Metal detectorist finds centuries-old religious artifact once outlawed by emperor

A metalworker in eastern Poland recently discovered a religious artifact that experts say dates back hundreds of years. Experts have said the cross icon is likely a relic of Orthodox communities that continued to be practiced after a series of reforms that divided the Russian Church in the mid-17th century, and an example of the type of symbols that were banned under the reign of a later monarch. .

The cross, made of copper alloy, was spotted by a metal detector in Niedrzwica Duża, a town about 160 kilometers from Warsaw, according to the provincial monument conservation office, which said in a statement that it had received the object last week. The relic was found buried in the ground by Jacek Zięba, a metal detector who searched the area with permission from the office.

Measuring only a few centimeters from end to end, the artifact appears to be a typical biblical symbol showing Jesus nailed to the cross, with other figures carved into the peripheral space that are more difficult to decipher. The conservation office shared images of the cross and compared them with others depicting the icon as it might have originally looked.

The inscriptions on the back of this particular cross have allowed experts to link it to the Russian Old Believers or Old Ritualists community, a group of Eastern Orthodox Christians who maintained the beliefs and ritual practices of the ancient Russian Orthodox Church after ‘an overhaul of changes has been implemented around. 1650. These liturgical reforms divided the religion, the “Old Believers” being in the minority. But they remained faithful to their pre-Reformation customs for several centuries, even as the leaders of the time and the Church itself moved in another direction.

“For the Old Believers, from the beginning of the movement, in the mid-17th century, icons were central to their religious life,” researchers write in an article on the religious community’s connection to iconography and its predominance in their private lives. worship. The article, published in 2019 in the theology journal Religions, noted that icons from this period served “as a material foundation for the identity of the Old Believer movement.”

Under Tsar Peter I, also known to historians as Peter the Great, the creation, sale and use of cast icons like the cross were prohibited by the Russian Church. Peter the Great became Russian tsar – monarch – in 1682 and reigned as emperor from 1721 until his death in 1725. According to Poland’s provincial conservation office, he instituted a ban on crosses copper castings between 1723 and 1724.

The casts were not only used by Old Believers to practice their religion, the office said. They were also widely sold and eventually purchased on public forums by ordinary people, and it was common to see one in homes across Russia. While fundamentalist communities were established at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries along part of the Baltic Sea, another pole emerged in mainland Russia, near Moscow, about a century later. Historians say the inland community was known for its artistic culture that produced huge quantities of simplistic cross icons.

Throughout the reign of Peter the Great and many other rulers at other times in history, Russia encompassed parts of Eastern Europe, including Poland. Given this and the fact that the Old Believers of Russia settled in several places at different times, experts believe that more work needs to be done to determine exactly when the cross was created. But it is generally estimated to be around 300 years old.