In the summer of 1668, a detachment of archers, 125 people, was under the walls of the Solovetsky Monastery. They looked confused: it seemed that the archers themselves did not understand why they were ordered to come here. Among the inhabitants of Solovki and the brothers, the appearance of a small military detachment also caused bewilderment. Thus began a unique event in world history when the Orthodox army besieged an Orthodox monastery. The siege lasted eight years and entered the Russian chronicles under the name of the Solovetsky standing.
Monastery-fortress
Those who arrived on the island had no thought of a siege, if only because the garrison of the fortress was seven times the number of the streltsy army. Of the more than seven hundred defenders of the monastery, half were monks, but not simple ones, but trained in military affairs and sometimes even more skillful than the Pomor and Arkhangelsk archers. “Elder Hilarion the gunner, a sailor, at the copper shot cannon, and with him on the turn of worldly people - 6 mercenaries,” - this was the composition of one of the detachments of the garrison.
The monastery was one of Russia's outposts in the north. The walls at the base were 5-7 meters thick, 8-11 meters high, and a little over a kilometer long. The arsenal of the holy fathers contained 90 cannons, 900 pounds of gunpowder and large supplies of hand firearms.
Why a siege?
It all began in 1653, as a result of the church reform that Patriarch Nikon had started unexpectedly in Lent. Along with the pilgrims, a rumor reached the monastery brethren that in Moscow churches they began to be baptized not with two, but with three fingers. And in 1657, innovations affected the monastery itself: new service books came from the patriarch. But the monks, already aware of the reform and personally knowing Nikon himself, locked the heretical books under lock and key, without reading.
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Nikon vs. Solovki
Disagreements between Nikon and the brothers of the Solovetsky Monastery began long before his patriarchate. Back in 1639 he was expelled from here. And ten years later, when he became Metropolitan of Novgorod and Velikie Luki, he began to oppress in every possible way the Solovetsky monks who were in his subordination. He came to the point of outright robbery: not only did he "borrow" several books from the monastery's library, paying only for one, and appropriated a gold cufflink with a yacht and an emerald donated by Simeon Bekbulatovich to the monastery, he also took the remains of Metropolitan Philip to Moscow.
Archimandrite Nikanor
The main ideologist of the uprising was the elder Nikanor, who was popular among the monks. The Tsar's conflict with the Solovetsky Monastery is also associated with his personality. It so happened that it was in 1653, when the first signs of church schism appeared, that the abbot of the monastery died and the brethren chose Nikanor as the new abbots. However, in Moscow this decision was not approved, but imposed on the monastery of Abbot Bartholomew. His relationship with the monks is evidenced by the fact that the latter wrote denunciations to the tsar, and in 1666 raised a mutiny against him. Nikanor, in 1653, was appointed archimandrite of the Zvenigorod monastery and became the confessor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich himself. But here he served only seven years, and in 1660, due to the fact that he did not hide his sharp rejection of the church reform, he was returned to Solovki. During the riot of 1666, Bartholomew was deposed,and Nikanor was elected to his place.
Correspondence of the Solovetsky Monastery with Alexei Mikhailovich
The tension between the king and the brethren grew gradually. He can be judged by the intonations contained in the correspondence of the parties. “We pray for the king and his family, we are ready to lay down our souls for their royal majesty,” the monks assure the king after the uprising of 1666. The only thing they ask for is to allow them not to leave the “traditions of the holy fathers”. And a year later, in September 1667, they no longer hesitate to give the tsar an ultimatum: “If you, our great sovereign, the anointed of God, are not in the old faith handed down to us in the old faith, and you will change your books, mercy We ask you, sir: have mercy on us, do not lead us, sir, send more teachers to us in vain, we will by no means change our former Orthodox faith, and lead us, sir,Send your king's sword to us and from this rebellious life move us into a serene and eternal life! " The tsar's response in February 1668 was even more categorical: he called Nikanor's supporters schismatics and ordered "the conciliar and ordinary elders who are not disgusted with the holy catholic and apostolic church and we, the great sovereign, are obedient" to immediately leave the islands.
From words to deeds
The tsar passed from words to deeds: he sent investigators to clarify the situation in the monastery, tried to exhort the schismatics, declared an economic blockade on Solovki and seized all their possessions in favor of the treasury. It is possible that, in addition to the desire to pacify the monks, he was also guided by the desire to seize the income of the monastery.
The siege that had been smoldering for eight years, like the events that preceded it, happened as if by itself, against the will of the people: in the summer the archers arrived under the walls of the fortress, tried to reason with the monks, and by winter they returned to the mainland. For 8 years, three governors were replaced: the first, Volokhov, shared power and fought with the hegumen Joseph appointed by Moscow. The second, Ievlev, who brought 500 Cossacks with him, killed the cattle, broke fishing tackle, burned the buildings around the monastery, and then ordered his subordinates to dig fortifications. The defenders of the fortress covered them with dense fire, and the frightened archers and Cossacks complained to the king about the governor. Ievlev resigned, and the steward Ivan Mescherinov was appointed to his place.
Bloody denouement
During the years of the siege, about 200 people left the monastery for various reasons. Many considered armed struggle unacceptable. But fugitive peasants, archers and Cossacks flocked to the fortress. Despite the tsarist ban, the Pomors supplied food to the monastery. In 1674, the brethren decided not to pray for the Tsar-Herod. Archimandrite Nikanor walked with a censer between the cannons, sprinkled them with holy water and said: "Mother galanochki, we have hope for you."
A sluggish struggle with the monastery and countless clashes between schismatics and Nikonians, mass self-immolations, brutal reprisals of opponents with each other forced the tsar to show political will.
In December 1674, he ordered Mescherinov, on pain of death, not to leave the island and add zeal in the fight against the rioters. And in June he repeated the threat: "Will you soon not go to the Solovetsky Monastery on the island and learn to repair the craft carelessly, and you, Ivan, should be sentenced to death for that."
And Mescherinov approached the task with zeal. The fugitive from the monastery, the monk Theoktist, pointed out a weak spot in the defensive fortifications. At first they did not believe him, but then, for lack of other means of struggle, they decided to take his advice. On a snowy night on February 1, the fortress was taken. Then the court was repaired. The leader of the rioters, Samko Vasilyev, was executed, Nikanor was left to freeze, and 26 more people were killed. Later, an unenviable fate befell the rest. Of the five hundred defenders of the fortress, only 14 survived. A week after the suppression of the uprising, Aleksey Mikhailovich also died.