This chapter surveys the institutional structure and economic position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century. After the relatively uneventful tenure of Patriarch Filaret, the Muscovite Church began to feel pressure for change from within and from without. When Patriarch Nikon became patriarch in 1652, many of the latent tensions within the Russian Church erupted into open conflict. During his tenure in Novgorod, Nikon made it clear that, in his opinion, the ecclesiastical hierarchy was the natural leader in the campaign to revitalize Russian Orthodoxy. Belief was a significant element in the resistance of the Don ossacks to Moscow's administrative control. The Russian Orthodox community had fallen into schism. In competition with the state-supported official Church, the Old Believers had begun to build their own organisations, select their own cadre of leaders and create their own religious culture. Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church soon had to bend before the onslaught of a wilful reforming autocrat.