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now in Moscow, not indeed as regards the last twoi forthe first time, but extended and pushed to extremes.Moscow had recently known one patriarch, Philaret,who had virtually acted as tsar (1619-33), but that was anovel exception due to the fact that he was the father ofthe weak and inexperienced tsar Michael, while himselffor long only too deeply versed in affairs of state.Philaret's position had caused much dissatisfaction, andhis two successors made no attempt to continue therole of 'Lord Sovereign.' Not so Nikon, who becamepatriarch in 1652.He was overweening and highly autocratic, and by hisreform measures, to be described in the following section,he aroused further antagonism from one section of theclergy. Thus he could rely only on his personal ascendancyover tsar Alexis for the paramount position inboth state and church which for some years he occupied.This was not a secure basis upon which the predominanceof the patriarchate could be built. The tsar finallybecame alienated from Nikon, and after a long andinvolved struggle he was condemned and deposed by achurch council, attended by two of the Eastern patriarchs(1666). The same council pronounced that the tsar hadindependent authority in state, the patriarch in churchaffairs, and that neither should interfere with the other.Within less than forty years of this hopeful version ofJustinian's sixth novella there was no patriarch at all,and a tsar who made a public mockery of the patriarchaloffice and stigmatized monks as' parasites' and' gangrene.'5. The Schism and its Consequences •Though Nikon as the overmighty patriarch fell, Nikonas the reformer succeeded, and in so doing he unwittinglychanged profoundly the course of Russian religious andchurch history. The reforms were concerned solely withliturgy and ritual, involving the correction of the textsof the Bible and the service books and of various pointsof ritual in accordance (at least professedly) with the bestGreek manuscripts and Greek practice. The reformswere denounced as Greek innovations by their opponents,189