This Page Last Updated January 18th, 2010 (new style reckoning)
The Pomorsky Answers
The Pomorsky (the Shore dwellers) were those Russians who went to live in the northern areas around the White Sea after the heretical reforms of Nikon. This was the largest group of exiled Old Believers during the time and they settled along the Vyg River. The monk Danilov, who escaped the Solovetsky slaughter, started this community along with the Denisov brothers. Leska was a women’s Old Believer community led by Danilov’s sister which was nearby, up a tributary of the Vyg. On the orders of Tsar Peter a monk was sent to the Pomosrky (the Vyg Community) in the year 1722 to ask 106 questions about their position. So the Denisov’s (outstanding Old Believer writers and theologians who did most of this work) gave Nikonites a book, The Pomorsky Answers, which quickly became the handbook of the entire Russian Old Faith. In all this time the Nikonites have never given a good response to the Pomorsky Answers. Many Nikonite’s have found the Old Faith true by the content inside these pages.
The images of this manuscript are in TIF format, I have them organized into folders that are compressed into ZIP file, with all of them in one 14.8 MB zip file. There are also a couple color front pages and a reference PDF document inside. This is a download link for the single file. Below are a couple photos of the front color pages.
One of the questions that the Nikonite Church asked was how the Pomorsky Old Believers could continue to have new monastics without a bishop. Near the end of this book the answer is given that the first among monks, St. Anthony the Great, was not made a monk by any bishop, neither were any of his brothers. There are several other references given to support this strong Old Believer position, just like all the other areas in dispute.
