The Great Moscow Synod () was a Pan-Orthodox

synod A synod () is a council of a Christian denomination, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. The word '' synod'' comes from the Ancient Greek () ; the term is analogous with the Latin word . Originally, ...

convened by Tsar

Alexis of Russia Alexei Mikhailovich (, ; – ), also known as Alexis, was Tsar of all Russia from 1645 until his death in 1676. He was the second Russian tsar from the House of Romanov. He was the first tsar to sign laws on his own authority and his council ...

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

in April 1666 in order to depose

Patriarch Nikon Nikon (, ), born Nikita Minin (; 7 May 1605 – 17 August 1681) was the seventh Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' of the Russian Orthodox Church, serving officially from 1652 to 1666. He was renowned for his eloquence, energy, piety and close t ...

of Moscow. The council condemned the famous Stoglav of 1551 as heretical, because it had dogmatized the Russian church's rituals and usage at the expense of those accepted in Greece and other Eastern Orthodox countries. This decision precipitated a great schism of the

Russian Orthodox Church The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

known as the Raskol.

Avvakum Avvakum Petrov (; 20 November 1620/1621 – 14 April 1682; also spelled Awakum) was a Russian Old Believer and protopope of the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square who led the opposition to Patriarch Nikon's reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church. H ...

and other leading

Old Believers Old Believers or Old Ritualists ( Russian: староверы, ''starovery'' or старообрядцы, ''staroobryadtsy'') is the common term for several religious groups, which maintain the old liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian ...

were brought to the synod from their prisons. Since they refused to revise their views, the Old Believer priests were defrocked, anathemized and sentenced to life imprisonment in distant monasteries. One of the decisions in the synod was a specific ban on a number of depictions of

God the Father God the Father is a title given to God in Christianity. In mainstream trinitarian Christianity, God the Father is regarded as the first Person of the Trinity, followed by the second person, Jesus Christ the Son, and the third person, God th ...

and the

Holy Spirit The Holy Spirit, otherwise known as the Holy Ghost, is a concept within the Abrahamic religions. In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is understood as the divine quality or force of God manifesting in the world, particularly in acts of prophecy, creati ...

, which then also resulted in a whole range of other icons being placed on the forbidden list.

References

{{Reflist 1666 in Christianity 17th-century church councils History of the Russian Orthodox Church 1666 in Russia 17th century in Moscow

Alexis of Russia