Avvakum autobiography books
Avvakum autobiography books
Autobiography books of famous people...
by Archpriest Avvakum
Translated by Kenneth N. Brostrom
Moscow in the middle of the seventeenth century had a distinctly apocalyptic feel. An outbreak of the plague killed half the population.
A solar eclipse and comet appeared in the sky, causing panic.
Avvakum autobiography books pdf
And a religious reform movement intended to purify spiritual life and provide for the needy had become a violent political project that cleaved Russian society and the Orthodox Church in two. The autobiography of Archpriest Avvakum provides a vivid account of these cataclysmic events from a figure at their center.
Written in the 1660s and ’70s from a cell in an Arctic village where the archpriest had been imprisoned by the tsar, Avvakum’s autobiography is a record of his life, ecclesiastical career, painful exile, religious persecution, and imprisonment.
It is also a salvo in a contest about whether to follow the old Russian Orthodox liturgy or import Greek rites and practices. These concerns touched every stratum of Russian