History of the Condemnation of the Patriarch Nicon: By a Plenary Council of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Church Held at Moscow A.D. 1666-1667

The History of the Condemnation of the Patriarch Nicon, composed by the Greek prelate Paisius Ligarides of Scio (1612-1678), is an account of the bitter struggle between the leaders of the Russian church and state during the reign of Tsar Alexis Michaelovich (1629-1676) and the patriarchate of Nicon (1605-1681). The conflict resulted in the exile and deposition of the Patriarch in 1666, decreed by an ecclesiastical council headed by Ligarides. Ligarides’ History, a theological and legal essay on the powers of the tsar, is one of the most important polemics produced during the period. The arguments and ideas it contains represented important advances in the developing ideological tradition of the absolute authority of the tsar. This 1873 translation, the third of six volumes on the subject compiled by William Palmer, made this key historical source accessible to English-speaking scholars of Russian ecclesiastical history and political thought.