“What was, is what will be, and what has been done, will be done, and there is nothing new under the Sun” - these words of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes are the best fit to the eschatological expectations of Christians. In almost every era, especially during socio-political cataclysms, Russian believers were afraid of the end of the world and expected the arrival of the Antichrist.
Even the Apostle John the Theologian, in his conciliar epistle, warned that “the Antichrist would come”, and the fear of this event left an imprint on the entire medieval Christian culture. Soon after the baptism of Russia, many were waiting for the end of the world - in 999 and 1000 years from the birth of Christ. The image of the Antichrist as a successful enemy and persecutor of Christians became especially popular after the failure of the Crusades. It was believed that it was from the Holy Land that the news of the appearance of the "son of perdition" predicted by the Apostle Paul would come.
Babies with "horns"
In Kievan Rus, many works were known describing the future end of the world, for example, "The Word about Christ and the Antichrist" by Hippolytus of Rome. In addition to the books approved by the church, the Apocrypha were also read. Their influence can be found, for example, in The Walk of Abbot Daniel (XII century), where it is said that the Antichrist must be born in Capernaum, a city that rejected Christ. Spread in the Russian lands and frankly fantastic legends about the "birth of the Antichrist."
These stories were most likely brought to Russia from outside, from the west. However, the fear of the Antichrist became firmly established, becoming "Russia's constant companion." They talked about children who, immediately after birth, began to speak, died and were resurrected, and also performed other miracles. This folklore motif is probably based on the real facts of the birth of freaks. For example, in the Tale of Bygone Years under the year 1065, it is said about a child found in the Setoml River near Kiev with “shameful parts” on his face.
Black Angels
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The surge in expectations of the Antichrist took place around 1492 - when it was 7 thousand years from the creation of the world. The fact of the surrender of Constantinople to the Muslims convinced the Russian Orthodox people that life on earth should soon end.
However, folk eschatology experienced a real flourishing in the 17th century. In 1648 the Book of Faith was published in Moscow. Its author, Kiev hegumen Nathanael, considered the Pope the Antichrist, and waited for the end of the world in 1666. Thus, at the time of the church schism provoked by the reform of Patriarch Nikon, the degree of apocalyptic expectations in society was already very high. The Old Believers considered Nikon himself the Antichrist. The advocates of double-fingeredness told about their visions, in which Nikon was accompanied by "black angels", and at night the patriarch allegedly discussed with Satan how to destroy Holy Russia. The very name Nikon (Nikitios in Greek) the elder Joachim, in accordance with the rules of isopsephia, raised to the “number of the beast” - 666.
Around 1666, when the Great Moscow Council was held, which condemned the schismatics, a wave of collective self-immolations swept across the country. The extreme sect of "Kapitonovites" was ready to see the Antichrist in literally everyone - a tsarist official or a foreigner who stopped by in the village could pass for the "son of destruction". The image of the Antichrist reached the extreme degree of "depersonization" in the sect of runners - Old Believers-bespopovtsy, who took refuge in the forests near Yaroslavl and in Siberia. They considered the very institution of state power with its laws and censuses of taxable souls to be the "Spiritual Antichrist". The only way to remain Christians, in their opinion, was to exist in an underground position, without fulfilling civil obligations.
Along with this, in the era of schism, the "fantastic" line of ideas about the Antichrist developed. Protopope Avvakum, for example, described the "Antichrist, a rabid dog" as follows: "His flesh is all stench and very bad, he breathes fire from his mouth, and a stinking flame emanates from his nostrils and ears." The fairytale motif can be traced in the "Legend of the Antichrist", which was common among the schismatics of the village of Pinyuzhansky: "The Antichrist will come soon. He has already been born - born from the royal family. Sits in a stone mountain, behind 12 iron doors, behind 12 iron locks. Hunger torments him, he has nothing to drink there - so he gnaws those doors with locks. Seven doors gnawed through, there are only five left.
Kings of the apocalypse
Of the Russian tsars, the schismatics most stubbornly considered Peter I the Antichrist, under whom the persecution of the Old Believers intensified. Sectarians claimed that the Russian tsar allegedly received a blessing from the pope. In addition, their books provided calculations based on Bible prophecy. According to them, it turned out that seven tsars were to be replaced on the Moscow throne, and the eighth - Peter the Great - was supposedly the king of the apocalypse.
Another group of schismatics added another 33 years of the earthly life of Jesus Christ to the sacred date “1666”. Just in 1699, Tsar Peter, returning from a European trip, began his transformations, which shook the foundations of Moscow piety. These events alarmed not only the Old Believers. In 1700, the Preobrazhensky order received a denunciation of the book writer Grigory Talitsky. Under torture, he confessed that he had drawn up a letter in which he identified the Russian sovereign with the Antichrist. Talitsky believed that paying tribute to Peter was a sin. He urged the Orthodox people to find a new king named Michael in order to overthrow Peter. After the execution of Talitsky, the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Stephen, was even forced to compile a book about the Antichrist in order to convince the people that his coming had not yet taken place. However, not everyone was convinced. Superstitious people identified Peter's mother, Natalia Naryshkina, with a harlot who was supposed to give birth to the Antichrist. And they explained the convulsive seizures characteristic of Peter by the fact that "an unclean spirit breaks him." In the illustrated "Apocalypses" of the early 18th century, the Antichrist was often depicted as resembling Peter the Great. A new wave of eschatological fears arose at the beginning of the 19th century. She was associated with the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1806, the Russian Holy Synod, - published the "Announcement", drawn up with the participation of a preacher close to the tsar Platon Levshin. The document was read to the people in churches after the liturgy on weekends. It was said about Napoleon that he “thought to unite the Jews, scattered all over the face of the earth by the wrath of God, and arrange them to overthrow the Church of Christ and (oh, terrible insolence, surpassing the measure of all atrocities!) to the proclamation of the False Messiah in the person of Napoleon."
The French emperor was not "officially" called the Antichrist, but many believers read it between the lines. It is noteworthy that the Old Believers shared this view with the “Nikonians”. A notable monument of schismatic "eschatology" is the manuscript "The Legend of Napoleon the Antichrist", supposedly written after 1815. Its author predicted the restoration of Byzantium by the Russian tsars Constantine and Michael, the return of Napoleon to the throne and his subsequent struggle with the "Constantinople state".
It is no wonder that in the 20th century the image of the Antichrist, which had so many "hypostases", once again became a pretext for political speculation in Russia. On the one hand, the Russian autocracy was declared the "antichrist power", on the other, the revolutionary forces opposing it. The Old Believers also did not betray their traditions, who consistently declared Lenin, Stalin and even Gorbachev the Antichrist.
Magazine: Mysteries of History №21. Author: Anton Tambovtsev