introduction
In the ninth century the
 Rus
(or
Varangians
) became masters of what is now westernRussia and the indigenous Slavic population. Their chief centres of population wereNovgorod, in the north, and Kiev, in the south (now part of the Ukraine). This rulingminority of mostly Swedish Vikings soon adopted the Slavonic tongue and customs of their subjects.Tradition credits
Saint Andrew The First-Called
with planting the seeds of Christianityin the area about Kiev. These seeds were nurtured by the ministry of 
Saints Cyril &Methodius
, now known as the Apostles of the Slaves, in The Ukraine beginning in AD864, using the native language. They invented a Slavic alphabet (based upon the Greek),which is still used today. The north shore of The Black Sea had been settled by Christiansat least as early as the fourth century. The Khazars, rulers of what is now southern Russia,had adopted Judaism. However, the missionary efforts supported by Patriarch Photius of Constantinople to the Khazars was so successful that they soon asked for a Bishop of theirown. Just a few years later Emperor Basil I (
"The Macedonian"
) and Patriarch Ignatiuscommissioned a missionary Bishop to the Russians, who made many converts.The first known Christian ruler over the Kievan State is
Saint Olga
 
(Olha)
, dowagerregent, who received Christian baptism in AD 950. Although she sent to Emperor Otto I of Germany for missionaries, they seemed to have had no marked success. It is
SaintVladimir
 
(Volodymyr The Great),
the grandson of St. Olga, who accepted baptism himself about AD 986 and then in AD 988 commanded the Christianization of his entire State,who is recognized as having initiated the
conversion
of Russia. Although St. Vladimirreceived delegates from The Pope and sent representatives to Rome, it was The Church of Constantinople which won his support. At the time of his death, in AD 1015, there werethree bishoprics in his domains; based upon the foundations laid by St. Vladimir,Christianity continued its gradual, steady spread throughout Russia. The Metropolitan of Kiev, for centuries the administrative head of The Russian Church, was appointed by thePatriarch of Constantinople; he was usually a Greek, unfamiliar with The Faithful of Russia. The clergy were poorly trained and almost always too few for the size of thecountry. The priests were chosen by their parishioners, while the bishops (a substantialminority of whom were also foreigners with little understanding of the customs orlanguage of their flocks) were selected by the local princes.The establishment of an independent Russian Church coincided with the decline of TheByzantine Empire, and the simultaneous rise of The Russian Empire. This process washelped when Kiev was destroyed during the Tartar invasion, and the Metropolitanconsequently forced to move to Moscow (AD 1320). After the Grand Duke of Moscow(Ivan III) married a daughter of the nearest relative of the last Emperor of Constantinople,he claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Emperors. He even adopted thedouble-headed eagle, symbol of Imperial Byzantine power. Later, beginning in AD 1547,
 
Latin Old Roman Catholic Church of Flanders (Belgium) – Independent Apostolic Community© 2006 – 2009 Archbishop Philippe Laurent De Coster, B.Th., D.D.
3
the princes of the Russian State, as successors of the Byzantine Emperors, began callingthemselves
Czar 
(
i.e.
, "Caesar"). It was only natural that they would seek the prestige of aself-governing independent Church in order to bolster their own temporal claims.Although the Russian Church claimed autocephaly from AD 1448, when the RussianBishops began electing their own Primate (the Metropolitan of Moscow), officialrecognition of this independence by the ancient and historic patriarchates was not secureduntil AD 1590 (one year after Jeremiah II, Patriarch of Constantinople, was persuaded toinvest Iob, the 46th Metropolitan of Moscow, as the first Russian Patriarch -- although Iobhad been promoted to the rank of Patriarch by the Russian Bishops in AD 1453) at ameeting in Constantinople of all the Patriarchs of the historic Sees. When Constantinoplefell to the Moslems on 29 May 1453, Russia became the only nation where the freedom of The Orthodox Church remained unrestricted; this favorably influenced their claim for anindependent Patriarchate.The
Time of Troubles
(civil war) which began in AD 1598 upon the death of Czar Fedor(Theodore), the childless son of Ivan IV, increased the Patriarch's political influence. Itreached its height under Patriarch Filaret, whose son, Michael, at the age of sixteen,became the first Czar of the Romanov Dynasty. When Patriarch Adrian died in AD 1700,Czar Peter The Great refused to allow the election of a new Patriarch, leaving StefanIavorskii as
 Locum Tenens
for 21 years. In AD 1721 Czar Peter finally promulgated a newconstitution for The Church, which suspended the office of Patriarch and placed thegovernance of The Church under an
 Holy Synod.
 Copying the example of Henry VIII of England, the government-imposed new Churchconstitution made The Czar the Head of The Church of Russia. It went further than KingHenry, however, by providing for a Lay Procurator (a government official) to administerThe Church's day-to-day affairs. This "constitutional" subjugation of The Church to theRussian State established the precedent of direct governmental control over andinterference in all the affairs of The Russian Orthodox Church -- a practice continued untilthe end of the 20
th
century by the atheistical government of the U.S.S.R.After the overthrow of Czar Nikolai II in March of AD 1917, The Russian OrthodoxChurch immediately convened a national
Sobor 
to reform The Church and revive thePatriarchate of Moscow, which Czar Peter The Great had suspended. Metropolitan Tikhon,who had earlier been Russian Archbishop in America, won the election and assumed theoffice of Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia in November of that year, almostsimultaneously with the outbreak of the Communist Revolution. This All-Russian Council
(Sobor)
attempted to restore
sobornost 
-- the active participation of the whole Church(bishops, clergy, and laity) in every aspect of the Church's life, in contrast to thebureaucratic centralization which had ruled The Church under the secular and often hostilegovernment of Russia since the creation of 
The Holy Synod 
by Czar Peter The Great.The new reäctionary Communist government of Russia immediately placed severerestrictions upon the revitalized and reforming Church of Russia. In view of the vigorousanti-religion activities of the new Russian government, Patriarch Tikhon issued a
of 00

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