Missionary activity of the Russian church during the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Russia

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Missionary activity of the Russian church during the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Russia

Shabelnikov I.V., Bachelor's student, Belgorod State National Research University

Abstract

The article analyzes the missionary activity of the Russian Church during the Mongol-Tatar conquests of Russia, its history and existence during this period.

Keywords: metropolitan, clerics, Mongol-Tatar conquests, missionary activity, parishioners, Catholics, Russification.

Introduction

Russian scribes of the 13th- 14th centuries - and these are almost exclusively clerics - transferred the concept of supreme secular power to the Golden Horde Khan. They called him by the title "tsar", which until then in Russia was called only the Byzantine emperor. For its part, the Golden Horde was interested in such an ideological provision of its rule over Russia.

In 1240, Batu's army ravaged Kiev - and Russia entered the era of the Tatar- Mongol yoke. The main reason for the disaster that befell the Russian people was undoubtedly the constant fratricidal enmity between the isolated principalities. By the beginning of the XIII century, only the Church united the Russian lands. However, even in these circumstances, the princes did not want to forget their quarrels and join forces in the fight against a common enemy. The other main reason for this indulgence of God was the sin of paganism, which had not been outlived by that time. Having received a great gift - the Orthodox faith and culture, the people began to assimilate it and gradually increase it. Full-blooded church life for two and a half centuries took root in the cities and gradually penetrated into the villages, but paganism retreated slowly. In Russia, a double faith arose, and in some places idols continued to be worshipped.

In 1257, having ordered to make the first census of the population of his Russian ulus, Khan Berke freed the Russian Church from it. The lands of the episcopal cathedrals and monasteries received immunity from paying tribute. In 1267, this was confirmed by the new khan Mengu-Timur in a letter of governance of the Russian Church, issued by him to Metropolitan Kirill III. Such letters - labels - were given by the khans not only to princes, but also to metropolitans. Thus, the status of the metropolitan became even higher than the status of the Grand Duke, since there could be two or more grand dukes in Russia at the same time, while the metropolitan was only one.

Organization of missionary work

The Mongol-Tatar conquests opened up vast territories for the Russian Church to acquire new parishioners - up to the mountains Central Asia and the borders of China. It was the monks who were the main agents of new processes in spiritual, cultural and civic life: the "domestication" of wild tribes took place, turning them into settled villagers. The skete became the center around which the settlement (village) grew. If the village grew quickly, a city appeared. At the same time, as a rule, the areas where the Tatar garrisons stood, the organizers of the monasteries avoided and went further - to the east, to the north. As a result, the whole of Russia was covered with a network of monasteries. At the same time, in the vastness of the Mongolian khanates many Christians have already lived - from the Nestorian church, declared heretical by the Orthodox in the 5th century. The missionaries of the Russian Church in the Horde were primarily directed at them.

In 1261, Berke allowed Kirill III to found a new diocese in Sarai is the capital of the Golden Horde. The bishops of Sarai were subordinated to the Orthodox of the Golden Horde, they were allowed to conduct missionary activities throughout its territory.

At this time, some Tatar nobles and representatives of the khan's family accepted Orthodoxy. The famous Nevruy, an ally, was baptized Alexander Nevsky, the leader of the punitive campaign against Russia in 1252.

The Chronicle calls him Alexa Nevry. There is a legend about a Tatar prince who was baptized under the name Peter near Rostov the Great in 1267.

From Tatar nobles who were baptized in the second half of the 13th - early 14^th centuries, the famous noble families subsequently took place in Russia Beklemishev, Meshchersky, Godunov, Saburov. Some Russian princes (Gleb Vasilkovich, Feodor Rostislavich, etc.) married Tatar princesses, who at the same time accepted Orthodoxy.

Limitations of missionary activity

Since 1320, when Islam finally became the state religion in the Golden Horde, the missionary activity of the Russian Church there has been limited. She was forbidden to convert Muslims to Orthodoxy. At the same time, it continued to operate among the numerous other Christian communities in the Horde and among pagans. Understanding the reasons why the Russian Church was sympathetic to the Khan's rule will be incomplete if we do not take into account the difficult situation that has developed in world Orthodoxy after the Fourth Crusade. In 1204, the Western Crusaders occupied Constantinople. Catholics began to be supplied to the department of the Ecumenical Patriarch. The Orthodox Patriarchate retired to Nicaea. The period of forced exile of the center of Orthodoxy lasted until 1265.

It was at this time that the Mongol invasion took place.

The Catholic Church has strengthened its claims on the Russian flock. The Vatican tried in every possible way to use the Mongol conquests to its advantage.

On the one hand, thanks to the religious tolerance of the Khans, wide spaces for missionary activity also opened up for him. With another on the other hand, he began to incite the Russian princes to revolt against the Golden Hordes, promising the help of Western European sovereigns in exchange for the adoption of the Russian Catholic creed.

With the first goal - to establish the propaganda of Catholicism in the expanses of the Mongol Empire - already in 1246 in Karakorum to the great Khan.

The papal legate Giovanni Plano Carpini arrived in Guyuk in 1253-1254. The Mongolian state was visited by the ambassador of King Louis IX of France Guillaume de Rubruk. For the second purpose, the Papal see incited speeches against the Mongols of the Galician Prince Daniil Yaroslavich. In 1248, Pope Innocent IV sent two letters to another Russian prince, the famous Alexander Nevsky, in which he encouraged him to convert to Catholicism, promising for this the help of the Teutonic Order against the Golden Horde. The chronicles also preserved the certificate of arrival in Novgorod to Alexander papal legates.

Conclusion

Thus, at that time the Russian Church had to contend with the increasing influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia and in world Christianity in general. And she found the means for this in establishing friendly relations with the strongest empire in Eurasia at that time.

And we can say that this round of struggle was won by Orthodoxy from Catholicism thanks to the support of the Golden Horde. Although Orthodoxy, in turn, lost to Islam there, but Catholicism was not allowed to go deep Eurasia. The influence of Catholicism on the Horde lands was limited only to the Black Sea (Surozh, Kafa, Tana) with a predominantly Italian population. A monument to the successful missionary work of the Russian Orthodox Church the conversion to Orthodoxy and the Russification of the diverse (Khazar, Tatar, Circassian and other) ancestors of the Cossacks on the Lower Dnieper (Zaporozhets or Cherkassy), on the Don, on the Khopra should serve that era (the Cossack state formation of the Scarlet Yar, known since the 14th century). It determined the subsequent geographical configuration of Russian state-building for many centuries.

Already at the end of the Mongol period, the heyday of Orthodox culture begins, undoubtedly associated with the golden age of Russian monasticism: by the beginning of the XVI century. About 180 monasteries were founded in the north of Russia alone. Monasteries appeared on new uninhabited lands up to the Kola Peninsula and the Arctic Ocean in the north and to the Urals in the east. Many pagan tribes living here have adopted the Christian gospel.

church orthodoxy cossack missionary

References

1. Kostomarov N.I. Russian History in the biographies of its main figures. Eksmo, 2009. P. 269.

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