The Patriarch Joachim Role in the Coronation Rite of Russian Tsars Reform

The reform of the coronation rite of Russian autocrats in 1676 was radical. Instead of the concept of a hereditary monarchy, in which the sovereigns received a blessing from the Church for the throne occupied according to their "antiquity", the idea of a sacred Russian state was brought to the forefront, and the leading place at the ceremony was taken by the patriarch instead of the tsar. Three people: Tsar Feodor Alekseevich, Chancellor A.S. Matveyev and Patriarch Joachim stood at the origins of the reform, which for the first time in Russian practice brought the coronation scenario to the Byzantine model. The discovery of the large work of Patriarch Joachim's scribes on the Russian Chronograph allows us to assert that it was he, not the tsar and chancellor, who initiated the reform. The Most Holy One consolidated these reforms in the rite of the coronation of Ivan and Peter Alekseevich in 1682, creating the basis for the coronations of emperors and forming at the highest state level the consciousness that “Russia is our sacred state”. The article shows the process of overcoming misconceptions regarding the role of the patriarch in the formation of the state ideology by studying the related literature of the 17th century. The key discovery was the establishment of the decisive role of archaeography in resolving important historical and historical-ideological problems. It was the study and description of manuscripts that made the primary contribution to reconsidering the results of many years of research in several seemingly independent areas: the study of the personality, views, and activities of the "supreme cleric" Patriarch Joachim (Savelov); the clarification of the nature and essence of the reforms of the reforming Tsar Feodor Alekseevich; and the analysis of the entire complex of coronation rites for Russian autocrats from the late 15th to the late 17th centuries as a single, evolving source. Patriarch Joachim's influence on the pan-Russian chronicle writing that flourished during his time and at his court was also the subject of painstaking research. But only after discovering that the Russian Chronograph with its fundamental idea of the sacredness of the Russian kingdom was at the center of the patriarchal scribes' research from the very accession of the Holy One to the throne in 1674, were we able to reconsider the question of the initiative of the coronation reform as the main secular ideological act in favor of this conservative, as opposed to the reformers.