In the mid-seventeenth century Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow, introduced a number of reforms to bring the Russian Orthodox Church into ritualistic and liturgical conformity with the Greek Orthodox Church. However, Nikon‘s reforms met staunch resistance from a number of clergy, led by figures such as the archpriest Avvakum and Bishop Pavel of Kolomna, as well as large portions of the general Russian population. Nikon‘s critics rejected the reforms on two key principles: that conformity with the Greek Church corrupted Russian Orthodoxy‘s spiritual purity and negated Russia‘s historical and Christian destiny as the Third Rome – the final capital of all Christendom before the End Times. Developed in the early sixteenth century, what became the Third Rome Doctrine proclaimed that Muscovite Russia inherited the political and spiritual legacy of the Roman Empire as passed from Constantinople. In the mind of Nikon‘s critics, the Doctrine proclaimed that Constantinople fell in 1453 due to God‘s displeasure with the Greeks. Therefore, to Nikon‘s critics introducing Greek rituals and liturgical reform was to invite the same heresies that led to the Greeks‘ downfall. However, Tsar Alexei‘s support for Nikon‘s reforms in 1666 split the Russian Orthodox Church in the raskol, between those who supported the reforms, and those who rejected the reforms and identified themselves as staroobriadtsy, or Old Believers (more properly known as Old Ritualists). In the centuries since the raskol, Old Believers maintained their identity as not only defenders of pre-Nikonian Russian Orthodoxy, but also their understanding of Russia‘s historical destiny as the Third Rome.
This dissertation focuses on the importance of place (defined by geographic location, the construction of community buildings, architecture, the layout of community space, liturgical spaces, and economic foundations) and community (defined by a shared spiritual identity and goals of maintaining spiritual purity) to the Old Believer community of the Rogozhskoe Cemetery of Moscow from its founding in the 1770s until 1917. Founded by priestly (popovtsy) Old Believers (those who still accepted the sanctity and significance of priests in a corrupt world, unlike the priestless (bespopovtsy) branch), the Rogozhskoe community eventually became a major spiritual center for the priestly branch of the Old Rite throughout the Russian Empire.
Drawing primarily from a collection of archival material held in the Russian State Library and published documents and works by the Rogozhskoe Old Believers, I argue that Rogozhskoe Cemetery both became a physical and ideological representation of the community‘s attempt to create a Holy Moscow in their understanding of the Third Rome Doctrine. Furthermore, I argue that the Rogozhskoe Old Believers envisioned their Holy Moscow as a part of two worlds: a community devoted to their shared faith in the Old Rite and as a model Christian community within the Russian Empire. This study, then, argues that the Rogozhskoe Old Believers adapted their Holy Moscow to meet their need to maintain their faith and respond to the political, social, cultural, and economic changes in Imperial Russia from the second half of the eighteenth to early twentieth century.