Раздел второй. ПАЛОМНИКИ. Сергей Александрович Нилус

Servant of the Mother of God and the Seraphim (Simbirsk conscientious judge Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov) The last words of Father Fr.'s last conversation. Seraphim was with me as follows: “...so, your love of God, if you are reproached - bless, if you are persecuted - endure, if you are blasphemed - be comforted, if you are slandered - rejoice! This is our path with you, and he who endures to the end will be saved! Come in peace to Voronezh!” They were told to me on September 5, 1832, when I was sent to Voronezh for the first time in my life. (From the notes of N. A. Motovilov) Seraphim! O holy and wondrous name! How great you are, great saint, with the Lord! The demons gnash their teeth about your name and... tremble!.. And great was their gnashing of teeth! From that sacred day when the God-loving Sovereign, God's Anointed One, filled and led by the Holy Spirit, embodying in his person the entire people's faith, in one mind with the Orthodox Church, bowed his knees with all his many millions of people at the shrine of the newly-minted saint of God, Seraphim of Sarov - from that very day the entire satanic regiment, led by its peacekeeper and the prince of evil under heaven, rebelled against the one who, while still in a weak human body, defeated the primordial enemy of the human race. I will not remember all the frantic rage that powerlessly and fruitlessly fell on the holy days, on the unforgettable July Seraphim days, unanimously experienced by the entire Orthodox world led by its God-given Head: this rage is memorable to everyone who, near or far, took part in the repentant public prayer at the tomb and at the shrine of St. Seraphim, who “sang in the middle of the summer” with the people "Easter". The Lord put Satan’s plans to shame: all their evil deeds scattered into smoke. The future will show in all its breadth and power the significance for the life of the Russian spirit of the recently experienced, re-experienced and rethought Sarov celebrations. But the present is already such that it has become clear to the original enemies of Russia how far it is, given the rise of faith, from that premature death, which they already seemed to be triumphant with a cry of victory. But the evil slander, having crashed against the insurmountable wall of the holiness of the ascetic of Christ, changed direction and struck, albeit with weakened force, at everything that directly or indirectly served to glorify the holy saint. One of these blows fell on a man who devoted all his spiritual strength to serving the memory of Father Seraphim and the Seraphim-Diveyevo women’s monastery founded by him, the last lot of the Queen of Heaven on earth. This was a Simbirsk and Nizhny Novgorod landowner and Simbirsk conscientious judge, hereditary nobleman Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov. The enemy’s anger, not having overcome Seraphim, fell heavily on Motovilov and tried to denigrate and slander his memory in the eyes of all those who, according to Seraphim, were interested in this out-of-the-ordinary personality. She called him "crazy." With the help of God and Father Seraphim, I will try to illuminate the darkness of lies that has shrouded the memory of this worldly associate and novice of our reverend father Seraphim of Sarov 33. In the Motovilov family, among those, at least its members, who still cherish family memories, in the depths of the cradle of its origin, a legend arose and still persists that their ancestor was a native of Lithuania, Prince Montvid-Montvil. The common people remade this surname in their own way and nicknamed the stranger Motovilo, and under this nickname he became his own, already Russian man. From this root came the Russian family of Motovilovs. One of the ancestors of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov, while still a Lithuanian prince, participated with his people with Dimitri Donskoy in the Battle of Kulikovo. In one of the branches of the Motovilov family tree, if I’m not mistaken, in the family of the senator of the Cassation Department Georgiy Nikolaevich Motovilov, the image of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, cut with a heavy Basurman sword, should be kept to this day as a family shrine. If it has been preserved, then it is now one of the few material witnesses to the first rays of the dawn of the Muscovite kingdom 34 . This image has its own legend. Nikolai Alexandrovich's father, Alexander Ivanovich, in his youth fell in love with a girl from the old noble family of the Durasovs; but, brought up in St. Petersburg, having managed to get used to metropolitan life, Marya Aleksandrovna Durasova, to whom Alexander Ivanovich was wooing, did not want to go with her husband into the calm of the village and refused him her hand. The struggle with the feeling of rejected love led to the result with which, in the good, holy, old times, people of heart and duty crowned any struggle that had become unbearable: they doomed themselves to God and in God’s help alone they went to seek salvation from the unbearable struggles of their spirit. Quiet monasteries, dedicated to God, behind their high monastery fence, among forests, far from the bustle of the rebellious world, gave the desired shelter to sick souls and joy and tranquility in Christ. This is how it was in those times, so close to us in time and so in spirit - alas! - distant... The Sarov hermitage accepted the inconsolable Alexander Ivanovich among its novices and, it seemed, hid him for the rest of his life from all worldly cares and sorrows. But God was pleased to change the firm decision of the inconsolable young man. While undergoing obedience on the prosphora, Alexander Ivanovich began to prepare to take monastic vows, but one day, tired of the unusual work, he dozed off and saw a wondrous dream, which, contrary to his intentions, determined his entire future life and had prophetic significance for Nikolai Alexandrovich. The Sarov novice had barely dozed off when he suddenly saw Saint Nicholas enter the prosphora and say: “The monastery is not your path, Alexander, but family life. In marriage with Mary, who rejected you, you will find your happiness, and you will have a son, you will call him Nikolai - God will need him. I am Saint Nicholas and have been appointed to be the patron saint of the Motovilov family. I was already at the time when one of your ancestors, Prince Montvid-Montvil, served in the army of Demetrius Donskoy. On the day of the Battle of Kulikovo, the Tatar hero, who struck the monastic warriors of Peresvet and Oslyabya, rushed with a sword at the Grand Duke himself, but Montvid with his chest repelled the directed mortal blow, and the sword stuck into my image, hanging on the chest of your ancestor; he would have pierced your kinsman himself, but I weakened the force of the blow and struck the Tatar to death with the hand of Montvid! This dream, as one would expect, changed the direction of Alexander Ivanovich’s thoughts, and he left Sarov. The secondary offer he made to Durasova was not rejected; and from this predicted marriage, the first-born was born on May 3, 1809, who was given the name Nikolai. This was our Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov. Motovilov lost his father early. At the age of eight, he was left an orphan with a mother, still a very young widow, and a sister, two or three years younger than him. The large fortune left by Alexander Ivanovich consisted mainly in the populated lands of three provinces - Simbirsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl - and required tireless care. Concerns about raising young children, the general way of moral and religious life of the ancient landowner life, in which the ideals of a wife and mother still stood high, and, most importantly, of course, God’s will - all this forced Motovilov’s mother to surrender with humility to her lot and not seek for herself what is now commonly called personal happiness. The former mothers sought and always found this personal happiness primarily in God, in His Holy Church and in housekeeping, which included raising children and caring for their wealth. The landowner life of old Rus', waiting in vain for its impartial historian, knows many types of such mothers and housewives who, in the quiet of their villages, built the property well-being of their children, and with them their homeland. The first comforter of Nikolai Alexandrovich's mother in the sorrow that befell her was the Church and her faithful servants, servants of God of every rank, starting with bishops and ending with that Christ for the sake of wandering Russia, which, throwing away all concern for the worries of tomorrow, in a prayerful feat, summer and winter, and in the spring crossroads, and in autumn bad weather, goes around in search of the saints in some places, with their tireless watch, countless cities and villages, dense forests, rutted high roads and whimsically running footpaths of the difficultly traversed wilds of spacious Russia. From the impregnable icy Solovki to the ever-green Mount Athos and the shrines of Jerusalem, from Pochaev and Kyiv to the borders of Eastern Siberia, to the walls of mysterious China, the pure wave of primordial Orthodoxy splashes, which created and glorified mighty Russia. This tireless watch goes around the shrine of Orthodoxy and carries the grace of the shrine to all corners and crannies, distributing it with a believing hand to every believing Russian heart. Naive faith, naive speeches! Children are storytellers, children are listeners! But whoever heard the fiery speeches of some, who knew how to notice the tears of tenderness of others, he saw face to face, he kissed her, mouth to mouth, tenderly loved, childishly holy, gracious Rus'... From the bright royal chambers, from the noble mansion of a nearby prince-boyar to the dank with dampness and uncovered poverty of the hut of a poor commoner, to those simple and faithful times, all of Christ's countless army of pilgrims found shelter and greetings everywhere, a warm corner, a bright center of heartfelt love and hospitable cordiality. Old Rus' knew how to understand and appreciate this spiritual feat of its people. Even then, wolves from the flock of Satan climbed into this flock of Christ’s sheep, but because of random wolves they did not discredit the pure sheep flock and dressed shamelessly and fearlessly in its golden fleece, and the holy, pure faith of the Russian man warmed his Russian heart. At the beginning of the 19th century, the faith of the Russian outback was still little shaken: life then did not know the speed of spreading spiritual infection that marked our so-called time - the time of steam, electricity, railways, telegraph, telephones - everything, in a word, that has torn and frayed the nerves of modern humanity. One hundred versts was a space of half a day's drive, and 500–600 versts from the large centers, from the capitals, began Russian provincial life, almost untouched by the trends of the times in its age-old foundations. The outback, so foolishly and evilly ridiculed by the shallow wit of the era of reforms and European apeism of the sixties and subsequent years, was that true field that grew the grain of Russian primordial life and gave abundant harvests that fed the mighty state organism of Russia. The distance, difficult to overcome by carriage, postal, and “long” ones, forced the average person to sit at home, in the house to be able to find and concentrate all his material and spiritual interests. Life flowed in the family, and everything was concentrated in it. There was nowhere to go, and there was no need; they knew their area, and they knew it well, thoroughly, accurately; They didn’t strive into the distance, but where they were born, they died there. Long trips were undertaken only for special needs, and, moreover, with great tautness of heart. But for the life of the spirit, even in those sedentary times, distances were neglected, and trips of a month or more, 400 or 600 miles, were not uncommon for our grandfathers and grandmothers. This movement could not be called trips - these were entire pilgrimages, usually organized with all the children and chosen members of the household, and their goal was more or less remote monasteries with the saints resting in them. the relics of God's saints or the ascetic elders living in them, glorified by the people's faith and enlightened by a godly life and Divine grace. “Not in words exceeding earthly wisdom, but in manifestations of strength and spirit,” our old men sought an answer to all the requests of the human soul and, the Lord is faithful, they received it. The great grief of the young widow drew her for advice and gracious help to the great saint of God, Father Seraphim, at that time the hieromonk of the Sarov Hermitage, who completed the feat of the retreat and began to receive visitors, of whom a great multitude began to gather from all over central Russia to the secluded Sarov Hermitage. The glory of Father Seraphim as a man of high spiritual life even then thundered throughout the believers of the Tambov and Middle Volga regions. The old people said that there were days in Sarov when the number of people coming and visiting Father Seraphim reached ten thousand. On her first trip to Sarov to visit Father Seraphim, the widow Motovilov took her Nikolenka with her. This was in 1816. Nikolenka was then eight years old. Mother and son were traveling to Arzamas from their estate, the village of Britvin, Nizhny Novgorod province, Lukoyanovsky district. In Motovilov’s manuscripts there are indications that in Arzamas one revered “blessed” woman met Motovilova and predicted to her boy his extraordinary destiny of power, incomprehensible and rejected by the world, but pleasing to God. Father Seraphim had just opened the doors of his reclusive cell, and one of the first visitors he received was the widow Motovilov and her son. In the manuscripts of Nikolai Alexandrovich, I managed to find a hand-drawn image of the plan of Father Seraphim’s cell in the form in which it was engraved in his childhood memory. The boy was so impressed by the furnishings of the cell that many years later he remembered it in every detail. His childhood imagination was especially struck by the abundance of burning candles in seven large candlesticks in front of the icon of the Mother of God. But the words and meaning of the speeches of Father Seraphim’s conversation with his mother were hidden from him. In his memory, only one episode of his stay in the priest’s cell was preserved. The boy, accustomed to frolicking in the freedom of the village, became bored, and while his mother listened to the conversation of the godly elder, he began to run around the cell, as far as its surroundings allowed. His mother stopped him reproachfully. But the priest objected to her reproach to the child: - The Angel of God is playing with the baby, mother! How can you stop a child in his careless games... Play, play, baby! Christ is with you! Motovilov remembered these words, full of meekness and fatherly affection, all his life. Could the child’s heart then foresee that this cell, in which the mother’s conversation with the monk took place, would subsequently determine the entire structure of Motovilov’s long-suffering life! Whether it was family piety, so characteristic in those days of noble families who lived constantly on their estates, or early acquaintance with people of spiritual achievement with whom the pious mother loved to spend time, or the pre-chosenness expressed in the significant dream of his father, but in Motovilov, religious curiosity awoke early, which caused him a lot of grief in his adolescence and youth. Having learned during the study of the Holy Scriptures about the Trinity in the One Being of God, he sought to explain this dogma to himself by phenomena of visible nature, which greatly embarrassed not only his simple-hearted village mentors, but also the teachers of law who were preparing him for admission to Kazan University. “Father!” he asked his mentor. So you teach me that a person consists of body and soul. But we were created in the image and likeness of God, therefore, we are also trinitarian in essence? - Well, aren’t you a heretic?! Truly, heretic! I’m telling you, don’t look for a higher self! Where are you going, where are you going? – I ask you! And the verbal admonition of the “heretic” was usually followed by a mentoring admonition, from which the admonished one cried a lot. The mother was also very upset, fearing what she thought was the excessive inquisitiveness of her child. In those good, simple times, mature people believed simply and childishly. She was especially afraid of her son’s future studies in the noisy academic city of Kazan. The spirit of unbelief and heresies, sown in the minds of the noble freethinkers of Catherine’s and Alexander’s times by the horde of foreign tutors and governesses who came to Russia with a ready-made program for the destruction of Russian foundations, this spirit could not hide from the foreboding heart of a loving and devoutly Orthodox mother. Well, how can this inquisitiveness of the mind, now under her wing directed towards the knowledge of the Divine, turn in the opposite direction! And there were examples of this. Even then, in provincial society they began to talk about the Freemasons as a mysterious sect, although harmless in appearance, but by all indications apostate and harmful. The Orthodox spirit of her late husband also foresaw death from Freemasonry, which, as a novelty, the last word of European education, the most prominent provincial figures began to get carried away with. Look, mother, take care of Kolya from the Masons if I’m gone! In my name, order him not to join their God-fighting society - it will destroy Russia! Motovilov himself heard such speeches from his father. The inquisitive mind of the child, of course, did not understand what kind of monster the Masons were; It’s unlikely that he could even grasp the immense word “Russia” in any way, but his father’s words did not disappear without a trace for him, and for Nikolai Alexandrovich Russia and Freemasonry remained forever two concepts, of which one certainly had to destroy the other. Motovilov remained an implacable enemy of this secret and essentially deeply revolutionary society throughout his life. But the mother’s prophetic heart was not mistaken in one thing: the university with its social sciences, in which the name of God is never mentioned, the cheerful, noisy and, of course, free-thinking secular society of the noble Kazan - all this soon in its everyday whirlpool swirled young Motovilov, the future eligible groom, as more than one mother probably secretly dreamed of him - and social life, although temporarily superficially, but still managed, it seemed, to erase the spiritual that was sown in the soul of a religious boy in childhood. - Well, mummy! - he often said to his mother, - you have these “temptations” again! “Temptations” he called the pilgrims and nuns whom Motovilova loved to greet at his place. Hearing Nikolinka’s conversations, not always modest and about immodest subjects, with downcast eyes and fingering her rosary, with a sigh and as if quietly whispering to themselves, it happened: The cheerful Motovilov did not like them at that time. Against the rainbow background of the joy of the noisy light to which his heart was drawn, these humble figures with fasting faces, in black robes, elderly, ugly, with the Jesus Prayer on their lips, should have seemed to him such a dark and unattractive spot... Underneath its unprepossessing appearance, true humility seems to many to be hypocrisy. Who needs these driven, forgotten, pitiful, dark faces? They are an ear-piercing dissonance in the victorious chord of the elegant world! But God’s calling led Motovilov to a different path - on a different path God needed him. Halfway through his university course, an incident occurred with Motovilov that was unusually characteristic both of him and of the era that raised him. In his notes, he vaguely says that “this incident plunged him into such an abyss of despair that he could not survive it, for he had to lose both his noble honor and his noble title and be given up as a soldier.” According to Elena Ivanovna, this incident, this terrible misfortune that so shocked Motovilov, was the kiss he threw to a young lady in the university corridor. This kiss was noticed by the authorities, who attached such importance to it - in words or in deeds - who knows - that Motovilov considered himself completely lost. He was especially frightened by the thought that he would kill his “mama.” And he loved his “mama” as only his pure filial heart could love. What an abyss separates the feelings of the majority of modern youth from the feelings of that time!.. On a dark night, from the apartment of Professor Fuchs, whose apartment Motovilov was living at that time, he went to the Black Lake, known to every Kazan resident, and there he decided to drown himself. He was already ready to throw himself into it, but some invisible force suddenly chained him to the place from which he wanted to throw himself into the water, and in the darkness of the night, over the gloomy waters of the Black Lake, he suddenly saw in a bright radiance the image of the Kazan Mother of God. Illuminated by a wondrous light, the Face of the Most Pure One looked reproachfully at the suicide youth and disappeared without a trace into the darkness of the night. This was the first sign in his life. The story that threatened Motovilov at the university had no consequences for him - his landlord, Professor Fuchs, helped him out of trouble, certifying that “he vouches for Motovilov” as a highly moral young man. But the wondrous vision left a deep imprint on his soul, and although the pleasures of the world still continued to pull him into their deceptive nets with uncontrollable force, nevertheless, the event on Black Lake marked the beginning of a deep spiritual revolution that subsequently took place in him. We do not have reliable information about the time of his life in Kazan after this event. We only know that, after he left the university with the title of full student, his mother died during a trip with him on a pilgrimage to Kiev, leaving in his care all the estates and a fifteen-year-old girl, his sister. Motovilov himself was seventeen years old. This was in 1826. In those days, noble honor required mandatory service to the State. A young man who had completed his course of study had to serve either in the crown service or by election - a non-serving nobleman was like a runt among the nobles. Avoidance of service to the Fatherland was considered such a disgrace that not a single girl from a respectable family would marry someone who had not served to some extent in the military or civil service of the Tsar and the Fatherland. Society was not served then - the concept of society was absorbed by the dogma of the Tsar and the Motherland - and they were served. The end of the Alexander and Nicholas times were strict in implementing state principles. And Motovilov’s heart was already gripped by “tender passion.” In the vicinity of his Simbirsk villages, the widow of Mikhail Petrovich Yazykov, from an old family of Simbirsk nobles Yazykov, lived on her estates. Her teenage daughter, Katenka, a girl of about fifteen, also lived with her. Sick by nature, completely ill by the time Motovilov left the university, the widow Yazykova did not leave the house, did not receive guests except her family and close neighbors, and Katenka grew up almost completely alone. Church, home worship and caring for her mother - this was the whole life of a young girl, almost a child. It was this Katenka, or Ekaterina Mikhailovna Yazykova, that Motovilov had been in love with since she was twelve years old. The pretty girl seduced his heart not so much with her appearance as with the inner qualities of her highly religious feminine soul. Did she like Motovilov? It’s hard to say... As for Motovilov himself, the hope of seeing his beloved girl as his wife did not leave him many years after the first flash of a spark of selfless feeling planted in his soul. They were wholesome in nature back then and knew how to love for a long time, devotedly and faithfully. But it was not Motovilov who was destined to take possession of Yazykova’s pure, virgin heart. Another heart was waiting for him, another hand was supposed to carry with his hand the heavy cross destined for him to glorify the great Name of God. God's chosen one, called to life by the clearly expressed Divine will, had to go through the crucible of all suffering, all temptations, heartache and physical torment, had to endure all sorrow, all persecution, in order to be spiritually purified and enlightened to be worthy to accomplish the great work of God on earth. For an active Christian, for every warrior of the Church of Christ, for every faithful son of her, and not a mercenary, the clear guidance of the Hand of God in the long-suffering and still not appreciated life of Motovilov is deeply instructive. Now his merit is visible: the observance for posterity of the smallest features of the life of the great saint of God, St. Seraphim, and the prosperity of the spiritual brainchild of the priest - Diveev. But even in our contemporary assessment of Motovilov’s activities, human rumor does not give him that high place in the majestic building of the great Sarov days, which rightfully belongs to him. By following step by step the life of this great man in spirit and heart, through scraps of his handwritten memories, through the memories of people close to him - his widow, Elena Ivanovna, and the orphans of Father Seraphim, the Diveyevo nuns and prayer books - we, perhaps, will be able to restore in possible brightness all this complex, full of tragedy and, in any case, the extraordinary character of the moral Christian a martyr of the 19th century, tormented by mental torture, and where? The center of original Orthodoxy is in Russia. Let us return to those already distant times for us, when the lover Motovilov had to enter into independent life as an orphan, with a girl-sister in his arms and with a large household under his inexperienced care. Motovilov’s heart was always in the foreground in the entire structure of his life. The dictates of practical meaning, the cold dictates of reason, if they were not alien to him as a person in the fullness of his contemporary education, then his reason was always subordinate to the desires of the heart. And Motovilov’s heart was fiery throughout. To get Yazykova’s hand, you had to serve - at least that’s what Motovilov thought, that’s what the entire noble majority thought then. The Onegins and Chatskys were just emerging. And it was here, at first, when entering the new life of an independent person, that he had to face the secret, but already great and formidable power of Freemasonry, with the root of the later flourishing weeds of the Russian revolutionary movement, which with its false liberalism infected the flower of the Russian service and landed nobility. “Having left the Imperial Kazan University,” Motovilov writes on a sheet I found, torn from some notebook, “as a full-time student on July 8, 1826, and on the way to Kyiv on pilgrimage, having lost my parent on the 20th day of the same July 1826, and remaining an orphan at the age of 17, having a sister Praskovya, fifteen years old, through my mother’s friend, Nadezhda Ivanovna Savrasova, I soon met the Simbirsk provincial leader, Prince Mikhail Petrovich Barataev, and soon became close to him to the point that he revealed to me that he was the master of the Simbirsk lodge and the great master of the Illuminati St. Petersburg lodge. He invited me to join the ranks of the Masons, assuring me that if I wanted to have any success in public service, then, without being a Mason, I could not achieve it under any circumstances. I answered that my father, my parent, forbade me to join Freemasonry, then that this is true anti-Christianity, and I myself, being at the university and having found a book about the Freemasons, was completely convinced of this and even saw extraordinary visions that predicted the fate of my whole life and told me to go against Freemasonry, Freemasonry, Illuminism, Jacobinism, Carbonarism and everything with them identical and existing in opposition to the Lord God. This angered him so much, and even more so in the simplicity of my heart, my open intention to soon, in order to arrange my affairs, go to St. Petersburg for assignment to serve in His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery, that he swore to me that I would never be successful in anything, because not only Russia, but the whole world is entangled in the networks of Masonic connections. Soon after that, a law was passed so that young people, although they had completed their studies and received diplomas for academic degrees in higher schools, would not have the right to go to serve in the capital, but would have to serve in the province for three years, supposedly to become familiar with the procedure of provincial service. Having been cut off from my feet at first, I, as they say, ran aground like a lobster.” Prince's confidence Barataeva’s belief that Motovilov would not succeed in anything because of his refusal to become a member of the Masonic lodge was soon justified in practice. For the vacancy that soon opened up for the position of honorary superintendent of the Korsun district school, Motovilov put forward his own candidacy, and when he was informed from the Council of Kazan University and from the School Committee that he had been elected to this position, Barataev called him to him and announced: – You won’t see this position like your ears. And not only will you not get this position, but you will not get any other government position, because both Musin-Pushkin (then the trustee of the Kazan educational district) and the minister Prince Lieven are masons subordinate to me. My command is their law! From that moment on, the persecution, or rather persecution, of Motovilov began, intensifying over time to the point of persecution, which finally brought him to such a nervous breakdown that he suffered from a nervous stroke, which confined him to his bed. He suffered in great suffering for more than three years. They persecuted him in the service, which he, however, nevertheless achieved, thanks to his supernatural energy, prevented his marriage with Yazykova, created a reputation as a madman, and even during the time of Governor Zagryazhsky they managed to subject him to personal detention on charges of treason. He was released from this arrest only by order of the Minister of Justice, Dimitry Vasilyevich Dashkov. There was no slander, ridicule, secret tricks and tricks to which political-sectarian human malice would not subject him. The emergence and life of Masonic lodges, their strength and significance in the life of Russia are still waiting for their truthful historian, or rather, observer. And will they wait for him?.. The seal of deep secrecy into which individual, and, moreover, unknown to the Masonic army itself, commanders-in-chief are privy, covers the essence of their activities, their means and goals, both past and present. Freemasonry, one can say with confidence, still exists today, under a different guise, but its destructive and mainly anti-Christian, or rather anti-Christian, goals remain the same. The long-suffering life of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov, who fought with the energy of despair for the best noble covenants of the past, devoted to the point of fanaticism to the Autocracy, a morally tortured confessor of the Orthodox Faith, deliberately erased from useful and deeply patriotic social activities - is a most instructive example of what it meant at that time, and, perhaps, in ours, to openly rebel against this secret, but great underground force. If the Lord had not diverted the energy of Motovilov’s remarkable strength to another, truly God-pleasing cause, he would have had to prematurely end his plans with earthly life: the Masonic force never stopped short of secretly killing those whom it considered dangerous to itself. For what kind of godly deed did the Lord divert Motovilov’s energy from state affairs, towards the accomplishment of which Motovilov’s fervently Russian heart gravitated so much? Who was supposed to be the direct instrument of God's providence for the earthly purpose of Motovilov, who was predicted in the significant dream of the former Sarov novice, who later became the father of Nikolai Alexandrovich? The creation of the spirit of the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, the Diveevo Convent, the last lot of the Queen of Heaven on earth, the future women's monastery and the life of the saint of God, who found in Motovilov its witness and inspired descriptor - this is the God-pleasing work for which Nikolai Alexandrovich was called to life. Our venerable father Seraphim of Sarov is that visible holy hand that changed and directed Motovilov’s steps along a different path, girded him with Divine grace and led him where he did not want, perhaps, to go at a time when to his young, inexperienced gaze the everyday path of the world seemed so tempting and brilliant. How great was the task destined for him was already partially shown by the great Sarov days. The future will reveal even more, even more significantly, the incomparable secret of the power of these days for the renewal of the spirit of Orthodoxy, and with it the greatness of the Motherland with its messianic goal. Service failures, the secret and obvious malice of influential Freemasonry, which did not spare even his pure love for Yazykova, dug for him all sorts of holes and traps into which he, in the simplicity of his young heart, fell every minute, broke Motovilov’s heroic organism, and, as I already said, a serious illness confined him to bed for more than three years. In his physical suffering, aggravated by moral suffering, an orphan with an orphan girl, his sister, in his arms, without support, without family, selfless participation (only Nadezhda Ivanovna Savrasova, his mother’s friend, did not leave him), he was renewed spiritually and cried out to the Lord, and the Lord did not fail to hear the voice of His servant’s grief. Approximately around this time, there were three significant dreams that were given to him as if to foreshadow the fate of his life and to reveal some of the secrets of the Divine economy. We take their description from the original Motovilov manuscript, which survived on a separate sheet 35. “In my first dream I was shown the incredibly greatest, not the house, but the palace of my father in the life of the next century. Two and a half versts in length, half a verst in width and a quarter of a verst in height; three stories high, with columns, each carved from one solid celestial pearl; the architectural style is similar to the Ionic order; the window glass is all solid at the bottom and top; 25 fathoms in height and width, and in the mezzanine 25 widths and 50 fathoms in height; the roof is all pure gold; walls of heavenly marble, whiter than the best Carrara marble. The mountain on which this house stood was seven miles high, gently stretching towards it, and in length, thirty miles around, was a garden of the most excellent fruitful and ever-blooming trees and shrubs. I saw my parent rise incorruptible from the tomb and enter it, and someone invisible said to me: “This is the house prepared for your parent in the life of the next century for his holy, merciful life.” In the second dream, my house, prepared for my sins, seemed to me, all covered in tar, dripping from the ceiling from being melted by hot coals. But the Lord vouchsafed me to leave it, and then I was shown the beauties of the paradise of God and the Eternal Kingdom of God and said: “Look! You left the house of your eternal destruction in a dream, and actually come out of it in life, so that you may be saved, like your parent, both on earth and in heaven.” In the third dream, fifteen great hermits, holy saints of God, took me from the bed of my almost dying illness, namely: 1) Saint Mark of France, 2) Saint Onuphrius the Great, 3) Saint Peter of Athos, 4) Saint Ioannikis the Great, 5) Saint Anthony the Great, 6) Saint Macarius the Great, 7) Saint Sava Sanctified, 8) Saint Gerasim, who lived on the Jordan river, and the rest, all like them, and led me to a wall reaching to heaven in height and width to the ends of the earth, and placed me in front of a door 15 fathoms high and 5 fathoms wide; and behind them stood a countless crowd of people: kings, patriarchs, rulers of the people, boyars of all nations, metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, priests, archimandrites, monks, and laymen of every rank - scientists, commoners, merchants, townspeople, courtyard people and peasants of all denominations. And all this stood closely, leveled, mixed up, in vain, to no avail, so closely that if you threw an apple between their heads, over their shoulders, it would roll and not fall to the ground. And the holy fifteen great hermits of God said to me: “We have brought you here, to this crowd of wicked people who have angered the Lord God, and the Lord God Almighty, through us, His servants, commands you to proclaim His word and His Divine judgment about them. Tell them all in front of us: kings, patriarchs, rulers of the people, boyars, merchants, townspeople, nobles, scientists, and artisans, and men, priests, and monks, and nuns, and people of all kinds! You have completely angered the Lord God in everything! You have despised, rejected and disgusted everything ancient, holy, godly, beneficial and all-saving in your souls and breathe hatred towards everything pleasing to God. You have so upset the goodness of God with all the abominations of your innovations that the vial of the wrath of God’s righteous wrath is seething with indignation, not dissolved by the slightest drop of compassion for you, the godless wicked, and woe to you if you do not repent and turn away from your godless evils, and do not soon seek the true path in all your abominations, repentance before the Lord God who has irritated you!.. Well, tell them all this in front of us!..” And no matter how much I cried, assuring them that I didn’t dare and that as soon as I mentioned it to them, they would destroy me; but they threateningly objected to me: “If you do not tell them all this will of God, then the Lord will destroy you along with them, and they will complain to God about you forever and ever. If they become angry, one and all, with you and want to destroy you from the face of the earth, then the Lord God in the Trinity will protect you, and the Lady Herself, the Most Holy Theotokos, will be your Intercessor against all their attacks on you. Go through them and boldly speak to them these words of mercy and eternal life, and the Lord Himself will bless you, and the Mother of God will Herself be your Helper in everything.” And I told them everything; and they listened to everything and, parting in front of me, began to give me a way among themselves. A large triangle, several fathoms long, opened up before me, and I, repeating to everyone these merciful and compassionate words of the Lord, not having reached the end of the triangle, tried how wide the road people had given me was, and stretched out my hands crosswise in both directions, and it was not enough to reach the people by a whole yard from my hands. And I don’t know why or why I waved my arms, and I was lifted upward from the ground by an arshin, so that I flew in a circle, like a big bird, up into the sky and saw that I had soared higher than everyone else, and below me there were people swarming with worms... At first I was extremely frightened, thinking that I would fall down and be completely crushed into dust; but a light, clean, and crystal-transparent feather bed was spread under me, and I rejoiced inexplicably and said: “Lord! when I was down there with them, how great they seemed to me then and how magnified they were before me then! And now what have they become? no more than worms swarming in a dung heap!” These dreams and a serious illness were given to Motovilov during the period of his life from 19 to 22 years. Medical help, to which he tirelessly turned throughout his long illness, turned out to be powerless. Having tormented his body, a serious illness cleansed his spirit, and his spirit turned to God, who showed him the way to heal his body and further enlighten his spirit. This was the path - Father Seraphim of Sarov. Once upon a time, in Motovilov’s childhood, his father saw his Angel playing with him; now the same Guardian Angel led him a second time to the monk in order to entrust him for life to the guidance of the divine elder. This is how Motovilov describes his first conscious meeting with the Monk Seraphim. “A year before I was given the commandment to serve the Mother of God at the Diveyevo monastery, the great elder Seraphim healed me of serious and incredible, great rheumatic and other diseases, with relaxation of the whole body and the loss of legs, crumpled and swollen knees, and with bedsores on the back and sides, with which I suffered incurably for more than three years. On September 9, 1831, Father Seraphim healed me from all my illnesses with one word. And the healing was as follows. I ordered myself, seriously ill, to be taken from the village of Britvin, my Nizhny Novgorod Lukoyanovsky estate, to Father Fr. Seraphim; On September 5, 1831, I was brought to the Sarov Hermitage; On September 7 and 8, on the day of the Nativity of the Mother of God, I was honored to have the first two conversations with Father Fr. Seraphim, before and after lunch in his monastery cell, but he had not yet received healing. And when the next day, September 9, I was brought to him in his nearby hermitage near his well, and four people, who carried me in their arms, and the fifth, who supported my head, brought me to him, who was in conversation with the people who came to him in large numbers, then, near a large and very thick pine tree, and to this day (the sixties of the last century) on the banks of the Sarovka River existing, on his hay field, they put me in prison. When I asked him to help me and heal me, he said: - But I’m not a doctor. One should treat doctors when one wants to be treated for any illness. I told him in detail about my misfortunes and that I had experienced all three main methods of treatment, namely: allopathy - I was treated by famous doctors in Kazan - Vasily Leontievich Tellier and the rector of the Imperial Kazan University Karl Feodorovich Fuchs, who, according to his knowledge and practice, not only in Kazan and Russia, but also abroad, was a fairly famous medical surgeon; hydropathy - at the Sergievsky mineral sulfur waters, now Samara province; I took a whole full course of treatment and homeopathy from the founder and inventor of this method, Hannemann, through his student, the Penza doctor Peterson, but from not a single method did I receive healing of my illnesses, and then I no longer believe in salvation in anything, and I have no other hope of receiving healing from my illnesses, except through the grace of God. But being a sinner and not having the boldness to approach the Lord God, I ask his holy prayers so that the Lord will heal me. – Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is the God-man, and in His Most Pure Mother of God, that She is the Ever-Virgin? “Do you believe,” he continued to ask me, “that the Lord, as before, healed instantly and with one word or with His touch all the ailments that happened to people, and now just as easily and instantly can continue to heal those who need help with one word, and that the intercession of the Mother of God to Him for us is omnipotent, and that through this intercession the Lord Jesus Christ can now also instantly and with one word heal you? I answered that I truly believed all this with all my soul and heart, and if I had not believed, I would not have ordered myself to be taken to him. “And if you believe,” he concluded, “then you are already healthy!” “How healthy,” I asked, “when my people and you hold me in your arms?” - No! - he told me. You are now completely healthy with your entire body! And he ordered my people who were holding me in their arms to move away from me, and he, taking me by the shoulders, lifted me from the ground and, putting me on my feet, said to me: - Stand tighter, plant your feet firmly on the ground... like this! Don't be timid! You are completely healthy now. And then he added, looking at me joyfully: - Do you see how well you stand now? “Involuntarily, I stand well, because you hold me well and tightly!” And he, taking his hands away from me, said: “Well, now I’m no longer holding you, but you still stand strong without me; Go boldly, my father, the Lord has healed you! go ahead and get moving! Taking me by the hand with one hand, and pushing my shoulders a little with the other, he led me along the grass and along the uneven ground near a large pine tree, saying: - Look, your love of God, how well you did. - Yes, because you deign to lead me well! - No! - he told me, taking his hand away from me. The Lord Himself deigned to completely heal you, and the Mother of God Herself begged Him to do so. You will now walk without me and will always walk well; come on! “And he started pushing me so that I would go.” “Yes, I’ll fall and hurt myself!” I said. - No! – he contradicted me. You won't get hurt, but you'll walk firmly... And when I felt some kind of power overshadowing me from above, I perked up a little and walked firmly, he suddenly stopped me and said: - Enough already! - and asked: “What, are you now convinced that the Lord has really healed you in everything and in everything completely?.. The Lord has taken away your iniquities and the Lord has cleansed your sins.” Do you see what a miracle the Lord has done for you today! Always believe undoubtedly in Him, Christ our Savior, and firmly hope in His compassion for you, love Him with all your heart, and cleave to Him with all your soul, and always firmly hope in Him, and thank the Queen of Heaven for Her great mercies towards you. But since your three-year suffering has seriously exhausted you, now you do not suddenly walk a lot, but gradually: little by little, get used to walking and take care of your health, as a precious gift of God!.. And, after talking with me for a while, he let me go to the hotel completely healthy. So, my people went alone from the forest and the nearby desert to the monastery, thanking God and His wondrous mercies to me, revealed in their own eyes, and I myself sat down alone with the hotel keeper Father Gury, firmly sitting in the carriage without human support, and returned to the hotel in the Sarov desert. And since many pilgrims were with me during my healing, they returned to the monastery before me, announcing to everyone about this great miracle. As soon as I arrived, abbot Nifont and the treasurer, hieromonk Isaiah, with twenty-four elder hieromonks of Sarov met me on the porch of the hotel, congratulating me on the mercy of God, through the great elder Seraphim, bestowed on me in their days. And I enjoyed this blessed health for eight months, so much so that I had never felt such health and strength in myself until then in my entire life. Often during this time and for a long time I visited Sarov and repeatedly talked with this great elder Seraphim, and during one of his conversations at the end of November 1831, I had the happiness of seeing him brighter than the sun in the grace-filled state of the influx of the Holy Spirit of God.” The miracle that took place made a stunning impression on Motovilov and determined the entire structure of his future activities in God’s field. After that, the Monk Seraphim irresistibly attracted him to him. Motovilov could not help but see in him a conductor of Divine grace of such spiritual beauty and power that before this wondrous appearance in his enlightened eyes all the deceptive charms of the world, to which he had previously been so passionately drawn, became pale and, as it were, temporarily faded. The gracious gifts of clairvoyance, healing, the mighty, boundless power of the prayer of the saint, this kind of angel in the flesh, were so close to the spirit of the healed and grateful Motovilov, so attracted this spirit to Christian perfection, impossible in its entirety without a break with the world, that from that time Motovilov became attached to his gracious doctor with all his ardent heart and completely surrendered to his leadership, enjoying almost constantly his godly wisdom conversations. Almost every month he left his estates in Sarov to visit Seraphim and lived for two or three weeks under the wing of his mentor and benefactor, often and for a long time taking advantage of his intimate communication with him. And the world, meanwhile, still burst into his soul, not only never getting tired in the fight against the aspirations of his spirit, but as if attacking him more and more forcefully, carrying him away with its brilliant baits, throwing its seductive nets over him. Of course, the image of Yazykova, the personified first love of Motovilov, rose at the head of all the other seductive ghosts of powerful worldly memories, and, of course, the poor, tormented soul in him, and only in him, sought the fullness of her earthly happiness. “Not the judgment of God and not the judgment of man!” This secret spiritual struggle could not be hidden from the monk’s insight, and when it had already reached the level of great heartache, carefully, however, hidden from the priest - so, at least, it seemed to Motovilov - Father Seraphim suddenly, unexpectedly asked him: - Well, your love of God, you all want to ask me about something, but it’s as if you don’t dare? Just talk to me, poor Seraphim: with God’s help, I am ready to answer you what the Lord deigns to reveal to me! “I said,” Motovilov writes in his notes, “that I extremely love a certain noblewoman, my neighbor in my Simbirsk villages, and I would like him, Father Seraphim, to pray to the Lord for her, so that the Lord God would name her my bride. “Is she really very pretty,” he asked, “that you love her so zealously and deeply, your love of God?” I replied that although she was not a beauty in the full sense of the word, she was very pretty. But most of all, what seduces me about her is something gracious, Divine, which shines through in her face. The sight of her struck me when she was twelve years old, and from then on I fell in love with her wholeheartedly. “Why not a beauty?” Father Seraphim asked me. According to your description, it should be like that! Because,” I answered, “to be complete in typical beauty, one must have great height, a slender body, a royal look, and much more, which she does not have.” True, instead of that, she has something that touches a person’s soul, something that many beauties do not have in themselves... “What is this?” asked the great old man. “And this,” I answered, “is that she was raised like a monastery.” “How?” he asked. How's the monastery? I didn’t thoroughly understand your answer!.. “And this is what I mean by it,” I told him. Her father, Mikhail Petrovich Yazykov, left her an orphan early, five or six years old, and she grew up in solitude with her sick mother Ekaterina Alexandrovna, as in a monastery - she always read her morning and evening prayers, and since her mother was very religious and religious, there were often prayer services and all-night vigils at her bedside. Having been raised for more than ten years under such a God-loving mother, she herself became like a monastery. This is what I like most and especially about her. Father Seraphim continued to ask me: - Well, your love of God, are monasteries better educated than secular girls? “Of course,” I answered, “in greater fear of God, with greater love for God and in greater reverence than we worldly people!” “How do you conclude this?” he asked. “From the words of Pachomius the Great,” I answered, “when the fate of future monasticism was revealed to him from the Lord God and the brethren asked him: “What, father, did the Lord God deign to reveal to you about us?” - he answered: “The Lord said about us, holy fathers and brethren, that we perform all monastic duties as they should, and He blesses our paths; but the monks who live behind us will live worse than ours, for they will please the Lord half as much as we do.” “And then,” the fathers asked, “what will happen?” “Oh!” exclaimed Pachomius. What’s next will get worse and worse, so that the last monks will no longer do anything of ours, monastic, but will live as today’s secular Christians live!” “And how will worldly Christians live?” - the fathers asked. “But the worldly will live worse than beasts.” “How will they be saved?” - asked the elders. And Pachomius answered them that the Lord deigned to tell him: “Trouble will come upon them, and their fathers will be found higher.” “Why?” – the elders asked again. “That’s why,” answered Pachomius. At present, due to the abundant grace of God in us and due to our zeal for the work of salvation, there are among us many God-inspired, perspicacious servants of God. If one of us falls - a brother or sister, then no matter how hard his fall may be, none of us, due to the Divine love for our neighbor that abounds in us, will be too lazy to travel a thousand miles and go through all the great difficulties in order to raise up the fallen one. Consequently, it is much better and much easier for us now, for we help brother from brother, and convenience overcomes sin. And in those fierce and troubled times, monks and nuns will not only not help each other, but will also plunge each other into destruction, and then each of those who love God will have to save their soul and care for it, like a hermit or hermit...” So, father, this is why I think that, no matter how bad the life of modern monasticism is now, it is still similar to the ancient worldly Christian life. That’s why, in my opinion, a girl raised in a monastic way would be better off raised in a secular way... This is the upbringing I love and respect so much at Yazykova. The Great Elder listened deeply and attentively to my answer and, as if in oblivion, asked me: – How old is your God-destined bride now? - For five or six years she was left an orphan after her father, she lived with her mother for ten years, and after six months or a little more her mother died... I think that she is now no more than 16 or 17 years old! - What are you, father, your love for God! No no! Your destined bride from God is now 8 years and a few months old, maybe 3 or 4, and hardly more than 5 months, but according to the new resolution of the Synod, a man under 18 years old, and a girl under 16, cannot marry. So shouldn't you wait for your God-ordained bride for 8 or 10 years? How can you marry her now? It’s impossible - she’s still very young. - Yes, for mercy, Father Seraphim! - I said. How young? After all, according to the new law, I can marry her! “Who are you talking about, poor Seraphim?” he asked me. “About Yazykova,” I answered, “about Yazykova, Ekaterina Mikhailovna!” - A! - he responded. About Yazykova!.. Well, I’m not talking to you about her, but I, poor thing, am now talking about the bride destined for you from God, and for her, I assure you, according to God, your love for God, now there will be no way for her to live for more than 8 years with a few months!” This conversation took place in October 1831. Great was Motovilov’s disappointment and at the same time sorrowful bewilderment at that time! However, this was not the end of the significant conversation for Nikolai Alexandrovich’s life. The turning point had to be indicated with particular sharpness and clarity, which would radically change and firmly determine the direction of his main activities in the future. This activity was characterized by Motovilov in the title with which he liked to call himself both in his notes and in his speech: “Servant of the Mother of God and the Seraphim.” “After being silent for a while, the priest continued 37: - After all, it’s different, your love for God, to ask the Lord God to prescribe a bride for someone - as you, for example, now ask that I, poor one, beg the Lord to prescribe Yazykov as a bride for you - and another, when the Lord Himself has already deigned to prescribe what kind of bride to someone - like, for example, for your love for God. Your bride is now no more than 8 years and 3, 4 or 5 months old. Believe me, this is exactly true, and I myself, poor Seraphim, am ready to testify to this. And about the destinies of God and the incomprehensible ignorance of them, I, poor one, have this to tell you: do you know Tobit and his son Tobiah from the Bible?.. So the son of Tobit prays, it happened that the Lord would give him such and such a bride. And Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, a relative of Tobiin, at the same time also happened to pray to the Lord God that He would give her such and such a groom. And the Angels of the Lord offer both their holy prayers and lift them up to the Throne of the Almighty God... So the Lord, seeing that both of them were asking Him for the same thing, decided in His goodness to unite them both in holy marriage. But there were several hundred miles between them, and they did not know each other. But the Council of God was so firm about their union that the Lord even allowed a demon to be near Sarah, who killed every other suitor, except Tobiah, who would dare to touch her. Although she was given in marriage to seven suitors, all seven were struck with death, for it was not for them that it was prepared from the Lord God. When the Providence of God was pleased to unite Tobias and Sarah, the Lord sent Tobias the Archangel Raphael as a companion, and on the way to the village of Raguil in the Tigris River he caught a fish and ordered Tobias to remove the bile from it to drive away, as it later turned out, the spirit of malice from Sarah. So, your love for God, what are God’s destinies! Who would have thought that Tobias and Sarah, separated by such a long distance, would marry each other! But what is impossible with man is possible with God!.. Father Fr. is here. Seraphim paused and seemed to think, and suddenly turned away; speech on something else, suddenly asked: - And what, your love of God, did you do with the girl of your yard man who lived with you? I froze, frightened both by the elder’s insight and at the same time by the fact that he would scold me for my sin... But the elder, without waiting for my answer, began to continue: The Holy Church of the Lord in its conciliar rules so legitimizes that if anyone takes a free girl and lives with her, he is obliged to marry her afterwards, and this duty requires this. If the girl does not want this, then arrange her life so comfortably that later, due to the sheer burden of poverty, she cannot fall into new sins and would always thank the Lord. After these words, my soul felt better. “I did just that!” I told Father Fr. Seraphim. “Well,” he answered, “it’s good that you did so, and may the Lord God bless you!.. Did you have children from her?” “Well,” he said, “if not, then may the Lord God rest them in His Kingdom.” And when they were alive, you should have raised them in the fear of God, for, your love of God, you should not despise illegitimate children - they are not to blame for their birth. And it’s better not to judge their parents, because non-condemnation is half of salvation... There was, for example, an incident in Greece: a royal nobleman, driving across the river, saw a girl washing her dress. Captivated by her beauty and learning that she was the daughter of a widow, he stayed with her. After that, this girl had a dream that a bright star rolled into her womb. A certain great and God-inspired elder, to whom she and her mother turned, announcing what had happened, explained to them that someone great would be born from this daughter. And, father, the saint of God, Theodore Sikeot, was born, whom the Lord assigned to him to guard, in addition to the Guardian Angel, also the Great Martyr George the Victorious... Glory to God! Velma, you did well to reward that girl and give her away in marriage... But, your love for God, life is great, and a lot happens in life. There are also cases when you or some other man, even though you not only have no close dealings with a girl, but even know her little, will begin to revile that girl either for you or for someone else and begin to say: she is his neighbor and he lives with her, although there is a proverb, however, it is extremely displeasing to God, that being a good man is not a reproach, and although men are not much reproached for this, but for a girl, even if she has maintained chastity, the loss of her honorable name and good fame is worse than death. I pray and ask, your love for God, do not despise words and do not forget my miserable request... Here the priest bowed to me to the face of the earth and, standing up, continued: “If someday, somewhere, a girl will be reviled for your sake, that she is a close and sincere Motovilovskaya, and they will say about you that you live with her, then even if you did not touch her at all, I ask and implore you - respect the request of the wretched Seraphim - sanctify her for yourself! - How, father, to consecrate? “I’m not talking about sanctification: like a pure virgin, she is holy even without that.” Sanctify her as your friend, that is, take her as your wife, just say - marry her! And the priest again, for the second time, bowed before me to the face of the earth. I also fell at his feet, and when I got up, I said to him: - What are you doing, father? Who are you talking about? After all, I already told you that the girl who lived with me has already been settled, and believe me, since I decided to marry Yazykova, and especially since I began to visit you, I no longer have a single one. - Oh, your love for God, what you are!.. I’m not telling you about the present time, but about the future. After all, I told you that life is great and a lot happens in life. So when it happens to you in the future that you will be reproached for some girl, and she will be reviled for you, then don’t forget the requests and pleas of the wretched Seraphim - marry this girl! And the priest bowed to me, a sinner, for the third time, to the face of the earth, and I again fell at his feet. Standing up and looking straight into my eyes, Father Seraphim began to peer vigilantly into me and, as if looking into my very soul, asked: - Well, father, will you fulfill the request of poor Seraphim? – If God deigns to do it, then I will try to do as you wish! “Well,” said Father Seraphim, “thank you!” Don’t forget this girl!.. And she, I tell you, is a poor Seraphim, she is like an Angel of God both in soul and in flesh... Then, after being silent for a while and peering at me shrewdly, and as if piercing me through and through with his gaze, he added: - But perhaps you will be embarrassed when I tell you her title!.. She is a simple peasant woman!.. But do not be embarrassed by this, your love of God: she is your sister according to our forefather Adam, and according to our Lord Jesus Christ! Then the priest began to talk about how we should live with my future wife and ended his conversation by repeating his request, begging him not to forget either his request or the conversation; and then released him in peace, without saying anything about Yazykova.” When the Seraphim-Diveevo Convent was created, it was a small community, not yet recognized by either secular or spiritual authorities, made up of several living blueberries, mostly of peasant rank. These founders of the future women's monastery had a great spirit, and they then took upon themselves, these pure souls, a great feat of faith and poverty. The participation of the Monk Seraphim in the establishment and leadership of this convent, unparalleled in Russian chronicles, is well known to anyone interested in the life of this wonderworker of all Russia. One of the first nuns of Diveevo were two sisters - Praskovya and Marya Semyonovna Milyukov, girls of peasant rank. Their own niece, the daughter of their brother Ivan, Elena, a girl of about six, lived with them. A little over two years or three or four months before Motovilov’s healing, the Monk Seraphim unexpectedly ordered the two Milyukov sisters and the other Diveyevo nuns who were with them to bring little Elena to him. “I remember,” Elena Ivanovna Motovilova herself told me (she was that little girl Elena), “they brought me to the priest in his hermitage, which stood in the Sarov Forest. I was still very young then and was just beginning to learn to read and write. Father took me in his arms, put me on the table in his cell, and said to my aunt and the other sisters who came with her: - Bow to her - in time your great mistress will be!.. They bowed to me: such was the faith in the priest’s words. Then he gave me six ABC books. “You have these ABCs on you,” he said, “they will come in handy in time!” At that time I had a brother and a sister - so there were only three of us. For whom, we thought then, three more? And I married my Motovilov, and I had exactly six children, all of whom I learned according to these ABCs.” Let us recall the time of the conversation between the Monk Seraphim and Motovilov about the bride destined for him from God. This conversation took place in October 1831. Elena Ivanovna was born on May 17, 1823. “The bride destined for you by God is now 8 years and a few months old, maybe 3 or 4, and hardly more than 5 months,” the priest said then. Isn’t this a miracle of foresight?.. And how such a gift of grace was supposed to act on the receptive soul of Nikolai Alexandrovich!.. At the indicated time, Motovilov still had no idea either about Diveyevo or about the role that over time he was to play in the destinies of this last lot on earth for the Queen of Heaven. An eight-year-old girl at that time, Elena Milyukova, could even less suspect that she would someday marry, and even to a rich nobleman, who in the future would stand at nothing to fulfill the behest of her father, and in a worldly guise would become the servant of the Mother of God and Seraphim that he later became, according to God’s wondrous provision. Raised at that time in the nascent monastic community by two aunts who devoted themselves entirely to serving God and the Most Pure Mother, she prepared to remain in the monastery for the rest of her life. Could she think, as a “monastery” brought up, to “be a great mistress” for Diveev, who raised her?! Is it only in the spiritual sense... As we have already said, perhaps frequent meetings with the divine elder became an urgent need of the spirit for Motovilov. And the elder, penetrating into the depths of his soul and seeing the ability of his fiery heart to ignite with the unquenchable fire of great love for God, accepted him closer and closer into his fellowship. An ardent patriot, brought up in the spirit of Orthodoxy, imbued with selfless loyalty to the throne and homeland on the devout principles of Russian statehood, Motovilov could not help but grieve and not be horrified by the dizzying speed and force with which the destructive principles of the French Revolution began to break into the foundations of Russian life and mainly into the class leading it. The December days, which dishonored the Russian nobility, tormented his heart as a faithful nobleman, ready to lay down his life for his Tsar, for the Anointed One of God. The terrible specter of Freemasonry, to which Motovilov attributed a secret guiding significance in all the unrest that had occurred in Europe and Russia, 38 stood before his mental gaze with a flaming sword of vengeance for the sins of a free-thinking society, for its main sin of deviation from the right faith in God. A faithful heart trembled for the future of the homeland. The elder shared his fears and, endowed with the great gift of amazing insight, showed him those paths of sorrow that threaten Russia if she does not repent of the sin of the impending apostasy from Orthodoxy. The events of the future were revealed by Elder Motovilov with the clarity of a panorama unfolding before the eyes of the amazed hidden man Seraphim. The events of the Sevastopol War, the times of emancipation, the sorrows of the Orthodox Church, even the time of the discovery of his relics, which would come during the reign of Emperor Nicholas, “in the soul of a Christian” - in the words of the saint - all this sea of ​​prophetic insight into the distance of still emerging times and events took his breath away and led Motovilov to his intended goal of serving God in the field that was to be indicated to him by the Monk Seraphim. Manifestations of the power and goodness of Divine Providence, which acted before the eyes of Motovilov in the saint with such obvious and indestructible power, gradually created in Motovilov a steadfastness and ardor of faith such that no resistant forces could resist. For Nikolai Alexandrovich, the time had come for the fulfillment of his third dream, recognized by the Monk Seraphim as a prophetic dream. The time was ripe for the struggle for Orthodoxy, for Diveyevo - the house of the Most Holy Theotokos, for the covenants of Father Seraphim. The time of passionate denunciation, the time of heroism, difficult trials, great revelations, a break with the victorious world and the unbearable burden of strangulation, spitting - all that heartache, the cross of which Motovilov carried to his righteous end with a firm and fearless hand, was coming. The last link connecting Motovilov with his former life was destroyed. The weakness inherent in every person at the first stages of faith also affected Motovilov. So strong was his love for Yazykova that, contrary to the saint’s prediction, he decided to propose to her and was refused. This was in May 1832. Yazykova has already been betrothed to the famous theologian, philosopher and poet Khomyakov. God's punishment was not long in coming for unbelief: Motovilov fell seriously ill - his legs were paralyzed again. In this situation he was brought on September 3, 1832 to Sarov. He writes about this like this: “When in the month of May 1832 I was struck by severe spiritual grief, I was again subjected to illness and the loss of my legs. After suffering for four months, I heard about the discovery of St. the relics of St. Mitrofan and about the holiness of the life of the local Bishop of Voronezh, Anthony, which is why I wanted to go there and live on the advice of my relatives. It would have been 200 versts closer to go through Penza from the Simbirsk estate, but, remembering the great mercies of the Lord shown to me through the great elder Seraphim, I ordered to take myself through the Sarov Hermitage to Voronezh. First of all, I wanted to be the first to tell him about my second disaster, which is what I did, arriving on September 3, 1832 in Sarov. When they brought me to him, he took a fatherly part in me and, after talking with me for a while, said: “Let’s pray to the Lord that He will tell us: should I still heal you or let you go to Voronezh?” And when the next day I was brought to him again, he said to me: “It was not because of God that I said, poor Seraphim, to your love for God, that I might heal you: the Lord will heal you at the relics of St. Mitrofan.” Behold, father, the Lord and the Mother of God, this very night appearing to me, the poor one, for the 17th or 18th time, deigned to reveal to me your whole life from birth to dormition. And if the Lord Himself had not put my fingers into His nail wounds and into His most pure rib, pierced by a spear, I would not have believed that such strange lives could exist on earth. And your whole life will be filled with such whims and oddities because for you the secular is so closely connected with the spiritual and the spiritual with the secular that it is impossible to separate them. - Father! – Motovilov asked him. What do your words mean - until the Dormition? Or will I die soon? - No, your love for God, you will not die soon - you still need to be an accomplice to me in fulfilling the all-holy will of God. Dormition means a quiet, Christian death, which the Lord will honor you with after the end of the days of your earthly life. - Well, father, what will my earthly life be like? – asked Reverend Motovilov. “I, wretched one, was not ordered to reveal this to your love of God.” The Lord deigned to say: “I give my servants to endure everything here on earth, and I transfer them into the life of the next century completely cleansed from all filth of the flesh and spirit, and although the Angel of Death is allowed to resolve the unions of their body and soul, the suffering of death will not touch their souls. They die just as they fall asleep. But you do not reveal to him all the circumstances of his life, but only what I allow, for if he finds out everything and I punish him for his sins, then he can say to Me: “Lord, why are You punishing me, when through the mouth of Your servant, Seraphim, He Himself predicted to me that I would sin in such and such a way.” And when I decide to reward him for the truth he has done, then won’t the enemy, the devil, have the right to dare, so to say: “Where is this Thy truth, Lord, that You reward him for that truth, which through Seraphim You Yourself announced to him that he would certainly accomplish it; but he believes Seraphim as You Himself, the Lord God.” That is why I, wretched one, am revealing to you only what I have already told you... So, your love for God: if you are reproached - bless, if you are blasphemed - take comfort, if you are slandered - rejoice! This is our path with you!.. He who endures to the end will be saved. Come in peace to Voronezh - there you will be healed!” It was here, after his last conversation with Motovilov, that the monk commanded him to serve the Mother of God in the person of the Diveyevo monastery. He called on two sisters of the Mill community - Evdokia Efremovna Alamasovskaya, who was at the appearance of the Mother of God on the day of the Annunciation in 1831 (later - nun Eupraxia) and Irina Semyonovna Zelenogorskaya, who was later the third headmistress, so that they could testify to others his words. Having placed the right hands of the sisters in Motovilov’s hands and holding them with his own, Father Seraphim commanded that not only after his death they themselves tell Nikolai Alexandrovich everything in detail, what and where and how the Mother of God started through him, but that all the sisters did not hide anything from him, because the Mother of God wanted Nikolai Alexandrovich to be appointed nurse of the monastery. Then the monk confirmed that, by the will of the Queen of Heaven, Nikolai Alexandrovich knew everything about the monastery in the same detail as he himself knew. Turning to Motovilov, the priest ordered him to be a witness in his time to everything that was done in Diveyevo under the “poor Seraphim,” and testified that even the entire structure found after the death of the Elder was not built spontaneously by himself, but according to the purpose and instructions of the Queen of Heaven. “And I, poor Seraphim, did not spontaneously place one pebble with them!” - said the priest, finishing his speech. “And having given me the commandment to serve his mill orphans,” writes Motovilov, “the priest sent me in peace to Voronezh, where I arrived on the 19th day of September 1832, and then on the night of October 1, on the Feast of the Intercession of the Mother of God, I received from this secondary illness a complete and speedy healing through the prayers of Anthony, Bishop of Voronezh and Zadonsk.” This was the last meeting with the reverend. The will of God was declared, and from that moment the former Motovilov died to a life of hesitation and doubt. “A servant of the Mother of God and the Seraphim, unshakable in faith,” was born. But this high and extraordinary title, inaccessible to a mere mortal, could not be given to a person without special trials. The abundance of miracles and signs that Motovilov witnessed, communication with the great torch of Orthodoxy, communication close, in essence, to communion, all the depth of the great mystery of salvation contained in the grace of God, which was revealed to him by the monk, the greatness, finally, of the mission entrusted to him by the Venerable Seraphim - all this could not but cause the greatest temptations on the part of the primordial enemy of the human race. Seraphim's days were drawing to a close. The covenant given to the Monk Motovilov already indicated that the number of these days was known to the great elder, and the elder, knowing the threats of the future hanging over the head of his servant, sending him to Voronezh, as if handed him over from hand to hand to another great warrior of the army of Christ. During his lifetime, this warrior was glorified by the holiness of life and miracles of the Archbishop of Voronezh and Zadonsk Anthony I Smirnitsky. In the person of Anthony, Motovilov found himself another gracious patron and intercessor against that satanic force that had already secretly taken up arms against him in order to prevent him from fulfilling the great task of caring for Diveyevo, which the Monk Seraphim entrusted to him. By God's will, Nikolai Alexandrovich was detained in Voronezh after his healing. In the chambers of the archbishop, who took a heartfelt part in it and... Having fallen in love with him, he began collecting materials to compile the life and description of the miracles of St. Mitrofan. From one atmosphere of true holiness, the Lord transferred him to another, filled with the fragrance of the Holy Spirit of God. Saint Anthony awaits the fulfillment of the time appointed by God in order to further enlighten with the light of his holiness the glory of the Voronezh region, already shining in the person of two great saints of God, Saints Tikhon and Mitrofan. By the end of December 1832, Motovilov’s heart, which had been calm until that time, became alarmed. Saint Anthony noticed this and asked him what was wrong with him? “I want to go to Father Seraphim!” answered Motovilov. I'm afraid I won't find him alive if I delay. There were only a few days left before the saint's death. Foreseeing in his spirit the futility of the trip, knowing that Motovilov would no longer find Father Seraphim alive, and fearing a shock to his not yet fully strengthened body, the saint kept him with him for the time being. On the morning of January 2, 1833, the day of the righteous death of the saint, at an early hour, Motovilov, tormented by a premonition, ran to Anthony into his inner chambers. The saint did not allow him to utter a word and greeted him with these words: “Today at about two o’clock I saw an old man who looked like Vassian 39 . This elder came to me in great glory, but his face was sorrowful, and tears flowed down his cheeks. “What are you crying about, great old man, so bitterly?” I asked him. In such glory you should only rejoice, but you cry! “I’m not crying for myself, my soul enjoys inexpressible joy; but you have one landowner here - I left her today - and my soul grieves and cries for her so much! - Master! You don’t tell me, you pity me: it wasn’t Vassian who came to you tonight - it was Seraphim who came to you! It is he, it is his soul that has appeared to you today: the landowner is my sinful soul - my father is crying for her, going to the Lord. Tell me, lord, did Seraphim die? “Yes,” answered the saint, “Father Seraphim died tonight.” You won't find him now! - Ah, lord, lord! Why did you hold me back when I so wanted to go there?.. “You wouldn’t have found him alive anyway: in three days you wouldn’t get from Voronezh to Sarov.” Humble yourself - God wants it so! - Well, go with the Lord. On the same day, the Eminence of the cathedral celebrated a memorial service for the deceased, and on January 4, Motovilov left Voronezh and arrived in the Sarov Hermitage on the 11th, two days after the burial of Fr. Seraphim. Great was Motovilov’s sorrow when, upon his arrival in Sarov, he saw only a freshly filled grave, which hid from him forever the one whom he loved most on earth, since he was convinced that the light of joy and earthly glory was not squandered for him. His inconsolable grief touched the stern monks of Sarov and “in great consolation of my great sorrow,” writes Motovilov, “that I was not worthy to be in time for the burial of Father Seraphim, Abbot Nifont blessed me with the same Gospel, which the great elder Seraphim had in daily use during the last three and a half years of his life, having a slightly burnt place on the back of the binding on his day death; also the image of the Mother of God, Life-Giver, small on a cypress tree, the same one with which his mother blessed him with permission to stay forever in Sarov. They also gave me that same book - the Spiritual Alphabet, with several leaves missing from the beginning, from which he himself, the great elder Seraphim, studied spiritual life, and from the two crosses that were always on him - a small cross, carved by his hands and overlaid with the silver of that ancient silver ruble that his mother gave him when she sent him to Kyiv on a pilgrimage and which was on him.” Motovilov then bought the distant hermitage of Father Seraphim and, together with the nearby one, ceded by Sarov to Diveev, transported it to the father’s orphans. These were the first steps of Nikolai Alexandrovich on the path of lifelong obedience imposed on him by the elder. Through his mediation, most of the shrine left after the monk was transferred to the ownership of the inconsolable Diveyevo sisters. But from these first steps in the field of serving Diveev, enemy attacks began against him. The power of these attacks was so great that, if we did not have evidence of temptations of this kind in the lives of the saints, it would seem difficult to believe that such power was granted by God to the enemy of our salvation. The last stronghold of faith on earth was being created, the last House of the Mother of God, which in recent times the hand of the Antichrist would not dare to touch. How could the enemy of our salvation not rise up? And with what fury this uprising took place! The compiler of the Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, the inspired father Archimandrite Seraphim (Chichagov) 40 briefly touched upon this terrible moment in Motovilov’s life. He writes like this: “Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov, a man of a warm and sincere heart, was single at that time and, in order to truly serve the memory of Father Seraphim and fulfill his commandment regarding Diveev, he decided to go to the homeland of the great elder in Kursk, collect information about his childhood and youth, and also visit the Kiev-Frolovsky Monastery and ask about Agathia Semyonovna Melgunova, who was a monk there, founder of the Kazan-Diveyevo community... Motovilov passed on all the information he obtained about the parents of Father Seraphim in Kursk and about the great elder himself upon his return from the trip to Ivan Tikhonov 41, who used this when publishing tales about the exploits of Father Seraphim.” “But this trip,” writes Father Chichagov, “had very bad consequences for Nikolai Alexandrovich himself: he fell ill with a severe nervous and mental disorder for no reason. Since the medicines did not help him, Nikolai Alexandrovich went again to Voronezh to see Archbishop Anthony, who admitted that the illness occurred by God’s permission from the enemy, who poured out his revenge on him for the work that served to glorify the great saint of God, Father Seraphim. Over the course of several months, he was completely cured, having often received the Mysteries of Christ from Saint Anthony of Voronezh.” In reality, this enemy attack was incomparably more terrible and longer. I will describe it from Motovilov’s manuscript, which I kept and found among such rubbish of old business accounts that it could easily have been overlooked, just as her father, the archimandrite, probably did not notice. Once, in a conversation with the Monk Seraphim, we touched upon a conversation about enemy attacks on people. The secularly educated Motovilov, of course, did not fail to doubt the reality of the phenomena of this misanthropic force. Then the monk told him about his terrible struggle for 1001 nights and 1001 days with demons and the power of his word, the authority of his holiness, in which there could not be a shadow of a lie or exaggeration, convinced Motovilov of the existence of demons not in ghosts or dreams, but in the very real bitter reality. The ardent Motovilov was so inspired by the elder’s story that he exclaimed from the bottom of his heart: - Father! How I would like to fight demons!.. Father Seraphim interrupted him in fear: - What are you, what are you, your love of God! You don't know what you're saying. If only you knew that the smallest of them can turn over the entire earth with its claw, you wouldn’t volunteer to fight them! - Do demons have claws, father? Oh, your love for God, your love for God, and what do they teach you at the university?! You don’t know that demons don’t have claws. They are depicted with hooves, claws, horns, tails, because for the human imagination it is impossible to imagine a more vile species than this. This is what they are in their vileness, for their self-willed falling away from God and their voluntary resistance to the Divine grace of the angels of light, as they were before falling away, made them angels of such darkness and abomination that it is impossible to depict them with any human likeness, but likeness is necessary - so they are depicted as black and ugly. But, being created with the strength and properties of angels, they have such an irresistible power for man and for all earthly things that, as I told you, the smallest of them with his claw can turn over the entire earth. The Divine grace of the All-Holy Spirit alone, bestowed upon us, Orthodox Christians, for the divine merits of the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ, alone makes all the intrigues and deceptions of the enemy insignificant! Motovilov felt terrible then. Then, under the protection of the monk, he could not be afraid of Satan’s malice. But the frivolous and daring challenge, by God’s permission, did not remain without consequences: it was accepted. This is what the saint’s soul wept about when it appeared to the great archbishop at the hour of its separation from the body. After the death of the Monk Seraphim, Motovilov soon left for Voronezh to ask for the blessing of His Eminence Anthony to travel to Kursk in order to collect information about the parents of his benefactor and about his life in Kursk and thereby lay the foundation for his work in compiling his life. Simultaneously with this work, he, on behalf of the bishop, had to begin compiling a service and akathist to St. Mitrofan. Having decided to devote himself to the work of serving the Mother of God and the Monk Seraphim, Motovilov could not throw off from his soul the attraction to social life and family joys: he remembered Father Seraphim’s prediction about the bride destined for him and about her beauty and, not knowing her, expected her. But, without breaking with the world and still following the path of spiritual improvement, he could not do without a spiritual leader. Seraphim was replaced by Anthony. Without betraying his faith in his father, he surrendered to the leadership of another holy ascetic. The Eminence did not immediately agree to Motovilov’s trip to Kursk and for a long time dissuaded him from going, asking him to wait and do a better job of analyzing the handwritten and other information about the life and miracles of St. Mitrofan, which was needed to compile a service for him. Vladyka foresaw the terrible misfortune that threatened Motovilov during this trip and wanted to distance her from Nikolai Alexandrovich. But servant Serafimov, ardent and quick to make decisions, did not want to hear about the postponement of his trip and only hesitated, waiting for the bishop to have mercy and let him go, seeing his impatience. Apparently, the hour of God’s will had come, and the bishop finally blessed the impatient Nikolai Alexandrovich’s trip to Kursk, but he blessed somehow reluctantly, with a tight heart. Motovilov managed to collect little information in Kursk. Close relatives who remembered the saint’s childhood and youth, some died, some responded to oblivion. Even the house in which the monk was born and raised was destroyed, and new buildings grew in its place. There was one old man, the same age as the priest, who gave him the information that is now included in all editions of the saint’s life. The trip to Kursk and stay there were quite successful. A thunderstorm awaited on the way back to Voronezh. At one of the post stations on the road from Kursk, Motovilov had to spend the night. Left completely alone in the room of travelers, he took his manuscripts out of his suitcase and began to sort them out in the dim light of a lone candle that barely illuminated the spacious room. One of the first he came across was a note about the healing of a demon-possessed noblewoman, Eropkina, at the shrine of St. Mitrophan of Voronezh. “I wondered,” writes Motovilov, “how it can happen that an Orthodox Christian woman, partaking of the Most Pure and Life-Giving Mysteries of the Lord, is suddenly possessed by a demon, and, moreover, for such a long time, like more than thirty years. And I thought: “Nonsense! This can't be! I wish I could see how a demon would dare to possess me, since I often resort to the Sacrament of Holy Communion!..” And at that very moment a terrible, cold, fetid cloud surrounded him and began to enter his convulsively clenched lips. No matter how the unfortunate Motovilov fought, no matter how hard he tried to protect himself from the ice and the stench of the cloud creeping into him, it all entered him, despite all his inhuman efforts. The hands were as if paralyzed and could not make the sign of the cross; the thought, frozen with horror, could not remember the saving name of Jesus. A disgusting, terrible thing happened, and for Nikolai Alexandrovich a period of grave torment began. In this suffering, he returned to Voronezh to Anthony. His manuscript gives the following description of the torment: “The Lord vouchsafed me to experience truly, and not in a dream or in a ghost, the three torments of Gehenna. The first is a fire that is unluminous and unquenchable by anything other than the grace of the Holy Spirit. This torment continued for three days, so that I felt like I was burning, but was not burned out. This hellish soot was removed from all over me 16 or 17 times a day, which was visible to everyone. These torments ceased only after confession and Communion of the Holy Mysteries of the Lord with the prayers of Archbishop Anthony and the litanies he ordered for all 47 Voronezh churches and all monasteries for the sick Bolyarin servant of God Nicholas. The second torment for two days was the fierce tartar of Gehenna, so that the fire not only did not burn, but could not warm me. At the request of His Eminence, I held my hand over the candle for half an hour, and it became completely smoky, but did not even warm up. I wrote down this convincing experience on a whole sheet of paper and added my hand to that description with candle soot. But both of these pangs of Communion at least gave me the opportunity to drink and eat, and I could sleep a little with them, and they were visible to everyone. But the third torment of Gehenna, although it decreased by half a day, for it lasted only a day and a half and hardly more, but the horror and suffering from the indescribable and incomprehensible was great. How I survived from her! She also disappeared after confession and Communion of the Holy Mysteries of the Lord. This time Archbishop Anthony himself gave me communion with it from his own hands. This torment was the incessant worm of Gehenna, and this worm was not visible to anyone else except myself and His Eminence Anthony; but at the same time I could neither sleep, nor eat, nor drink anything, because not only I myself was completely filled with this most vile worm, which crawled throughout me and inexplicably terribly gnawed my entire insides and, crawling out through my mouth, ears and nose, returned to my insides again. God gave me strength on it, and I could pick it up and stretch it. I declare all this out of necessity, for it was not without reason that this vision was given to me from above from the Lord, and no one would think that I dare to call on the Name of the Lord in vain. No! On the day of the Last Judgment of the Lord, He Himself, God, my Helper and Patron, will testify that I did not lie against Him, the Lord, and against His Divine Providence, the act He performed in me.” Soon after this terrible ordeal, inaccessible to an ordinary person, Motovilov had a vision of his patron, St. Seraphim, who consoled the sufferer with the promise that he would be given healing upon the discovery of the relics of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk and that until that time the demon that had possessed him would no longer torment him so cruelly. Only more than thirty years later this event took place, and Motovilov waited for it, and waited for healing out of his great faith. Hellish, in the literal sense of the word, the torments of Motovilov, in the relief of which the holy husband Archbishop Anthony took such an active part; brought him finally closer to the Eminence. Anthony loved him with truly fatherly love. This love, this intimacy of communication, which Motovilov was given by two great lamps of the Russian Orthodox Church - Seraphim and Anthony, one of whom has already become prayerfully recognized as a saint - this alone serves as irrefutable proof that in Motovilov Russia has lost a man extraordinary in spiritual strength, not only by not using this power, but during his lifetime mocking its long-suffering owner. And these forces were contained in an unshakable, fiery faith of a purely confessional nature and fiery love for the Throne and Motherland. Motovilov’s heroic body was burning and was slowly burning away from the flame that was devouring him, kindled by a heart indignant at the apparent apostasy of the leaders of Russia from the righteous faith of their fathers and from devotion to the Throne. He could not be consoled by the prophecy that “this must be”, he stood against all “this” with his chest, with his whole heroic body he lay on the threshold of that open door through which all that enemy army was breaking into Russia, which foolish contemporaries mistook for angels of light, supposedly bringing them great ideas - freedom, equality and brotherhood, but in reality - grief, death and destruction. How could they not recognize then, seduced by enemy visions, in a man awarded the greatest revelations, the “madman” with whom they glorified him. Now Seraphim’s holiness is his protection. But at that time he was destined to drink the cup of bitterness to the bottom, and he drank it fearlessly, never once sacrificing his faith or convictions. Your heart bleeds when you see in his scattered papers here and there exclamations tormenting his soul: “I am a Christian! Do you hear everything?.. I am a Christian!”... This is how only the martyrs of the first dawn of Christianity exclaimed in response to similar and cruel cries of triumphant paganism: “Christianos ad leones!” - “Christians to the lions!” Great was this human torment that paper alone was confided in such cries of mental torment! They will repay Motovilov on the terrible day of judgment!.. Proximity to Anthony, communication with him in spirit, a world hostile to the confessor forced Motovilov to devote all the time free from economic worries and worries about the rapidly developing Diveevo 42 to the Eminence. Six hundred miles from his Simbirsk estate, Tsylny, to Voronezh were not an obstacle for him, and in general his soul did not recognize any obstacles in the confession of his love and faith. Once, at the end of the sixth week of Great Lent, Motovilov was in Sarov with Abbot Nifont. Neither early nor late Easter was approaching. The spring crossroads were in full swing outside, but the water in the rivers and lakes had not yet been disturbed. Having achieved something for Diveev from the abbot (at that time Sarov still took a material part in his destinies), Motovilov, to celebrate, went to Voronezh to see Anthony to celebrate Easter. - Madness! Where are you going in such bad weather? After all, you will be flooded with water on the way! - exclaimed the horrified abbot, who was kindly disposed towards Nikolai Alexandrovich. “Antony will be waiting for me.” And you yourself know what kind of horses I have,” Motovilov announced, and immediately ordered them to be harnessed, and left for Voronezh. Motovilov's horses did not give up, and on Holy Saturday, around two or three in the afternoon, he was already forty or fifty miles from Voronezh, in the village of Knyazh-Baygora. To shorten the route, he had to move below the pond dam. The spring water was already breaking the ice and pressing against the dam. The peasants dissuaded us from moving through this place, claiming that the dam would now be lowered, and advised us to take a detour. Taking a detour meant being late for matins... - Why think about it! With God, I went under the dam! - Motovilov shouted. Let's go quickly! The horses took off and rushed like an arrow to the other bank. Before the sleigh had time to reach half the dangerous path, the water was released, and the water, like a vertical wall three fathoms high, flew at Motovilov and covered him, the coachman and the troika; Motovilov only managed to shout: - Saint Mitrofan, save! And I didn’t remember anything else. He woke up already on the other side. The lathered troika heavily mowed down its sides, from which water flowed like a stream. The coachman, all wet, stood near the sleigh and pushed the unconscious master. The sleigh was full of water. They overturned the sleigh, drained the water, wiped off the suitcase and again: - Let's go quickly - we'll be late for matins! But Motovilov was not late for matins. Frozen and icy, he entered the archbishop's chambers just at the moment when the bishop was already going to church. The Bishop greeted him with the words: - Saint Mitrofan announced to me your miraculous salvation, and that you will arrive at our matins. Change your clothes quickly and let’s go together to give praise to the Lord God for delivering you from arrogant death! The suitcase with Motovilov's belongings turned out to be dry inside. This matins remained memorable for Motovilov. During the Liturgy, which Archbishop Anthony served, with tenderness and horror he saw him surrounded by the light of an unflickering radiance, and when the bishop came out of the altar to bless the people and say a prayer for the highest blessing of the grapes planted by the Lord’s Hand, he saw from Anthony’s lips an emanating flame in the form of a fiery tongue, rushing towards the servants and those praying and enveloping each of them with its indescribable light. But not everyone was rewarded with the touch of this wondrous flame: some, whom the flame touched, brightened and began to shine with the same light as the ruler; this Divine flame bypassed others, and they turned black like coal. Among the concelebrants there was one archpriest - Motovilov saw him, as it were, all girded, like swaddling bands, with black stripes. “His appearance,” writes Motovilov, “was like a zebra, and subsequently this archpriest was soon exposed for some bad deeds and deposed from his rank.” “Whether I was in heaven or on earth during this Divine service, I don’t know, God knows,” recalls God’s servant, Nikolai Alexandrovich, in great admiration. During the service, Archbishop Anthony glanced soulfully at Motovilov twice or twice, and his merciful gaze seemed to ask him: “Do you see the manifestations of Divine grace given to the truly faithful?” And Motovilov’s gaze answered: “I see, I am afraid and in great reverence I rejoice immensely!” Who could believe Motovilov’s testimony at that time?! The threshold of the sixties was approaching: the spirit of materialism was already ripening in the air - for him ascetics did not exist, and for him Motovilov was either a liar or a madman. But the liar still had to be refuted, but was it worth it for the madman? After this service on the Bright Resurrection of Christ, both co-secretaries - the great bishop and the layman Motovilov - did not sleep for two nights, spending them in a spiritual conversation about what had happened and about other mysteries of the wondrous Divine vision of sinful people. I don’t know where the notes about these nights full of grace went. I did not find these notes in the pile of papers that I received for consideration. And they should have been... The time has finally come for the fulfillment of the prophecies of St. Seraphim about the marriage of Nikolai Alexandrovich with the bride destined for him from God. While worrying about the Diveyevo monastery, visiting it often, he fell ill on one of his trips and was forced to lie in his house in the village of Diveyevo, near the monastery, for about a year. He recognized his bride for this illness. This was, as we said above, the niece of two great-spirited Diveyevo nuns, Maria Semyonovna and Praskovya Semyonovna Milyukov, at that time a seventeen-year-old beauty, Elena Ivanovna. She lived in a monastery, wore “black clothes,” but did not take vows of obedience and monasticism. I don’t know how this rapprochement happened, and I didn’t try to find out, despite the fact that I had the opportunity to ask her about it in conversations with Elena Ivanovna: love is a tender flower, only a close and also tender hand can touch it; all the more tender is the dried flower of experienced old love - how easy it is to scatter its faded petals with a careless movement!.. But it is not difficult to guess on what basis this rapprochement took place: love for Seraphim, love for Diveev - these two feelings united the hearts of Nikolai Alexandrovich and Elena Ivanovna into one conjugal love, and their wedding took place in 1840 under circumstances that were in complete agreement with the prediction of the Monk Seraphim. Motovilov’s wish came true - Elena Ivanovna was, in the full sense of the word, “raised like a monastery.” This wedding attached Motovilov to Diveev even more: childhood memories and all of Elena Ivanovna’s relatives remained in this wonderful shelter of the Queen of Heaven, and he became even sweeter, even closer to Nikolai Alexandrovich’s heart. But the world did not forgive him for this wedding, just as it did not forgive him anything in his life: Nikolai Alexandrovich, with Diveev and his emerging family, remained completely alone in this world. So Seraphim, with fatherly love, eradicated everything secular in him, compassionately but steadily leading him to the spiritual alone. And the world had something to gossip about and there was something to push Motovilov away from about this wedding. But in the person of his wife, he found the fullness of the joy of life - she was his “true sister both according to the forefather Adam and according to the Lord Jesus Christ.” After the wedding, the young couple moved permanently to Tsylna, Motovilov’s Simbirsk estate. Mental illness, as it is now customary to call the serious illness from which Nikolai Alexandrovich suffered, did not manifest itself in anything, at least it did not manifest itself in the painful form that he suffered in Voronezh. Only some kind of persistent melancholy gnawed at him from time to time, each attack of which was alleviated by the Holy Mysteries and pious trips to distant and nearby monasteries - to Kyiv, Voronezh, Zadonsk, Sarov and Diveev. These were the favorite places of his diligent pilgrimages. But other holy places of Holy Rus' also attracted his God-loving soul. No wonder St. Seraphim called him “your love for God.” Wherever he had been during his Christian life, whom had this man, burning with faith, seen!.. His second benefactor, Anthony of Voronezh, rested peacefully in the Lord. But, an orphan in the world, Motovilov did not remain orphan in the world of spiritual improvement: he lived in close communion, one might say, with all the true pillars of Orthodoxy of that time. He did not look for them at the heights of the hierarchy, but in the deserts, dens and abysses of the earth. There, in the hidden, mysterious silence, invisible to the hostile world, in the inner desert of the monastery fence, he found those unknown workers of the great Christian spirit, of whom the whole world is unworthy and with whom the little-seen, modest monks and nuns of Orthodox Russian monasteries still shine. In his free time from traveling on business in Diveev or on pilgrimages, Motovilov devoted himself to memories of Seraphim: and if at the present time the life of the saint could be compiled in such detail and carefully, then Orthodoxy owes this most of all to Nikolai Alexandrovich. While serving Diveev, he never tired of serving Seraphim. Meanwhile, in the mysterious depths of the century, difficult events for Russia were emerging - the Sevastopol War was approaching. Motovilov reacted in his own way to the national disaster: whoever wanted and who didn’t want to listen, he told everyone that the time had come for repentance, that the “vial of the wrath of the Lord” was ready to be poured out on Russia for betrayal of all domestic foundations and, mainly, for betrayal of Orthodoxy. They looked at him like he was crazy and ridiculed him in his eyes and behind his eyes and, as best they could, insulted him. At the first shot, aimed at the Sevastopol bastions from enemy ships, he sent the Emperor, to be sent to Sevastopol, a copy of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of all joys”, in front of which he prayed all his life and in a feat of prayer the Monk Seraphim died, and in a bitter foreboding he awaited the wrath of God. Events proved that Motovilov was not mistaken. In Motovilov’s notes I had to find an extremely interesting episode from the era of the Sevastopol defense, which remained completely unknown. The spirit of the times tried to hide him from the world that slavishly served him. The great Sovereign Nikolai Pavlovich died. The Sevastopol war is already over. The great days of the coronation of Emperor Alexander II have arrived. Motovilov, along with other nobles, was chosen to be a deputation from the Nizhny Novgorod nobility for the coronation days in Moscow. At one of the evenings with Prince Ivan Feodorovich Zvenigorodsky, he had the opportunity to meet with one of the heroes of the Sevastopol defense, Admiral Pyotr Ivanovich Kislinsky. Motovilov did not fail to inquire what happened to the icon he sent to the late Emperor and whether it was delivered to Sevastopol. Kislinsky answered him: – The icon of the Mother of God was sent from the Emperor, but our Serene Highness 44 did not pay any attention to it, and it was kept in some closet for a long time, until the Emperor himself asked where it was placed. Then they found her and placed her on the North Side, and only the North Side, as you know, was not taken by the enemy. Why are you surprised? We have never done such things before... Once I was with His Serene Highness, and we sat down to play chess. Suddenly an adjutant enters and reports that a messenger has arrived from Archbishop Innocent of Kherson and wants to see the commander-in-chief. Without looking up from the game, His Serene Highness said: – Ask him what he needs? – The messenger said that he needs to see your lordship in person! “What do you need?” asked the commander-in-chief. The Bishop sent me to report to your lordship that he arrived in Sevastopol with the miraculous icon of the Kashperovskaya Mother of God and ordered me to ask you to meet her, as appropriate, at the gates of Sevastopol. The Lord ordered to say: behold, the Queen of Heaven is coming to save Sevastopol. - What, what? What did you say? Repeat! – Behold, the Queen of Heaven is coming to save Sevastopol! - A! So tell the archbishop that he bothered the Queen of Heaven in vain - we can manage without Her! Thus ended his most illustrious conversation with the archbishop's messenger. And then this is what happened: this answer was conveyed to Innocent in all the severity of its rude and blasphemous form. Then the bishop decided: “They don’t accept us, so we’ll go ourselves!” - and ordered the holy icon to be taken ahead of him to the bastions. Suddenly they announce to him that the icon is not coming, that the horses have stopped. “We’ll carry it then,” said the bishop. But the icon did not allow itself to be carried further than the North side. She couldn't be moved. Seeing this miracle, they served a prayer service for the Queen of Heaven on the North Side, and the Bishop took the icon back. What was it like to hear the ardent-hearted Motovilov! 45 The sixties have finally arrived. The long-awaited celebration of the opening of St. by Orthodox believers in Russia took place. relics of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. On the opening day, during the Liturgy, Motovilov stood at the altar, prayed and cried bitterly that the Lord was not sending him the healing that, according to the promise of St. Seraphim, his tormented soul was waiting for. During the singing of the Cherubim, he looked at the high place and saw St. Tikhon on it. The saint blessed the weeping Motovilov and became invisible. Motovilov immediately felt healed. Who can describe the joy of fulfilled faith?! From that moment on, Motovilov no longer belonged to himself, but gave all of himself to serving God. The events of internal Russian life that were changing before his eyes, although they upset him, although he still hated with all his soul the spirit of the times that outraged him, which he never called otherwise than “the spirit of the Antichrist, who is about to come into the world,” he has almost ceased to annoy the world with his denunciations and prophecies. Only once did Motovilov’s hot heart couldn’t stand it. The “best people” celebrated the opening of the then new zemstvo institutions, and, of course, they celebrated, as usual, with a sumptuous dinner. Motovilov was at this dinner. He listened, listened to the florid speeches of the newly born speakers of the provincial parliaments, and suddenly he jumped up with a glass in his hand: “I raise my glass high to the speedy destruction of that institution, the foundation of which you so solemnly celebrate.” If it does not perish, it will destroy Russia. I raise my glass high to smash it to the ground so that no one can say - I drank from Motovilov’s glass for the death of Russia! He broke his glass and left the festive dinner. Thus ended the entire political career of the last of the Mohicans of the old noble Russian spirit. The last years of his life Motovilov finally gave himself up to wandering. Throughout the vast expanse of Great Rus', his red fur coat was seen. So they called him “the gentleman in a red fur coat.” From Tikhon to Mitrofan, from Seraphim to the groove of the Queen of Heaven in Diveyevo, from Anthony and Theodosius to Alexander Nevsky - through all the holy places, with a thirst, an unquenchable thirst for the shrine, this servant of the Mother of God and the Seraphim crossed and moved. Over the years, what people called oddities in him increased more and more. According to Diveev, which he loved to the point of self-forgetfulness, in any weather - whether it was cold, rain, or sunshine - he always walked with his head uncovered, considering it a sacred duty to walk around the entire canal of the Queen of Heaven at least once a day. When there was icy conditions and it was impossible to walk along the rather high shaft of this ditch, he got down on all fours and so on all fours and walked along this sacred place for him, along which, as the Monk Seraphim said, the Footsteps of the Queen of Heaven Herself passed. Some laughed at him, and there were many of them, too many; Well, there were also those who cried with emotion. Who understood, of course. For Christ's sake, the holy fool of Diveyevo, the blessed one, the great servant of God, Pelageya Ivanovna Serebrenikova, considered him one of her own and called him Nikolka. - You're crazy, Nikolka! “As crazy as I am!” the blessed one used to tell him. And she loved him! One morning in March or April 1878, Motovilov told Elena Ivanovna his dream: – Today, mother, I saw the Queen of Heaven in a dream. She looked at me mercifully and said to me: write to Zosima in Zadonsk 46 so that he sends you an exact copy of My icon, which serves as an altarpiece there. When you receive it, I will lead you to such holy places that you have not yet seen, and I will show you such holy saints of God that you have never heard of. - So, mother, I’m thinking of writing to the governor and abbot of Zadonsk - let him send me this icon. -Where are you going to take her? After all, our entire image is hung with icons!” Elena Ivanovna answered him. So he wrote to Zosima. Zosima, a friend of Nikolai Alexandrovich, responded to this letter as follows: “I know that you no longer have a place in the figurative. The image is large and, sorry, I can’t send it to you.” “My Motovilov became sad here,” Elena Ivanovna told me. But not even a week had passed, again a letter from Zosima: asking for forgiveness for the refusal and writing that before he had time to send his letter of refusal, the very next night he saw in a dream the Queen of Heaven, threateningly reprimanding him how he dared not fulfill Motovilov’s request. “The icon,” he writes, “will be sent to you as soon as we paint it.” We received this icon in July. My Motovilov found a place for her. I looked - he began to put this money under the icon. Wrap it in paper and put it away. So the day, and the next, and the third. Well, I think, he’s going to holy places and collecting money. So a lot of time passed, and he still didn’t go anywhere. Once I entered the room where this icon hung: lo and behold, the money that he had been collecting for so long was lying on the floor. I shout to him: - Nikolai Alexandrovich, and Nikolai Alexandrovich! So you will collect money, you will have nothing to go to holy places! He came to my call, collected the money, counted it; he seemed to turn a little pale, but didn’t say anything and hid the money in the table. After this, a little time passed, my Motovilov fell ill, went to bed and began to grow weaker and weaker - the doctors could not determine any illness - and nine days later he died; did not die, but fell asleep quietly, like a child. On the day of his death he received Holy Communion. Only then did I understand what kind of holy places and saints of God these were, which the Queen of Heaven promised to show him. Three days before his death, I found him in the morning so cheerful, so joyful. “I saw,” he says, “our yard is full - all my holy benefactors have gathered in our yard.” What a joy! And on the third day he died. We buried him in Diveyevo, and it seems to me that how much money Motovilov collected for the image, that’s how much his funeral cost me.” I heard this story from Elena Ivanovna. And here’s what I heard from the cell attendant of the late Diveyevo Abbess Maria, mother of Elizabeth: “Nikolai Alexandrovich, leaving before his death for the Simbirsk province to his estate, was completely healthy. Saying goodbye to us, he said: “Well, goodbye, mothers! God willing, even sideways, drag me to your place.” We saw in these words that Nikolai Alexandrovich was talking about the life of the next century, about the monasteries prepared by God for Diveyevo. But it turned out that he predicted his death. They brought him to bury us, according to his will. They wanted to bring it into our Church of the Nativity, but the coffin was large and could not fit through the doors of the church - they are narrow here, you know - and they had to be brought in sideways; so they dragged it sideways.” Motovilov's death occurred on January 14, 1879. By this time, in Diveyevo they were waiting for the icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands, which was supposed to be sent from the war by the brother of one of the Diveyevo nuns. This nun kept running to Blessed Pelageya Ivanovna to find out if the icon would be brought soon. They didn’t know about Motovilov disease in Diveevo. “Just wait: first they will bring Nikolka, and then the icon,” answered the blessed one. And so it happened. The body of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov, a servant of the Mother of God and Seraphim, was brought for burial to Diveyevo, and the icon was brought after him. Thus ended a long-suffering life. This is the story of Motovilov. He was blessed, and he died blessedly. Some will laugh at this story, and some may even think bitterly. Oh, how I wish my reader could ponder this story! Letter from N. A. Motovilov to Emperor Nicholas I 47 All-merciful Sovereign! As a result of my loyal desire to have the good fortune to most humbly personally report to Your Imperial Majesty about the prophetic words of the great elder Seraphim, the Mr. Minister of Your Highest Court, Count Vladimir Feodorovich Adlerberg, instructed me to refer to Count Alexei Feodorovich Orlov 48, and they conveyed to me so that I, without being at all embarrassed by any fear, everything that I know from I outlined this subject on paper in its entirety and the full essence of it in words as short as possible, and if I could, I would not seek the happiness of personally most submissively reporting this to Your Imperial Majesty. This is the meaning of the form in which Your Highest will was conveyed to me, Most Gracious Great Sovereign Emperor, but how to balance the space with brevity, the safe ease of an oral all-subject report with the inevitable caution of presenting the same thoughts on paper, and finally, what to think about the proposal not to look for an opportunity, even for one moment, to enjoy the so desired for every loyal subject of yours and the highly desired happiness of seeing your blessed face The Most High Person of Your Imperial Majesty, when your magnanimous availability, Most August Monarch, is so great that it does not hide you from the very last of your loyal subjects. They tell me that the vagueness of the current situation of our Fatherland involuntarily becomes the main reason that it will hardly be possible for me to be honored with the greatest happiness for me to personally see you, my unfeignedly beloved Monarch from the bottom of my heart. But are two, three, or even four minutes sufficient, perhaps, for the High Monarch’s favorable listening to the words of the great elder Seraphim - words that are hardly just in the current state of our Fatherland and should be brought to the knowledge of Your Imperial Majesty - will take so much time away from your great concerns about the steadfastness of your power, and how the words of the great elder can be a hindrance happiness of the Russian land, when they are from him only, for your Highest Person, without whom there cannot be happiness on the Russian land, and they relate only. And was it ever possible that what I put down on paper was brought to your attention, even one word of my truth, without it being either misinterpreted or completely abandoned as a complete default, in the hope that I would never, in any way, be honored with the happiness of seeing you personally, Sovereign, and reporting everything to you in absolute justice. And don’t be so kind as to think that I dare to express myself so all-submissively, without having any reason for it. No, Your Imperial Majesty, no one more than me has an undeniable right to such a way of thinking, although very unpleasant for me, but nevertheless inevitably forced from me by inevitability. To prove my real words, I should only, at least in brief outlines, gradually tell all the circumstances of my life, which served as both the main and accompanying and final motivating reasons for this, but in order not to really use your most merciful Highest attention for evil, I will only dare to give one example: Your Imperial Majesty probably knows the case about the two Diveyevo women's communities - the essence of that case, officially stated, is available in the Holy Governing Synod, this case began at my request, but is it officially presented as in fact everything related to it was set out by me on paper; here is the shortest account, my own, of its true and real essence. The Yaroslavl landowner, Colonel Agafya Simeonovna Melgunova, nee Belokopytova, tonsured at the Kiev-Frolovsky convent, a nun of Alexander, was honored in a dream to receive from the Mother of God a notification that she should not end her life in Kyiv, but go to the North of great Russia, and there the Queen of Heaven will show her the place where, after her death, with the favor of the Mother of God, a monastery of virgins will be built, to which She will bring down Her blessing from Iberia, Athos and the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, equal to those three holy places with Her heavenly blessing 49 . Nun Alexandra saw the second appearance of the Mother of God in the Nizhny Novgorod province of the Ardatov district, in the village of Diveevo, on the very place where the great elder Seraphim later built the two-altar Church of the Nativity of Christ and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The old lady of God, after many years of monastic labors spent near that place, finally, six months before her death, settled with three sisters opposite this place, about which the Queen of Heaven told her in a vision that it was exactly the one that would belong to the great monastery predicted for her in the Frolovsky Kiev-Pechersk monastery, and dying, she gave the commandment to the hierodeacon of the Sarov desert, Seraphim take care of the spiritual well-being of the one who, according to the prophecy of the Mother of God, once had the foundation of that great monastery. After her death, at the place of her residence, others gathered to those sisters who came to her and remained after her, and a community was founded that contained a charter and prayer rule, the same as the rule of the Sarov Hermitage. Meanwhile, the hierodeacon, later Hieromonk Seraphim, succeeded in spiritual and monastic deeds during a seventeen-year desert life, where he was honored to endure fasts - 3 days and 7 days, two, three, four and six weeks and finally 72 days - and after that he fought with demons for 1001 days and 1001 nights and received a complete victory over them, about which I myself passed on from mouth to mouth. And after all that, after five years of silence in retreat, having achieved complete, like the prophet Moses the Seer of God, grace-filled internal and external illumination, he decided to take up the improvement of the above-mentioned community, which was under the leadership of Ksenia Mikhailovna Milovanova, and wanted to teach them the simplicity of life and the easiest acquisition of the grace of the Holy Spirit in exactly the same way that he had learned from many years of his own grace-filled experience, but she became little to him obey, saying that they had already been given a charter by the builder Pachomius, the head of the Sarov Hermitage, and she did not agree to innovations, believing that by observing the previous charter, she and her sisters would be saved; and the great elder Seraphim, looking not for his own siblings, but for his neighbor, left them alone and turned to the former, completely separated from any communication with anyone, desert dwelling, but the Mother of God appeared to him, ordered to start a new and second community in Diveyevo in a field near that village of only girls with the condition that widows should never live in it, gave this community a new one and nowhere experienced, and She Herself invented and laid down the statute, communicated orally during Her appearance to the great elder Seraphim, and at the foundation of the new monastery she ordered him to cut down a two-stage mill from the Sarov forest and attach a cell to it in the order indicated by Her Herself; from the previous community to take the sisters indicated by name by Herself, and then add to them only those whom She Herself deigns to indicate to him, and in the place mentioned above, where Her second appearance to the nun Alexandra was, to build in honor of the Nativity of Her Son our Lord Jesus Christ and Her own, a two-altar church, in which to serve as deaconesses to serve the altar, to choose from the newest community of Her maiden sisters, and the most to subordinate the church to the department of this maiden community, promising that his own relics, as well as the relics of the first Alexandra, would one day rest in the lower Nativity of Her church - and, adding many other predictions about this second maiden Diveyevo community, he ordered that the place of the estate of this community be surrounded by a ditch and a rampart made by the labors of the community sisters - that all by the great elder Seraphim fulfilled - and in Diveyevo, from the time of the establishment of this new community, nicknamed the Mill, there began to exist two monasteries, completely separate from each other, not at all subordinate, although not deprived, however, of Christian communion; and from these two communities, by a special appearance of the Mother of God, on the night of September 3, which happened to him, on September 4, he commanded me on behalf of the Mother of God Herself to serve his own virgin community and, joining my hands with the hands of two sisters of this community, said to me: “Just as the Mother of God handed over this community to me from hand to hand, so I, by Her command, transfer my service to this great monastery after your death, so serve To the Queen of Heaven throughout your life and preserve everything in it, as the Mother of God herself deigned to arrange in it through me, poor Seraphim. And this coming summer we will work with you on these three beds.” Having announced to all the sisters that the Mother of God had appointed me to be their nourisher throughout my life, he sent me off to Voronezh. Upon my return, I learned after his death that in Diveyevo there are two communities, and in Kulikovo, Tambov province of Temnikovsky district, a third begins, with the blessing of the same great elder; and having taken upon myself, according to his commandment, to serve his own community, the Mill Maiden Diveyevo, and according to my own, not without the will of God, which would take a long time to explain here, and two others, I wrote to Mr. Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Governing Synod, Count Nikolai Aleksandrovich Protasov, dated January 14, 1838, about the existence of three different communities named above, and about various their benefit separately for each donation of my lands; and finally, being a special grace-filled healing on the night of June 1 to June 2, 1842, granted to me from a serious bruise throughout the body and a dislocation of the left leg and two ribs in the left side, he certified that my request from June 1, 1842, was fair and pleasing to God with the order to send it without fail to the name of the Right Reverend John, Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas; I not only sent her then - and the Right Reverend immediately to the Holy Governing Synod, but also after that, with repeated requests for compliance with all my conditions for the donation of land, laid down by me and tending only to the observance of the commandment of the great elder Seraphim and the indispensable will of the Mother of God Herself through him, first, and then directly through the last, third, grace-filled endowment announced, I repeatedly insisted on the return to both Diveyevo communities of their former identity, and through this the indispensable, forever undestroyed, through their dispensation, the all-perfect fulfillment of the will of God, violated by the unjust union; and I expressed all this not in words, but on paper, referring to the laws themselves - which spoke in my favor - and did this not through some lower and secular place, but through the Holy Governing Synod. And through such a great place and all my above-mentioned daring and fair insistence, forced from me only by the fear of God and love for the Mother of God, I tried to bring it to your Highest information, but what was the crowning of all such long-term and persistent efforts of mine? My conditions were ridiculed, I myself was exposed as fussing about, I don’t know what, the union of the communities was attributed not to a false report about their existence, forced by the unfair insistence of one of the members of the Holy Governing Synod, but to the Highest will of Your Imperial Majesty, although from you, however, the entire correctness of the present state of affairs of the Diveyevo two communities is completely hidden by various false interpretations of the will of the great elder Seraphim and slandering me; and through whom was all this done? Through the Holy Governing Synod, and the slander against me was raised - through a senator! How, after all this, forgive my question, Your Imperial Majesty, will I dare, through a written statement on paper, to most submissively bring to your Highest attention the secret of Divine prophecies about you and your Russia, whereas I was commanded to faithfully convey it only mouth to mouth. If you deign to doubt me, whether I am some kind of traitor and whether I dare to trouble Your Imperial Majesty with evil intent, then I will most humbly dare to present to your all-August attention, Great Sovereign, what kind of blood flows in my veins from my father’s side, Motovilov’s. My ancestors - Slavic rulers, equal in rights to the present nobles, were honored to participate together with Gostomysl in the calling of Rurik, Sineus and Truvor to reign over the Russian land, which, although only I know from our family traditions, is not subject to any doubt, and with Pozharsky and Minin there were also two Motovilovskys. My ancestors, during the liberation of Moscow and Russia from the Poles and then during the elevation to the All-Russian throne of the All-August House of Romanov, from them, from Eusebius Semenovich Smirny-Motovilov, the governor of Irkutsk or Tobolsk, my great-grandfather, court councilor Mikhail Semenovich Motovilov, who worked together with Field Marshal Minikh in the overthrow of Biron and opened in The Sarov Hermitage is the act that the Empress Tsarevna Elisabeth Petrovna needed upon her accession to the All-Russian throne, and throughout the almost thousand-year period of their nobility in the Russian state, the Motovilovs, serving as captains and colonels, centurions of rifle regiments and governors of advanced regiments and in regional cities that are now provincial, never betrayed either God, or the Sovereign, or The Fatherland, having served both One, and the other, and the third always with faith and truth, and on the maternal side, I dare, pointing to the late foreman Nikolai Alekseevich Durasov and all those descended from his sisters, to conclude that she is from the same family and, having been raised in his house, had the good fortune to repeatedly enjoy the high favor and all-august attention of your great grandmother, Empress Catherine Great, which was also honored by my parent, who began his service at the highest court of Her Majesty and was forced to retire only due to his serious illnesses, which depressed him throughout his entire life. Forgive my madness, Your Imperial Majesty, if I dared to remember the merits of my ancestors, but I myself did not deign to do anything useful for you, Great Sovereign, and once again, most graciously, kindly ask me one question, what if each of the great dignitaries surrounding your throne were given in life at least half of the obstacles with which I was removed from the opportunity to be useful to Your Imperial Majesty, then could they at least do something good for you? And if no one prevented them from serving you, Great Sovereign, then why was it that I was not only not allowed into public service for 14 years in a row, but even now, and on my second visit to your northern capital, they suggest that I not seek personal all-subject representation to Your Imperial Majesty, while you yourself do not deign to hide yourself from the last of your soldiers? Please generously forgive the sincere simplicity of my loyal speech, and if you can, then do not reject, I once again beg Your Imperial Majesty, my persistent request to most mercifully allow me to verbally report to you the words of the great elder Seraphim, who told me about you, Great Sovereign, that you are a Christian at heart, which very many do not dare say about themselves, that Seraphim, to whom it was announced from God that his death would be similar to the death of the seven youths who slept in the Ephesian cave. And what has been made clear to me about him is that he will rise before the general resurrection from the dead during the reign of Your Imperial Majesty and only for you, Great Sovereign, about which to everyone in the fullness of everything and the above, having explained in complete justice, out of the duty of an Orthodox Christian loyal conscience, that I am ready to confirm with an oath, I completely surrender myself to the all-August will of Your Imperial Majesty, and If you most mercifully deign to allow me to reveal to you a secret, which I did not exaggerate the value of only because I only wanted and wish to allow the most submissive court of all to make a real and fair assessment of it, then I will constantly thank the Lord, who has put it in your heart, in time to listen favorably to my loyal speech about it. If not, then having endured it for twenty-two years and not revealing it to anyone, I will take it with me to the grave with a reproachable conscience for hiding the talent entrusted to me from the Lord through His great servant Seraphim. Your Imperial Majesty's most loyal slave, titular councilor, honorary warden of the Korsun district school, member of the Nizhny Novgorod-Ardatov prison committee and candidate for the position of Simbirsk conscientious judge Nikolai Alexandrov, son of Motovilov. I have temporary residence in St. Petersburg, 1st adm. frequent 1st quarter in Bolshaya Millionnaya Street in the house of Countess Zubova, near Mozalevsky No. 4 Letter to Emperor Nicholas I [Word by the Great Elder Seraphim] All-August Monarch, All-Merciful Sovereign! Having had the good fortune personally to see with my own eyes the Highest Command of Your Imperial Majesty about the most submissive report of the words of the Great Elder Seraphim on paper, I hasten to immediately fulfill your Most Sacred Will for me. Here is the content of his conversation on Easter Thursday, 1832: - Having told in detail about Elijah the Tishbite and about Abishai, the military leader of David, about Gideon, the leader of the Israeli people, he concluded that in Russia there are still many people faithful to God, although spiritual depravity distracts many from God, and, saying that it is necessary to serve the kings, since Abishai, who was ready to sacrifice his own a hundred times for David’s life, and adding that, like Gideon, the people of God need to wait for the call and election of God, and then, acting according to God, do not despair, even if their zeal for the Fatherland did not receive proper appreciation, for love for the Tsar and the Fatherland is pleasing to God, and if people did not appreciate it, then God will reward him - he asked me what exactly draws me to St. Petersburg; I said that it was my desire to serve Your Imperial Majesty there; why there, and not in another place, I answered that, being closer to you, in case of need, I would be immediately ready to shed to the last drop of my blood, if it were necessary for your All-August health, and to be, if possible, to help God as much as possible, useful to the Church of Christ. He answered: “Your zeal is pleasing to God, and He will not leave you for it, but since, according to the word of the prophet - in a favorable time you listened and on the day of salvation you helped you - then zeal, although for God and not according to reason (that is, prematurely), is not only displeasing to God, but is also a sin. So now your journey is not on the road - and this is your very zeal for the Emperor, if people who are unkind to him find out about him prematurely, it can harm you, but take care of yourself. Don’t worry about the Sovereign, the Lord will preserve Him. He is a Christian at heart, which some even great spiritual persons cannot say about themselves. Great was the Sovereign Emperor Peter I Alekseevich, for which he was rightly named Great and Father of the Fatherland, and by faith in the Lord he could not be compared with the faith of His Imperial Majesty; Judge for yourself: Peter the Great lived in a time when the leading boyars valued the Tsar’s property with just one glance, as if it were the mercy of God, and everyone silently submitted to the Tsar, so it was easy for him to rule. But now the people are no longer the same, and if, despite all this change, they obey the Sovereign and his enemies tremble, then our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and the Mother of God help in everything for the unfeigned faith of his Orthodox faith, it is with this that he is above Peter the Great and for this reason God helps him in everything and in his days he will so exalt Russia above all her enemies that it will become above all the kingdoms of the earth and not only we will no longer have to learn anything from foreigners, and they will also have the opportunity to visit our Russian Land and learn from us the Orthodox Christian Faith and pious life according to this faith; and at first there will be many, many griefs for the Sovereign and they will repeatedly look for his consecrated head and the belly of the Royal Family, but the Lord will always protect him and his entire August Royal House; for the sake of one righteous man, an entire clan is saved, which he says for the sake of three, and in his sovereign family, look, your love for God, how many holy relics are from his crowned flesh and blood, I think that there are more than a dozen saints of God, so they are all prayer books for his clan and his sacred Imperial Person; Even if his most august parent, the most pious Empress Maria Feodorovna, is like a dear mother to all orphans and the needy, and this is the work of saints only for God-wise wives, and if something is great in a simple person, especially in a sacred, crowned Royal person, it is pleasing to God, and the Sovereign, who died in God, was his most august parent, Emperor Pavel Petrovich, how he loved the Holy Church, how he honored her holy statutes and how much he did for her good, few of the Russian tsars, like him, served the Church of God; and the Lord will help His Imperial Majesty and even much more to do for our Holy Orthodox Church and the one true, immaculate Apostolic Ecumenical Church of Christ in the whole universe, but before that, both the Sovereign and the Russian Land will have to endure a lot of grief; not only external enemies will rise up against him, but also internal ones, and this is how it will be: the rebels who rose up against the Tsar upon his accession to the throne boasted that although the grass was cut down, but the roots remained, although it was not according to God that they boasted about it, but this, however, is true, for the main leaders of this evil intent, having betrayed those whom they themselves had drawn into this evil intent their own, but they themselves remained on the sidelines, and so they are and will be looking for the destruction of the Sovereign and his entire Royal Family, and will repeatedly look to see if it is possible to somehow get rid of them, and when their repeated attempts do not succeed, they will move on to something else - and they will try that if it is possible for them, then in all government positions there would be all people who either agree with them, or at least are not harmful to them. And they will in every possible way restore the Russian Land against the Sovereign; when even then they do not succeed, since they will want to, because in some places the private disturbances they are starting will soon be stopped by the grace of God, then they will wait for a time when it will be very difficult for the Russian Land without that and, one day, one hour, having agreed in advance about this, they will raise a general rebellion in all places of the Russian Land; and so many of the employees will then themselves participate in their evil intentions, then there will be no one to appease them. And at first a lot of innocent blood will be shed, its rivers will flow across the Russian Land, many of your brothers, nobles, and clergy, and merchants who are disposed towards the Tsar will be killed; but when the Russian Land is divided and one side clearly remains with the rebels, while the other clearly stands for the Sovereign and the integrity of Russia, then, your love for God, your zeal for God and for time. And the Lord will help the just cause: He will stand for the Sovereign and the Fatherland and our holy Church, and the Lord will preserve the Sovereign and the entire Royal Family with His invisible right hand and give complete victory to those who took up arms for Him, for the Church and for the good of the indivisibility of the Russian Land; but not so much blood will be shed here as when the right side standing for the Sovereign receives victory and catches all the traitors and delivers them into the hands of justice. Then no one will be sent to Siberia, but everyone will be executed - and here even more blood will be shed than before, but this blood will be the last, cleansing blood, for after that the Lord will bless His people with peace and will exalt the horn of His anointed David, His servant, a man after His own heart, the most pious Sovereign Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich - he was also established and will even more confirm His holy right hand is over the Russian Land. So why should we be discouraged, your love for God: if God is for us, whoever is against us, God foreknew them, these he chose, these he chose, these he sanctified, sanctify them, these he glorified, and he watches over them; Why should we be discouraged, your love for God, if God is for us, who is against us - understand the pagans and submit, as God is with us, those who are able, submit, as God is with us, and if you are able, you will be victorious, as if God is with us - so, your love for God, God is with us, and there is no way for us to lose heart.” In indescribable joy, I just wanted to say: “So bless me, father, I will go to St. Petersburg now and try to see the Emperor and most submissively report your words to him,” and he, covering my mouth with his hand, said: – Don’t you understand: not now, but after; now is not yet the time, but later, when through the prophet you see Jerusalem, things will be different. The Lord Himself will then lead you and He Himself will put it in your heart to speak good things about Jerusalem. And now you must take care, and the Lord will preserve the Sovereign and bless him and the Russian Land with every blessing, both on earth and in heaven; At the same time, mouth to mouth, report all my words to His Majesty - then say what you now think. I asked what; he answered: “Everything that is for the good of the Sovereign, the Holy Church and the Russian Land, God will then put in your heart - then do not be afraid and tell it all to the Imperial Majesty, and as you have already repeatedly said: the Lord and the Mother of God themselves will arrange your path for good, and the poor Seraphim’s prayers to Him for you will be with you everywhere.” That’s all, Your Imperial Majesty, that Father Seraphim deigned to speak about Your Imperial Majesty in this unforgettable conversation for me and added, “that the Lord will prolong the days of your life for many years and in your venerable old age will grant you a peaceful and holy death, like those of the most august ancestors of Your Imperial Majesty, who with faith and truth pleased God." Here I should also remember how, after the death of the great elder Seraphim, I myself was told about his resurrection from the dead - and this was confirmed three times: in 1835, in 1847 and in 1851, but I don’t know whether Your Imperial Majesty would like to know about it. After that, having most submissively explained in the shortest words I could about the conversation of Father Seraphim and falling at the highly sanctified feet of your feet to the face of the earth, I most humbly, loyally and slavishly beg you, Great Sovereign, that I dared to bother you with the most submissive request, mouth to mouth, to announce all this to Your Imperial Majesty - this really was and in fact, the desire of the great elder Seraphim. Most mercifully forgive me. Your Imperial Majesty's most loyal slave, titular councilor, honorary warden of the Korsun district school, member of the Nizhny Novgorod-Ardatov prison committee and candidate for the position of Simbirsk conscientious judge Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov. I have temporary residence in St. Petersburg, 1st adm. frequent 1st quarter, in Bolshaya Millionaya Street, in the house of Countess Zubova, at Mozalevsky No. 4. Memo to Emperor Alexander II Original draft, written on April 15, 1866, during my serious illness, in the village of Rozhdestvenskoye, Tsylnya, and To His Imperial Majesty To the Most Pious Autocratic To the Great Sovereign Emperor Autocrat of All Russia, To the All-Merciful Sovereign In 1854, when Your Imperial Majesty was the Sovereign Tsarevich, Heir to the All-Russian Throne, I had the good fortune to submit to you a memorandum about some of the misfortunes of my life, mainly in the cases of my litigation with the Tatars of the villages of Malaya and Bolshaya Tsyln and the village of Besturleev Vraga, Tlanka, and also about those granted to my ancestors my, Arzamas residents Kirill and Daniil Motovilov, lands, in 1703 and 1704. And with your own hand, the Great Sovereign, you wrote on that note: “Help Motovilov.” But Your Imperial Majesty’s Highest command, which I issued to the Landmark Office regarding those matters, has still not yet been fulfilled. And at my request, a memorandum dated October 20, 1861 addressed to Mr. Minister of Internal Affairs about permission for me to open the activities of my Spasopreobrazhensky Bank and on the same subject another memo dated August 13, 1861 addressed to Metropolitan Isidore to the Holy Governing Synod about permission for me to build on my, from the benefits of this bank, dependency Cathedral of the Mother of God Joy of all Joys in Diveevo, neither one nor the other has yet answered me half a word. And it’s impossible to talk about other matters - so all my zeal for the benefit of Your Imperial Majesty is drowned out, that, for example, according to my papers: 1st - to Adjutant General Baron Wrangel on one sheet about a possible tax and urgent need for the burned city of Simbirsk, and 2nd - to Senator Zhdanov about the truly essential and main cause of the Simbirsk fire and the tireless preparation by the well-known party of that all-Russian revolution, about which the great elder Seraphim said back in 1832, on Easter Thursday, that through the reforms, which had a Decembrist conspiracy to be established in Russia, it would happen and about which my own handwritten note on two pages, in 1854 in the month of Martyrium, submitted to His Imperial Majesty, should be kept in III Department of His Majesty's Own Chancellery, then on one sheet of paper to Baron Wrangel and this last one, on 4 sheets, to Mr. Senator Zhdanov, absolutely nothing has been answered so far. Whereas my last paper is of high national importance, because when asked by His Excellency, how will I prove that the Polish revolt and all other petty, but nevertheless all-destructive Russian revolts are an adjustment to only one Decembrist-Russian agitation and who are the main Decembrists. I answer: that they are explained in precise and clear clarity in the 1862 edition of Ryleev’s life, published in Leipzig. And what is most surprising is that the great elder Seraphim himself, in 1832, at four o’clock on Holy Easter, speaking about the Decembrists, deigned to directly remember all of them by name and therefore, in fact, did not let me into St. Petersburg, that these people, having learned my great devotion to the Sovereign Emperor, your most august parent, and my complete lack of solidarity with their the church and monastery - ruinous, regicidal and anti-Christian-abolitionist trends, they will not only not allow me to see the Sovereign, they will not give me any promotion, but they will completely wipe me out from the face of the earth. For even though they completely surrounded the throne of His Majesty Sovereign Nikolai Pavlovich, he is a Christian in his soul, and it is only this great true faith in God that is his only defense from all of them. It is my duty to report to my all-subjects that in submitting to Mr. Senator Zhdanov the last, 4-page draft report (for for some reason he was not pleased to allow me to copy it completely), I was excited not by the charming, but by the true apparition in a dream in God of the late Sovereign Emperor, your parent, who promised to tell you about this apparition as well. sacredly. A vision, extremely significant and no less important, which I saw many years ago on the night before the capture of the famous fortress of Kars by the troops of Your Imperial Majesty. When he, the great Sovereign, deigned to console me with the assurance that he was not only completely forgiven, pardoned, saved, blessed by the Lord God, but also placed near the great elder Seraphim. And I heard about the Decembrist all-disastrous actions from himself and, even more in detail, from Father Seraphim himself. Before submitting the paper to Mr. Senator Zhdanov, as you most graciously deign to see from the attached descriptions of these visions, he ordered me to act as Father Seraphim predicted in 1832, as stated on two pages of my note about the Decembrists, exposed by the great elder Seraphim, twelve years ago most dutifully presented through Count Orlov. And even after that, according to a special, sacred and secret notification from the great elder Seraphim, given to me on April 1, 1865, about the death of Lincoln, although not an ardent one, but still an abolitionist. And as he, the great Father Seraphim, expressed it, the Lord and the Mother of God not only do not like such terrible oppression, ruin and unjust humiliation, which the Decembrists, ardent abolitionists, who prevailed over everything, are happening everywhere in Russia, but also the very insults of Lincoln and the North Americans, the Southern States of slave owners, are completely displeasing to the goodness of God. And therefore, on the image of the Mother of God, the Joy of all Joys, which, according to the command of him, Father Seraphim, was sent to the President of the Southern, namely the slave-holding States, was ordered to be signed: “To the destruction of Lincoln.” But I admit frankly that, having remembered the request of the Most Reverend Philaret to soften the words in my memorandum on June 1, 1861 against the grievances of Bishop Nektary, which were contained in the apostolic expression: “Breathing forgiveness and murder - not a word in a very angry mood,” I dared to weaken the power of the divinely inspired, sacredly secretly spoken speech of Father Seraphim to me and signed: “For all-victory over the serpent, Lincoln, and the northern abolitionists,” or complete all-possession over the entire North, etc.; in detail, exact lists of both sacred signatures under both images of the Mother of God are presented to both the President of the slaveholding States and Pius IX in exact copies. So, I will continue that in addition to him, father Seraphim, it is sacredly secret, but for me it is quite clearly commanded on behalf of the Lord to Your Imperial Majesty to most submissively report that regarding the Eighth Ecumenical Council it is extremely urgent at the present time, as, firstly, for the unification of the holy Churches of God under the single head of Christ the Life-Giver and under a single The Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos, so, secondly, a complete and complete anathematization of all the abomination of deviation from the holy universal faith of Christ, or the abolitionist leveling of everything in the world, that is, in Russian - Decembrism, and in ecumenical - Freemasonry, Freemasonry, Illuminism and all their Jacobin thrones of the church and monasteries of saints, ruinous and regicide bar-persecutive government - all basely godless and completely anti-Christian, concentrated mainly in the lodges: Simbirsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg - for Russia, New York - for North America, Calcutta - for the East Indies, London, Frankfurt-on-Main, except for small lodges of Swedish, Prussian, German, Austrian, Italian and others, worldwide headed at the Union Club in Paris - as in the universal centralization of everything ungodly, anti-monarchical and pan-revolutionary in the world. Even though in April 1865, Your Imperial Majesty should have sent me another third icon of the Mother of God, Father Seraphim, the Joy of all Joys, but that you already have two of them, dated 1854, most submissively presented to you by me. And one in Sevastopol, and the other in the large Winter Cathedral of your Imperial Palace, then I was only ordered, with decent filial, loyal reverence, to most submissively beg Your Imperial Majesty, would it please you to remove it from careless storage somewhere in the sacristy 50 and magnificently place this Divine in your church in a decent icon case? the cathedral, opposite the local main one, near the royal gates of the icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, in similarity with that in a separate icon case, opposite the local icon of Christ the Savior. And since an ulcer is coming to St. Petersburg (that is, cholera, and perhaps the ulcer of conspiracy, which manifested itself with a shot on April 4, 51, which I explained about this on July 27), would it be most merciful for you to order you to deign to deign to perform a decent priestly service and everywhere lithium and blessing of water, and sprinkling with holy water and Surround your Winter Palace and all of St. Petersburg with this icon, go around your entire capital and residence. And the Lord, both in 1854 and now, will completely deign to hide both you and your northern capital from the all-destroying ulcer, and during the priestly service and the tour of both the palace and St. Petersburg, so that the same two paraklesises will be sung in honor of the Mother of God to Her, our Lady Ever-Virgin Mother of God Mary, of which I mentioned back in 1854 year told and frankly through His Excellency the Minister of the Imperial Court reported most submissively. And then even more humbly and on behalf of Father Seraphim himself, who appeared to them as a great elder then, on April 1, 1865, and later. All this has been written by me so far in my serious illness, lying, indeed, on my deathbed. And the night from April 15 to 16 stopped this draft of my manuscript. And the next day, April 16, from the stories of the peace mediator, Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich Ukhtomsky, I learned about the vile and vile act of the scoundrel calling himself Karakozov. I can’t say who he really is, but I was infinitely sad that they were testing him to see if he was in his right mind. And all the noise of celebrations, speeches and other things ad infinitum, because of a deep feeling that internally disapproves of all this, I dislike to infinity. What I would have written next in my last short note dated April 14 or 15, 1865, most loyal, I cannot now say, but I have two dreams, or better yet, visions, about the Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, who died in Bose, on the morning of this July 27, and forgive me for using such a bad pen, but I will write anyway. The first dream was on the eve of the capture of Kars. After the death of His Majesty, the same revolutionary propaganda parties began to spread all kinds of slander against him. And although I was deeply convinced, confirmed by the words of the great elder Seraphim about him, that all this was a lie, nevertheless, my heart was endlessly sad about my unforgettable king Emperor, benefactor. And so I see a dream: Sovereign Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich and Empress Alexandrovna Feodorovna seem to be entering the small dining room of the Winter Palace, where I, by the highest command, had the good fortune to be invited. And the Emperor said to me: “For a long time, during my lifetime, I wanted to treat you with our royal bread and salt, but I didn’t succeed, then eat with us now.” His Majesty the Sovereign Emperor seated me on the right side of the round table, and Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna seated me on the left side. And when I began to eat, I saw that he, like Archbishop Anthony, began to chew quickly, and I thought: “And how the Emperor eats on both cheeks.” And the deceased His Majesty smiled, turning to me, and said: “Well done! Firstly, you shouldn’t even think so impolitely about the king and your master, but I know that you didn’t think out of malice. And secondly, you yourself told me on behalf of the great elder Seraphim that I am a Christian at heart. But do Christians die - they are according to Christ the Giver of Life and are always alive themselves, so I too rested for a while, until the future common Resurrection of all from the dead in the flesh, but in my soul and spirit I am alive, healthy and in the mercy of God and am not only forgiven of all my sins, for there is no man who will live and not see the death of sin - but also saved, and pardoned, and in all things resolved forever. And not only blessed by the Lord God, but for my great love for the great elder Seraphim and placed near him in the Kingdom of God. And what you wrote to me about the regicidal thirst for Decembrist revolutionism, Elder Seraphim now conveyed all this even more and in great detail (that means, before the capture of Kars). But why didn’t you tell me in detail then?” And I answered: “Your Imperial Majesty! If, having despised Count Orlov’s slander against me and spat on his warnings, you had then most mercifully deigned to allow me to have a secret audience, then I would have fearlessly had the opportunity to most submissively convey to Your Imperial Majesty not only what God-revealed I had the good fortune to learn from the lips of Saint Seraphim about Decembrism, but also what, Being guided by his divine instructions and the constant help of God during many years of wandering around Russia, I had the opportunity not in word, but in deed, to learn about the further course of this godless and royal agitation. For after the release, which you most mercifully granted me in 1833, from under arrest in Simbirsk, through the Minister of Justice Dashkov, all true Christians accepted me as a martyr for the faith of Christ. For I was unjustly arrested for my healing in Voronezh on the 1st day of October 1832 and for writing a full service and akathist to Saint [Tikhon] Mitrofan, and hitherto not allowed by the Holy Synod to be published, and for my imaginary, seemingly short accomplice with Alexei Petrovich Ermolov, and with Mikhail and Alexander Nikolaevich Muravyov, and Andrei, their brother, whom I, together with Norov, who later became my personal boss, Minister of Public Education, from 1854, in the simplicity of my heart, called my companions in traveling to holy places. Then, I repeat, the slaves of Christ considered me a martyr for the faith, and the slaves of the Antichrist and revolutionaries, reformers without reforms, considered me a great conspirator, but escaped arrest, they also took me for their fellow revolutionary and were extremely frank with me.” “Yes,” His Imperial Majesty deigned to answer me, “and the great elder Seraphim told me about this.” But as for the fact that you wrote to me in your letter that you never told anyone about this before 1854, this is not entirely true. “Yes,” I answered, “forgive me, Sovereign.” I got excited and in my ardor forgot that when other conspirators, also getting excited and making mistakes, often declared their desire to exterminate your entire august imperial family, then I, in the words of the great elder, whom they still respected despite their revolutionary spirit, had the good fortune to dissociate them from their royal plans. “That’s the same thing,” said the Emperor, “the great elder Seraphim also told me about this.” And we remember you and often talk about you, and wish you in everything for the benefit of the Church of Christ, our Imperial House and all of Russia, brilliant and completely victorious, insurmountable success in everything. Here is the whole, in all its wonderful detail, great dream on the eve of the surrender of Kars, about which I gave a brief note in 1861 through Princess Varvara Arkadyevna Gorchakova, along with some anecdotes about Suvorov, which I heard in childhood almost from my uncle, Suvorov’s Colonel Tishchenko, and told the former Governor-General Alexander Arkadievich Suvorov-Rymniksky. But here is a description of another, also wonderful dream, on the eve of 30 days before the execution of the second, shot for the Simbirsk fires, before the arrival of Senator Zhdanov in Simbirsk. I saw that I was in Simbirsk (living, however, on the occasion of the burning of Simbirsk on my estate and the place of my homeland, Simbirsk district, the village of Rozhdestvenskoye, Tsylnya, too). And that, as if by the highest command, they are calling me to the Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, who died in Bose, at the Simbirsk Pokrovsky Monastery. And I went straight to the small wooden chambers of the late Right Reverend Anatoly, where later on some occasion the Right Reverend Eugene was located, assuming that the Sovereign Emperor had probably already deigned to stop, but behind the cemetery they showed me a small, neat outbuilding, like a deserted hermit’s cell, opposite which in the front garden, beautifully decorated with magnificent flowers, the Sovereign Emperor deigned to sit Nikolai Pavlovich, on the very chair of Emperor Peter the Great, located in St. Petersburg in Monplaisir, from which His Majesty ordered everything to be done during his reign [unintelligible], then in this and His favorite place of Peter Velikovsky’s solitude. When I had the good fortune to approach His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor deigned to say to me: - What does this mean, Motovilov, that during my life you yourself volunteered to serve me, and now I myself call you, but I still won’t get it. Is it really possible that you, imitating others, decided to change us too?! - No, Your Majesty. But no one told me that you would deign to demand me. “Ah,” said the Emperor, turning to those around him, “isn’t my argument with you fair that you are lying about Motovilov, as if he forgot me and my Imperial House, the holy Church and our holy Russian land.” Well, thank you for showing up right away. I knew you and firmly believed that I was not mistaken about you. As soon as the Sovereign Emperor deigned to say this, then just diagonally from this place, near the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Mother of God, the earth shook over the tomb of our last holy fool Andrei Ilyich (about whom there is a story about his life in the magazine “Strannik”), and he came out from under the lid of his cast-iron monument, resurrected from the grave and, performing his usual foolishness, waddling from side to side, in his motley red shirt, and uttering the usual sounds: “Ah-ah-ah,” he began to approach His Imperial Majesty directly. And the Emperor, deigning to stand up and fold the first three fingers of his right hand in the Orthodox Christian folding of the fingers, and crossing himself correctly, and not with a handful, the usual example of some, deigned to say: “Well, thank God, these two (which means counting me among Christ for the sake of the holy fools) will now help in everything.” And as soon as he deigned to most graciously pronounce this royal speech, His Majesty was informed that from His Imperial Majesty, the most piously reigning Emperor Alexander II Nikolaevich, a courier with dispatches had arrived to him. And they hand him four of my manuscripts, half folded and in four colors - white, rose-red, blue and green, cross-tied with wide silk ribbons. And the Emperor, turn to me, deigned to tell me: – And these are your papers, you know their essence. And I, as I once told you, know them even better than you from the stories about them by the great elder Seraphim, and I myself and my son will begin to analyze them. Well, you begin to act as the great elder Seraphim commanded you to act in our favor. “With the greatest joy, with all my soul, I am ready to serve Your Imperial Majesty.” But that's not the point. It is necessary that I not only have the highest permission, but that none of the ministers, like the Minister of Finance Brock, should no longer interfere with me in anything in the service of Your Imperial Majesty. You and your most august son, and your entire imperial family, which of them you would like to allow into your secrets, should know what I intend to do for God, for you and Russia. And I will try to do even more than I promised and promise with the help of God. But your ministers, except Count Vladimir Feodorovich Adlerberg, have no right to this, and if this were so, then long ago everything ungodly and evil would have been exterminated by the grace-filled means indicated to me by God through the great elder Seraphim. But since the death of Your Imperial Majesty, in spite of all your love and all your mercy towards me, and instead of you, conveying to me your two bows through the Minister of the Imperial Court, you conveyed to me the words that you remember me as one of the first figures in the war on the Eastern Question, and I am humiliated, rejected. I am oppressed, cut off like a dog, and my life in the rank of a conscientious judge is worse than any hard labor - then how can I in any way serve God and you, and Russia, according to the words of the Lord indicated to me through Seraphim. After all, like Elijah the prophet, the priests of the revolution, the Decembrists, the tsar-suppressors, the enemies of God, the Tsar and the Russian kingdom are looking for my soul. - Well, don’t worry about it anymore. I'll fix it all myself. And I will tell my son Alexander for you. See, fulfill and fearlessly serve us with faith and truth. – I am ready and will, with God’s help, serve God, you and Russia. To serve as the great elder Seraphim instructed me through divine revelation, and the great Seraphim convincingly asked. Ended on July 28 - the day of the Hodegetria of the Mother of God and the name day of Father Seraphim. 1866. This essay was compiled by me on the basis of the handwritten memoirs of N. A. Motovilov, supplemented by conversations with his widow, Elena Ivanovna, and the sisters of St. Diveyevo monastery. This image belonged to N.A. Motovilov’s father, Alexander Ivanovich, as the eldest in the family, but during Nikolai Alexandrovich’s childhood orphanhood, it went to G.N. Motovilov. Nikolai Alexandrovich mourned this image all his life, but could not achieve its return. In general, it should be noted that in the Motovilov papers that I got for analysis, there was a terrible disorder - as if someone’s hand, out of spite, had frayed, scattered and torn these manuscripts, which often concealed the most precious messages. "Conversation about the purpose of Christian life." Continuation of Motovilov's manuscript. The reader can see how justified Motovilov’s fears were from the latest articles included in the book “Great in Small.” Famous hieroschemamonk of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, who had Emperor Alexander I. Now Bishop of Chisinau (1911). Novice of Sarov. Those interested can have detailed information about him in the Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery. The significance of Motovilov for Diveev is sufficiently clarified in the chronicle. His portrait attached to this chronicle with the inscription: “Benefactor of the Diveyevo Monastery” indicates with sufficient force that the covenant of Fr. Seraphim was fulfilled by him to the end. The Motovilovsky stud farm was at one time very famous in the Simbirsk province. He presented the shesterik to Sovereign Nicholas I as a gift, for which Motovilov was given a wonderful diamond ring from the Sovereign's office. Something similar happened during the last unfortunate Japanese War with the icon of the Queen of Heaven “On Two Swords,” intended by the vision and faith of the donors to protect Port Arthur. Port Arthur never saw this icon within its walls. Zosima was the governor and abbot of the Zadonsk Monastery in the seventies of the last century. On the letter is the resolution of Nicholas I. His Majesty’s own hand is written in pencil: “March 15, 1854. If he, as a loyal subject, has not forgotten his oath, then he must fulfill my order and convey on paper what he has to say to me: then I will decide whether I should call him or not.” Nikolai. Confidant of Emperor Nicholas I, later chief of gendarmes and head of the III department (1844–1856). Her blessing, common to all these four places, is that She promised to be personally in each of these places for three hours every day - and would not allow any of their inhabitants to perish. and how now, with the permission of the cocellar of this Council, I saw it cracked, but excellently and then graciously preserved under No. 537. (Note by Motovilov). The assassination attempt of the terrorist Karakozov on Emperor Alexander II. – (Comp.) .