Arseny Sukhanov

When the guests in Moscow, . early 1649, . Jerusalem patriarch Paissy said the king and the patriarch Joseph, many of Moscow's retreat from the ranks of worship and rites of the Eastern Church, . and in particular to the incorrectness of two fingers in the sign of the cross, . it was decided to send to the East faithful man, . which examined the issue would be on site,
. This order was entrusted to the elder A. However Paissy it in June 1649 went to Iasi, . visited Mount Athos and, . back in December 1650 in Moscow, . presented in order to report Ambassadorial of his journey, . he called "Stateynym list", . which is appended "The debate about faith" with the elders from Mount Athos (Belokurova published in The Christian Reading "in 1883, . N 11 - 12),
. In February 1651 A. undertook a second trip to the East. This time he visited Constantinople, Chios, Rhodes and other islands of the Greek archipelago, has penetrated into Egypt and Jerusalem, and across Asia Minor and the Caucasus back in June 1653 in Moscow. He submitted a report he called the king "Proskinitariy" t. e. fan (published by Professor Ivanovo, Kazan, 1870). A year later. was instructed to deliver to Moscow the greatest possible number of Greek manuscripts, which were necessary Patriarch Nikon to the steps he corrected service books. Thanks to the rich "charity", which he was given, A. successfully evacuated from Mount Athos and other places of 700 precious manuscripts, which are still considered as an ornament of the Moscow Synodal Library. A. From Jerusalem, at the request of Nikon, brought a model of a large Church of the Resurrection, which served as a model for building a great Resurrection Church in the New Jerusalem Monastery. A. died in 1668. In its reports to A. a small ritualistom that puts on a par with minor liturgical rites and the most important tenets of Christianity. He describes the bleak eastern depravity of the clergy, his humility and servility. Rather than mourn the decline of the eastern churches, groaning under the heavy yoke of Turkish, he was sort of schadenfreude notes that faith-de spoiled not here, but in the East. Question of the sign of the cross is the main content "of the debate about faith". According to A., Athos elders could not cite a single more or less strong case against two fingers. It is clear that the works of his followers gave the "old faith" a powerful weapon against the innovations of Nikon and widespread in splitting environment, where, incidentally, were the numerous distortions. - Wed. SA. Belokurov, "Arseny Sukhanov". Study t. I. A Biography. Sukhanov. Published in the "Readings of the Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities" (1891) and separately.