The struggle against the adherents of Skhariya…

The struggle against the adherents of Skhariya the Jew is led by hegumen Joseph Volotsky and his followers (Josephinians) and Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod.

Gennady is from the Gonzov boyar clan of Moscow and was, prior to his archiepiscopate, hegumen of the Chudov Monastery in the Moscow Kremlin.

His immediate predecessor in Novgorod, Sergei, had served less than a year and had been recalled and confined to the Chudov Monastery apparently due to mental illness.

Gennady had been named Archbishop of Novgorod in Moscow and placed in office on December 12, 1484, the first Novgorodian prelate not chosen by lots since 1359.

He had arrived in Novgorod in January 1485 with the task (as had been Sergei's) of bringing the newly conquered Novgorodian church (the city had been brought under direct Muscovite control only in 1478 and the last locally elected archbishop, Feofil, had been removed only in 1480) more in line with Muscovite ecclesiastical practices.

He faces opposition from the local clergy by his commemoration of several Muscovite saints, but deals with this opposition by including several local saints in his commemoration.

Gennady's main difficulty during his archepiscopate, however, is rooting out the Judaizer heresy from Novgorod and also Moscow, where it had spread when several Novgorodian clergymen were transferred to the capital.

He is said to have borrowed methods from the Spanish Inquisition, admiring how the King of Spain had dealt with heterodoxy in his kingdom, and he burns several heretics with the support of the grand prince and metropolitan.

After uncovering adherents in Novgorod around 1487, Gennady had written a series of letters to other churchmen over several years calling on them to convene sobors ("church councils") with the aim "not to debate them, but to burn them."

Such councils have been held in 1488 and 1490.

The councils have outlawed religious and non-religious books and initiated their burning, sentenced a number of people to death, sent adherents into exile, and excommunicated them.

In 1491, Skhariya the Jew is executed in Novgorod by the order of Ivan III.

More adherents are executed with Gennady's approval, including archimandrite Kassian of the Iuriev Monastery (who had allowed a number of adherents to hide there), Nekras Rukavov (they first tear out his tongue, then burn him at the stake), a Pskovian monk, Zakhar, and others.

The Novgorodian Fourth Chronicle notes that Gennady also helped pay for one third of the reconstruction of the current Detinets or Kremlin walls between 1484 and 1490.