Written from a Russian cell by Archpriest Avvakum in 1666AD, this is a beautifully rare find; witness of testimony written by the martyr himself during his final sufferings. Moscow in the middle of the 17th century had a distinctly apocalyptic feel. An outbreak of the plague killed half the population. A solar eclipse & comet appeared in the sky, causing panic. A religious reform movement is punished by a violent political project that cleaved Old Russian (Muscovite/Tartary) society and the ‘Orthodox Church’ in two. This is a Facsimile of the first English translation of this work published in England, 1924. Moscow

The autobiography of Archpriest Avvakum–a leader of the Old Believers, who opposed liturgical and ecclesiastical reforms–provides a vivid account of these cataclysmic events from a figure at their center. Written in the 1660s from a cell in an Arctic village where the archpriest had been imprisoned by a French loving 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 Tartary society–and this book is an enlightening look into Russian culture as a whole.

156 Pages

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