Dmitrii Tveritinov

(also D. E. Deriushkin). Born 1667 in Tver’ (now Kalinin); died no earlier than 1741. Russian heretic and thinker of the early 18th century.

After serving with the strel’tsy (semiprofessional musketeers), Tveritinov lived in a sloboda (tax-exempt settlement). In 1692 he moved to Moscow. Around the year 1700 he went to work in I. Gregori’s pharmacy in the foreigners’ settlement in Nemetskaia Sloboda. He also learned Latin and practiced medicine. Having become acquainted with Protestantism, Tveritinov developed his own doctrine, which resembled the heresies of 15th- and 16th-century Rus’. Tveritinov opposed the worship of icons and the cross and the veneration of saints and their relics. He preached rejection of the Eucharist, denied the authority of the church, and rejected the organized church system. Tveritinov acknowledged service to god by means of spiritual improvement and moral asceticism. These doctrines gained popularity among the inhabitants of Moscow. Tveritinov also engaged in philosophical arguments with the well-educated class of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In 1713 the clergy, headed by S. Iavorskii, started an inquisitorial proceeding against Tveritinov and his fellow believers, charging them with heresy. Thanks to the intercession of highly placed persons in St. Petersburg and of Peter I the Great himself, Tveritinov was released on bail in 1718 after recanting his views. In 1723 the Synod absolved him from ecclesiastical censure.