Глава XV
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The bishop’s denunciation of the harmful trend in the “Orthodox Interlocutor” coincided with his other opinions and attitudes, which aroused opposition to him in the rector of the seminary, Archimandrite German. A young man, hot-headed by nature, not alien to his class antipathies, he began to manifest them with harshness, to the point of oblivion of decency.
So one day at a dinner with the Right Reverend, where besides him there were the seminary inspector Archimandrite Isaac and the cathedral keymaster Archpriest Granikov and from the laity the brother of the Right Reverend who ruled the province, Archimandrite German heatedly spoke about landowners' rights as an evil, as if arbitrarily invented and practiced by the nobility and calling for fair punitive measures proposed by the articles of the Bell, a completely socialist way of thinking.
Another time, also indecently heated, in the house of the Eminence, in front of strangers, he began to challenge against the Eminence the latter’s thought and conviction about the need to teach the Tatar language in theological schools and the seminary of the Caucasian diocese, which he canceled and, contrary to the order of the academic authorities, arbitrarily replaced these hours in the seminary with the teaching of French and German.
Such a mood. the rector was explained by his rapprochement, on the one hand, with the director of the Stavropol gymnasium I. M. Neverov, a man of the direction - in religious terms - Protestant, in secular - in the Herzen direction, and decidedly hostile to both the bishop and his brother, the head of the Stavropol province Brianchaninov, who denounced and rebelled against his system of educating youth, in which Neverov set the goal as development freedom of thoughts, without constraining them with any critical analysis. On the other hand, Fr. Herman became close to Archpriest Krastilevsky, in whose family he found a pleasant way to spend his free time from classes.
In February (9th day) 1859, No. 1859, the chief prosecutor of the Synod demanded, through the bishop, the opinion of the seminary board and the bishop himself on the needs of the Caucasian seminary on the subject of its educational improvement. On May 4, No. 38, presenting the rector’s opinion on the above issue, the bishop, finding this opinion very solid in many respects, limited his own comments to the following 212:
"1. It is necessary to locate seminaries in remote parts of the city, so that the students of the seminary have as little contact as possible with the students of secular schools, so that they are removed from secular amusements, and meanwhile have every opportunity to enjoy not only a walk, but also the contemplation of the greatness of God in nature.
2. It is necessary that daily divine services be performed in the seminary according to the noble monastic rules and conducted by a series of thirty or forty people; this will not distract students from studying science, but will familiarize them with church services in good time and provide them with many church concepts about various subjects of theology, which is difficult to obtain during ordinary service in parish churches.
I have noticed during my monastic life that splendid service has a special effect on young people and leaves an impression on them for the rest of their lives: it instills in them a feeling of special reverence for everything related to the Church. This remark is supported by the observations here: in my Church of the Cross, a monastic service has been established; on holidays, in addition to the singers, the students of the seminary are invited to take part in the performance of the magnificent service with the greatest zeal, even with fervor, which clearly expresses the beneficial effect of such worship on their souls.
3. The teaching of extensive church history is necessary. Such teaching will give the pupils a decisive Orthodox direction, while today in many there is a noticeable direction that is vague: because of such an indefinite direction, they cannot have a strong influence on those of other faiths. The “History” of the Right Reverend Innocent is a more extensive table of contents of history than history: it does not at all express the characters of historical persons. For this reason, the impressions it makes are extremely weak.
4. It is necessary to eliminate the currently taught psychology, borrowed not from church sources, but from sources that are contrary to the Church. Experience shows that people who borrowed their knowledge from the psychology textbooks taught today cannot in any way come to terms with those concepts about the human soul that are delivered by the holy fathers of the Orthodox Church, who acquired knowledge about the soul from enlightenment from above.
5. Finally, for the Caucasian Seminary it is necessary to develop the teaching of the Tatar language, which is commonly used among all mountain peoples. The Kalmyk and Ossetian languages are much less needed. I set out this in detail in my report to the Holy Synod for 1858.
On May 11, 1859, the bishop, leaving on a tour of the diocese, in accordance with the desire personally expressed by Archimandrite Herman to pay special attention to the bishop's choir, in letter No. 40 informs him that he has made an order on this subject, given to the regent, subdeacon Alexander Verbeke, to treat, according to the orders of the singing choir, Fr. Archimandrite Rector.
But this was the last expression of an effort to support the rector in a proper and reasonable relationship with the bishop. The bishop had already noticed Krastilevsky’s influence on the affairs of the Consistory on the opinions of Archimandrites Herman and Isaac and attributed this to their respect for Krastilevsky’s experience in office work, which he mentioned in his report for 1858. With the departure of the bishop, Archimandrite German made an unauthorized order for the seminary to cancel the teaching of the Tatar and Ossetian languages at the Caucasian Seminary at the beginning of a new course and at the same time took a patronizing part in the Consistory in the affairs of Archpriest Krastilevsky. The totality of his hostile actions caused the idea about him made by the bishop in relation to Prince S.N. Urusov, who was correcting the post of Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, dated June 18, 1859, No. 54. We present its full contents 213.
To my chagrin, I must inform you that the rector of the Caucasian Theological Seminary, Archimandrite German, turns out to be extremely young in mind and heart and therefore incapable of holding the position he holds. Due to the weakness of his character, he becomes an instrument of ill-intentioned people, and when he submits to such influence and direction, then, due to his ardor, he acts with rashness and heat. Currently, he came under the influence of Archpriest Krastilevsky and became his strong tool, not realizing that Krastilevsky sees benefit only for his intrigues in restoring the rector against the bishop, undoubtedly associated with harm to the diocese, which is what Krastilevsky needs. All my admonitions were rejected by the rector with disdain and mockery.
He asked twice for my petition to the higher authorities to dismiss him from his position. I persuaded him, I postponed the fulfillment of his request, but now, seeing in this measure a necessary condition for the peace of the diocese and the salvation of the rector himself, I have the honor to submit his desire to your Excellency, humbly asking for the satisfaction of this desire.
Personally, I forgive the rector for all his unseemly actions regarding me, because I see in them the passion and recklessness of a simple-minded, inexperienced young man - this is how I understand the rector, who submitted to the influence of insidious people who looked with envy and fear at my sincere disposition towards the rector. I fell in love with him, I love him and wish him all the best: I sincerely regret that he rejected my love in order to submit himself to such people who are accustomed to plotting intrigues with their neighbors and then laughing at the misfortune of their neighbors, who entrusted themselves to their leadership due to their inexperience. It is with a heartfelt cry that I write these lines, but the feeling of the heart must be subordinated to prudence. Admonition became necessary for the rector for his own well-being, earthly and heavenly.
Upon my ordination as a bishop, while still in St. Petersburg, I petitioned for the appointment as rector of the Caucasian Seminary of its current inspector, Archimandrite Isaac, but upon closer examination of local circumstances I find that in the Caucasian diocese, in which both the Consistory and the Seminary were in unrest at the same time, a rector is needed in mature years, with experience, with a monastic pious direction: the Caucasus is the place revelry and courage, morally formed people are needed here.
This submission remained without consequences, as evidenced by the petition on the same issue - on the teaching of Tatar and Ossetian languages in the seminary - to the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod dated September 21, 1859, No. 94. 214 The Bishop writes:
“In the Caucasian diocese and in the Linear Cossack army there are several thousand Ossetian Christians, whose fellow Ossetian Mohammedans express an inclination to accept Christianity. For this reason, His Eminence Jeremiah took care to introduce the teaching of the Ossetian language at the Caucasian seminary, and since tribes speaking the Tatar language live along the entire border of the diocese, the teaching of the Tatar language was introduced at both the seminary and the Stavropol district school. The need for teaching the Tatar language was outlined in detail by me in my report to the Holy Synod for 1858. Under the Reverend Ioannikis, less attention was paid to the teaching of these languages. The rector, Archimandrite Herman, who came here with me, found it necessary to completely abolish the teaching of these languages and replace them with the teaching of French and German.
When I reviewed the diocese in 1858, I was practically convinced of the obvious benefit of the priests’ knowledge of the Ossetian, especially the Tatar, languages, as set out in my report, and of the uselessness of their knowledge of French and German, for in the Caucasus region even secular people are very little familiar with these languages. The Kazan Academic Board also ordered the Caucasian Seminary Board to support and develop the teaching of the mentioned oriental languages and rejected the rector’s proposal to replace them with the latest languages.
For the Ossetian language, it was extremely difficult to find a teacher. The student Kuzmin, who completed the course at the Caucasian Seminary, due to extreme illness, turned out to be incapable of holding the position of teacher, and His Eminence Eusebius, Exarch of Georgia, who was ordered by the Holy Synod to find a teacher of the Ossetian language for the Caucasian Seminary, notified me on July 14, No. 594, that among the students of the Tiflis Seminary of previous courses there is no one willing to take the position of teacher Ossetian language at the Caucasian Seminary.
For these reasons, necessity forced us to pay attention to the priest of the Caucasian diocese, John Sinanov, from Georgians, who spent his childhood in an Ossetian village, studied at the Caucasian seminary with the goal of subsequently becoming a teacher of the Ossetian language, graduated in the second category according to the moderation of his abilities and success in other subjects of study, but received a very good certification in the Ossetian language. This person, due to the vague circumstances of the diocese, was evaded from his appointment and is now a parish priest in the village of Novo-Mikhailovskoye. I invited Sinanov to my place and offered him teaching of the Ossetian language, which Sinanov still speaks fluently, at the seminary.
After this, I proposed this to the seminary board so that at the same time Sinanov would be given a position as a teacher at the Stavropol district school, since there is no way for Sinanov and his family to support himself on the salary of an Ossetian language teacher (225 rubles). The reason for this proposal was that in Stavropol itself, with a population of eighteen thousand, there are only three parish churches, with eight archpriests and priests. In addition to parish activities, they are burdened with other responsibilities, for the fulfillment of which they barely have enough strength and time. Why is there no possibility of giving Sinanov a place as a parish priest in Stavropol, both for the reason stated above, and because there is no reason to deprive any of the mentioned eight clergy of the place they occupy, of course, to take them to the village, without extreme offense to that person.
Since I cannot expect unanimous action in the form of general benefit from Fr. rector of the seminary, Archimandrite Herman, then I humbly ask Your Excellency to submit my proposal for the consideration of the Holy Synod. At the same time, I have the honor to add that, besides priest Sinanov, there is no other person to teach the Ossetian language in the diocese, on which sole basis I recommend Sinanov, earnestly wishing that over time a more satisfactory person would be prepared.
With feelings of complete respect,” and so on.
Such a review of the hostile mood of Fr. Rector Archimandrite Herman was not the first statement about him caused by the actual opposition of the archimandrite to the bishop. Regarding the affairs of the Consistory, the same mood of the rector was expressed in the cases of Archpriest Krastilevsky, in which we find the attitude of the bishop to the chief prosecutor of the Synod dated June 5, 1859, No. 48. The bishop writes to Prince Urusov 215:
“The clash known to the Synod between the former member of the Caucasian Spiritual Consistory, Archpriest Krastilevsky, who enjoyed the unlimited trust of my predecessor, and the former secretary of the Consistory, Alexander Vasiliev, led the Caucasian diocese into complete turmoil and deprived the Right Reverend Ioannikios of independence in managing the diocese, the power over which Archpriest Krastilevsky seized into his own hands.
Upon my arrival at the Caucasus See, as a result of the verbal and written instructions of the Holy Synod, I paid special attention to the direction of Archpriest Krastilevsky and, having seen from past and current affairs that the direction of Krastilevsky had been decisively formed, that his ability to rule unlimitedly over the bishop, the Consistory and the diocese was incorrigible, I entered the Holy Synod with a proposal to dismiss him from the rank of member Consistory, which my submission was honored by the Holy Synod.
Meanwhile, all means to calm Krastilevsky in the Caucasian diocese remained in vain. As a very insidious person and quite understanding of the matter, Krastilevsky personally did not make any claims against the measure taken against him, but chose the path of intrigue, enticing strangers to act in his favor. This type of action is considered by law to be sneaking. Krastilevsky also included his wife among the figures, who, of course, acts according to his instructions.
The course of action of Krastilevsky and his agents is depicted in the attached report to me from the secretary of the spiritual Consistory. Since the adventure and action described in this report actually and picturesquely depict the nature of Krastilevsky’s morality and activities, I humbly ask Your Excellency to draw your attention to this report and bring it to the attention of the Holy Synod.
Krastilevsky's behavior took on the decisive character of indignation, his actions are covered up with deceit, but the actions of his agents 216 are much more open. I do not lose hope of curbing those who have gone and are going out of order, but not otherwise than with the assistance of the Holy Synod and Your Excellency.
Already the secretary's report will give Your Excellency an idea of Krastilevsky's moral direction. The following extract from a note given to me by former secretary Vasiliev will add to this concept.
“Before the formation of the diocese,” the note reads, “Krastilevsky was a member of the Spiritual Board; after the board was renamed into the Consistory, he was made a member of it. Harassment and exactions from the clergy and biased actions in the Consistory forced Bishop Jeremiah to remove him, and Krastilevsky was not present. There are many cases about him, even about the murder of the superintendent of schools Ustinovsky, but everything ended with money, of which he has quite a lot.”
Driving to the Caucasus through Kharkov, I talked about the Caucasian diocese with the rector of the Kharkov seminary, Fr. Archimandrite Gerasim, who was previously the rector of the Caucasian Seminary. He treated me about Krastilevsky exactly as it was said in the note - he even mentioned the Ustinovsky case. According to my observation, Krastilevsky has the most cruel heart, is cunning and malicious, is resolutely directed towards arbitrariness and self-will, and is capable of the most vile acts and crimes.
The event described in the secretary's report happened after I left Stavropol. I will not hesitate to send to the Holy Synod the entire matter regarding the provision of a place for Krastilevsky after his dismissal from the Consistory. The case shows both the manner of my actions and the character of Krastilevsky.
With feelings of great respect” and so on.
Here is the presentation to the Synod mentioned at the end of this relationship with the affairs of Krastilevsky, it was noted on June 22 under No. 59: 217
“Entrusted to my administration of the Caucasian diocese, Archpriest Konstantin Krastilevsky, who was dismissed as a result of my representation from the title of member of the Caucasian Spiritual Consistory, by decree of the Holy Synod of November 4, 1858 No. 11099, was appointed by me as rector and dean of the cathedral of the city of Mozdok, and as Krastilevsky refused this place, then, when an archpriestly vacancy opened in Georgievsk, was moved to this city by the rector of the cathedral and the dean, but Krastilevsky refused this appointment too. At the same time, Krastilevsky demanded various appointments for himself in the city of Stavropol, which were not possible to fulfill, which is why I decided to present to the discretion of the Holy Synod that Krastilevsky had acquired the skill of unlimited power in the Caucasian diocese and persistently demand that his will be carried out unquestioningly, whether it be correct or incorrect, and therefore ask to move him from the Caucasian diocese to another diocese.
But after this Easter of 1859, upon receipt by the Caucasian Bishop's House of a salary instead of fishing and a mill, according to Krastilevsky's petition to me personally, and Krastilevsky assured me that he would spend the rest of his days in complete peace, engaged in the salvation of his soul, I found it possible to give Krastilevsky a place at the church of the Prison Castle, in which until then worship was held the brethren of the bishop's house and enjoyed the income from it. By this action I believed to fully satisfy the requirement of the high service entrusted to me, which legitimizes me to do all kinds of leniency for my neighbor and endure his infirmities until that extreme moment in which it will clearly turn out that these infirmities are no longer harmful in particular, but for the whole of society.
Krastilevsky did not fail to prove that he was not able to be calm and work on his own salvation, having spent his life in clerical menial activities, the purpose of which was self-interest, various lies and oppression of his neighbors. I had barely left Stavropol to see the diocese when Krastilevsky broke his promise. Before my departure, he intended to go with his wife to St. Petersburg, for which he submitted a petition to me, apparently to bring a complaint against me, as some people from the clergy told me about this - among them the cathedral archpriest - and announced the clergy with threats against me.
There are very clear signs that Krastilevsky has formed a party for a joint action against me, for example, from his petition it is clear that a certain secular person is assisting him with money. The existence of this party, which has its agents in St. Petersburg, became clear when I left Stavropol, and especially after my departure. I had barely left when Krastilevsky sent his wife and her brother, an official, to St. Petersburg.
The image of this lady’s departure is depicted: 1) in the report to me from the secretary of the Caucasian Consistory, which report was forwarded by me to the city holding the post of synodal chief prosecutor dated June 5, 1859, No. 48; 2) in a letter to me from Archpriest Krastilevsky dated June 11.
This letter, which is also attached, 218 is a wonderful document: in it Krastilevsky picturesquely depicts himself. Krastilevsky outwardly presents himself as both righteous and offended, meanwhile, in essence he admits that he released his wife without the permission of the diocesan authorities, having delivered her a certificate from the police, that is, an illegal appearance. From this letter it is clear that Krastilevsky is very dissatisfied that the unauthorized absence of his wife became known to me. In general, in this letter the ill-intentioned and unscrupulous clerk of the past time clearly portrays himself: this letter is a faithful example of all Krastilevsky’s clerical works. This letter is completely inconsistent with the secretary's report.
Since Krastilevsky’s actions are carried out in front of the entire clergy, I suggested that the Consistory consider this behavior of his. The consistory could not receive any answer from Krastilevsky, which they presented to me in a protocol signed by four members, not signed by the rector of the seminary, Archimandrite Herman, which has its own significance, and by the key leader of the diocese, Archpriest Granikov.
Seeing the absolute need to curb Archpriest Krastilevsky, especially for the entire diocesan clergy, and convinced by the very experiments in my understanding of him that he will not calm down in any way as long as he is in Stavropol, I humbly ask Your Holiness to move Krastilevsky to another diocese, since in the Caucasus, where he was the complete ruler for several decades, it is very difficult for him to be outside of this situation.
At the same time, I have the honor to attach two files about Krastilevsky: the case of the unauthorized absence of his wife and the above-mentioned letter from him to me, adding that Krastilevsky, from the time of his dismissal from the rank of member of the Consistory to this time, has not left Stavropol anywhere and no compulsion has been imposed on him to leave for Mozdok and Georgievsk.
The system of Krastilevsky's consistory activity is set out in his letter and the secretary's report: it consists in the constant removal of the bishop from his power, in the assimilation of this power to himself under the guise of the episcopal name, that is, in complete self-will. Krastilevsky and his students are drawn to this system.”
On July 6, 1859, under No. 65, we find a proposal given by the bishop of the Caucasian Spiritual Consistory 219.
“All matters concerning Archpriest Krastilevsky, starting with the decree of the Holy Synod on the dismissal of this person from the rank of member of the Consistory and up to the report to his rector and inspector of the seminary, were forwarded by me to the discretion of the Holy Synod. At the same time, I recognize the following orders as necessary:
1. Archpriest Krastilevsky complains about the biased action of the members of the Consistory of Archpriests, but these members refrained from any decision in the protocol and left everything to the discretion of the bishop, who, in turn, did not consider it appropriate for himself to give any definition on the consistory protocol, since the Consistory did not decide the definition, and submitted the matter to the discretion of the Holy Synod, therefore Krastilevsky’s desire that the members The consistories of the archpriests were removed from matters concerning Krastilevsky, leaving them without consequences.
2. I have given Krastilevsky the opportunity to appear before other members of the white clergy regarding the vow that he personally made to me - to spend his life modestly, in pleasing God and thinking about God - and not so that he would resist the authorities; but since his behavior turns out to be contrary, I find it essential for the hierarchical order to give the members of the Consistory and the dean of the city churches a place above Krastilevsky, as it is provided to them by the Charter of the Consistory.
3. The inspector of the seminary, who accepted the report from Archpriest Krastilevsky, is reprimanded for such abuse of power, for only the bishop and the Consistory have the right to accept papers (Articles 300, 301, 302 and 303 of the Ordinary Spiritual Consist.), and not the member and not some of its members in particular.
4. The rector of the seminary, who refused to interact with the members at the suggestion of the bishop and did not give his special opinion, but allowed himself to accept a report from Krastilevsky, to which he had no right, thereby showing himself to be partial to Krastilevsky and disobedient to his bishop, is subject to a reprimand and is removed from presence in the Consistory pending discretion, with a report of this measure regarding him to the Holy Synod, which I have done.
The rector, by not taking part in the Krastilevsky case, thereby showed disobedience and resistance to his archpastor, without signing any of the protocols, without submitting his separate opinion, and showed his biased attitude towards the case. Consequently, having accepted, without having the right to do so, Krastilevsky’s report, by which this one eliminates the members who fulfilled the bishop’s order, the rector discovered a desire to take the matter into his own exclusive hands and resolve it under the complete and sole influence of Krastilevsky himself, whom the rector, judging by his actions, became an agent, a tool, an accomplice.
5. Although Article 183 of the Constitution. of spiritual Consistories, the rector of the seminary, and therefore its inspector, is not obliged to participate in all meetings and affairs of the Consistory, but from the article it is clear that the charter in this too requires order and orders issued by the diocesan bishop.
The article does not at all give the right to the rector and inspector, due to their intriguing views, either to abandon the matter, or to suddenly intervene in the matter, to enter into a fight with the diocesan bishop, to frustrate his best intentions, to push him away from the management of the diocese, to strive to take his power into his own hands, as Archimandrite German has attempted to do this not for the first time.
6. I propose to the Consistory in pursuance of Article 280 of the Constitution. not necessarily submit all cases for consideration to the rector and inspector, but only the most important cases, and those in which the diocesan bishop will offer these persons participation. Cases in which the rector and inspector did not initially take part should no longer be offered to them for consideration and they should not be allowed to participate in these cases (Article 316). The rector and inspector are obliged to inform me with a report when they are primarily burdened with schoolwork and cannot be in the Consistory, and after a difficult time has passed, they again report to me with another report about the opportunity to take part in the affairs of the Consistory, so that their official relations are a consequence of the requirements of the service, and not a consequence of their intrigue or tomfoolery.
7. The Secretary of the Consistory has to carefully monitor that this order is observed in the Consistory. Moreover, he has to keep a list of exactly what days the rector and inspector are in the Consistory, with a note in which particular cases they took part, and submit this statement to me monthly for consideration. The secretary has to report to me about the receipt of this proposal and its implementation.”
A report to the Holy Synod about this circumstance was issued on the same date, No. 64. In it, the bishop, in addition to the cases about Archpriest Krastilevsky, presented to the Synod in the report dated June 22, 1859, No. 59, presenting documents from the inventory and from other files explaining the person and actions of Krastilevsky, added 220:
"1. From my resolution No. 1629 it is clear that Krastilevsky was given the opportunity to move from Mozdok, where he did not want to be, to Georgievsk to use the income of the St. George Cathedral and to remain in Stavropol as long as his household affairs required him, he did not leave Stavropol anywhere.
2. My resolution of June 3 was put on the Consistory protocol even when Krastilevsky’s wife, without receiving either permission or a passport, left Stavropol; the Consistory protocol itself took place after Krastilevskaya’s departure.
3. The rector and inspector of the seminary did not deign to fulfill that part of my resolution of June 3 that concerned them, which could significantly explain the attitude of these persons towards Krastilevsky: their neglect to fulfill my resolution only reveals their attitude towards the bishop.
4. In exchange for this omission, the rector and the inspector presented in their report dated June 15 the Krastilevsky report sent to them, from which the attitude of these persons to the Krastilevsky case is revealed, of which the inspector is in a state of hesitation, as he did not sign one protocol and signed the subsequent protocol, which has a much more influence on the fate of the case (this protocol was presented by me to the Holy Synod in the report No. 59).
Krastilevsky’s report has his usual direction: he tends to remove the bishop from government, calling the action of the Consistory that followed as a result of the proposal given by the bishop offensive. The members of the archpriest are slandered in this report as allegedly acting in a biased manner, for they did not put any decision in the protocol, but left it to the discretion of the bishop. Just as Krastilevsky himself acted, being a member of the Consistory, when he constantly excluded the bishop from the orders, although hiding behind the name of the bishop, so here he introduces inexperienced young men, the rector and the inspector, into this direction, who even last year 1858, despite all my admonitions, submitted to his influence, as I reported to the Holy Synod in the report for 1858.
Archpriest Krastilevsky is now in a state of obvious and complete indignation, already weakly covered by deceit. The rector, Archimandrite Herman, submitted to Krastilevsky’s influence with all the ardor, recklessness and tenacity of an inexperienced young man. In the case of Krastilevsky, he evades judgment with the other members at the suggestion of the bishop, but according to Krastilevsky’s report against the other members, he intervenes in the case, while expressing clear disobedience and opposition to the bishop, which is why I considered it necessary, among other orders, to remove the rector from being present in the Consistory until discretion.”
In the summer of 1859, the bishop toured the western part of his diocese - part of the Stavropol district and the village of the Black Sea Cossack army, where on the Black Sea shore he lived for about a month in one of the surviving buildings of the Taman customs house and enjoyed sea bathing. At this time, he visited the Greek church in Kerch, where he went to inspect the mineral mud there and traces of the invasion of Russia’s allied enemies in 1855, who captured Kerch-Yenikal and Taman.
Returning from a tour of the western part of the diocese, the Reverend, upon meeting him with the clergy in the cathedral of Stavropol, was unpleasantly surprised that Archpriest Krastilevsky, of his own free will, took a place below priest Burnukovsky. According to the inquiry, which was entrusted to the dean, it turned out that Burnukovsky acted this way at the urgent request of Krastilevsky. Such an act forced the bishop to ask the Synod to transfer Krastilevsky completely from the diocese. In his report dated September 7, No. 88, he reported: 221
“Since Archpriest Konstantin Krastilevsky refused the positions I gave him outside the city of Stavropol, but certainly wanted to have a place in Stavropol and received one of those indicated by him, and having received it, he began to show evidence by his behavior that he could not be calm while in the city of Stavropol, where he stood at the head of the spiritual administration for a long time and dominated without limit, then I had the honor of petitioning the Holy Synod to move him, Krastilevsky, to another diocese, on the occasion of giving an illegal appearance to his wife by him, Krastilevsky, and on the occasion of the behavior that he allowed himself in relation to the diocesan authorities.
In addition, I have the honor to present his behavior with the priest Burnukovsky, in which again the attitude towards the diocesan authorities that he allows himself is revealed, which consists of disobedience to the Consistory and the dean, in neglecting them, in replacing the order of the diocesan bishop with his own order, which has a very harmful effect on all other clergy.
The case I am presenting to the view of the Holy Synod is presented solely for the purpose of more clearly depicting before the Holy Synod the character and spiritual mood of Archpriest Krastilevsky, after consideration of which, I recognized and recognize that the continuation of service to this person in Stavropol has become, as it were, unnatural and impossible. The temptation produced by Krastilevsky has gone beyond the confines of the ecclesiastical department and serves as a subject of bewilderment and conversation for the public. Yes, and giving the priest Burnukovsky a place above himself was obviously done by Krastilevsky with the aim of presenting himself to the public as offended, and the diocesan authorities acting in a biased manner, which, however, deceived a few even from the lower class.”
This submission was left by the Synod without consequences.
In the fall of 1859, the place of rector Herman, who was transferred to Samara to the same position, was taken at the Stavropol seminary by Archimandrite Epiphanius Izbitsky, from the nobles of the Kyiv province, of the Roman Catholic confession. Having completed a course of science at Kiev University, he was about to enter the service as a teacher, but then decided to completely change both his career and his faith. He arrived in Moscow, under the patronage of Metropolitan Philaret, accepted Orthodoxy and monasticism, entered the Moscow Theological Academy, where he completed a master's course in science and entered into spiritual educational activities. During the first time of his tenure, he showed great activity in his position and, under the leadership of the bishop, was introduced into better relations with the local authorities of the civil department, who, in respect of the requests of the bishop, assisted him in finding new premises for the seminary.
The hiring of these took place for twelve years, on the most favorable terms for the seminary compared to the previous conditions: two houses were rented, of which one was the merchant Krutitsky’s, the best and most extensive house in the city, adjoining side by side to the eastern side of the episcopal dacha at the St. Andrew’s bishop’s house church, and the other was the assessor of the Treasury Chamber official Shchedrin across the street, opposite the same church. Significant additions were made to the latter, in accordance with the requirements for the special placement of the seminary institute.
In December 1859, after the conquest of the Eastern Caucasus and the capture of Shamil, the governor of the Caucasus, Prince Baryatinsky, traveled to St. Petersburg through Stavropol, where His Eminence Ignatius met him in the cathedral church and the next day introduced himself to him in his quarters in the house of the governor of the province. The vicar visited him that same morning in his modest bishop's house, newly built with donations. During this meeting, the bishop had the opportunity to personally explain to Prince Baryatinsky the position of the Caucasian See and on this matter gave him a memorial note; during this meeting, the prince viceroy expressed to the bishop his keenest desire and desire to spread Christianity among the mountaineers and his intention to organize missionary work in Tiflis for this purpose.
In extracts from the bishop's annual report for 1858, when he described the Assumption Church in the city of Mozdok, we noticed the miraculous icon of the Iveron Mother of God, taken by the mountaineers from the Kartalin gorges in 1793, which became the subject of reverent veneration not only by the Orthodox Christians of the mountaineers, but also by the Mohammedans themselves.
The dilapidation and crampedness of the church hastily built to receive the icon, together with the triumph of Russian weapons in this region of the Caucasus, with the fall of Vedeno and the captivity of Shamil, and together with the thought of Prince Baryatinsky about the spread of Orthodox Christianity among the mountain tribes, prompted the bishop to the idea of promoting the preaching of the word of God through the medium of the miraculous icon - the apostle, strong in faith, which was established among her mountaineers unshakably. He planned to begin the work by erecting a church, in its vastness corresponding to the large crowd of people who came to the icon and in its decoration - to the high feeling of reverence with which those praying resort to it. He wrote a note about this icon, which he forwarded to the head of the province, asking him to take the lead in the initiative to build this church in the manner given here. 222
“Your Excellency, dear sir!
In the city of Mozdok, in the Assumption Church, there is a miraculous icon of the Iveron Mother of God. The icon is not only respected by the Orthodox population of the Caucasus, not only attracts pilgrims from neighboring Russian provinces and the land of the Don Army, but also among the mountain peoples it is loud and famous for its miracles.
The wooden church in which the icon is placed is very cramped and already dilapidated. For this reason, it has long been proposed to build a stone church. Various circumstances made it difficult to carry out this intention. But these difficulties passed.
Meanwhile, the happiest event in the Caucasus was the conquest of all the mountain peoples of the Left Wing, who unanimously recognized themselves as subjects of the Orthodox Tsar, as well as shortly before that, the blessed will of the Tsar, announced to me by the Holy Synod, that all possible efforts be made to bring the holy Christian faith to foreigners immersed in idolatry or who believe in the absurd teachings and fables of Islamism, open up a vast field for new, very valid considerations. To my greatest consolation, on December 14th I personally heard from the lips of Field Marshal, Prince Alexander Ivanovich Baryatinsky, that His Excellency was taking an active part in the spread of Christianity among the highlanders. Under such circumstances, the effect of the miraculous icon on the highlanders, which is now strong, can incomparably intensify - leading to the most favorable results.
The need to build a stone church is now becoming more tangible and obvious. In order to give this matter a speedy progress, I allow myself to ask Your Excellency that you, having sought permission from His Excellency the Prince Viceroy, stand at the head of this matter, just as the construction of the church in Pyatigorsk was entrusted to Baron Ungern-Stern-Berg. Concentrating all actions under your control will lead to the energetic and rapid fulfillment of your pious intention.
For my part, I am ready to provide all possible assistance. The first evidence of this assistance will be that I take upon myself the care of drawing up a project for a new church. I believe, having depicted here, on the spot, the architectural needs of the church, to entrust the drawing up of the project to the famous professor of the Academy Gornostaev, who built two churches in the Valaam Monastery and the Church of St. Sergius in St. Petersburg, in the Sergius Hermitage, while these monasteries were in my charge.
The Emperor deigned to inspect the first two churches when he visited the Valaam Monastery in 1858 and was very pleased with them, and the church in the Sergius Desert, according to architectural experts, is the first church in Russia in architectural terms. The proposed church in Mozdok, both for its important purpose and as a monument to a great event, will be an elegant work of architecture!
With this, I have the honor to enclose a note about the miraculous icon of the Mother of God.
With feelings, etc. No. 1 January 1, 1860."
A note about the miraculous icon of the Iveron Mother of God in the Mozdok Assumption Church and the need to replace the wooden church with a stone one: 223
“In the Stavropol province in the city of Mozdok there is a wooden church of the Assumption of the Mother of God. In this church, behind the right choir, in the icon case, there is an ancient and miraculous icon of the Iveron Mother of God. Historical information about this icon is as follows.
In the twelfth century, the famous Georgian queen Tamara, after the death of her first husband, the Russian prince Georgiy Andreevich, the son of Andrei Bogolyubsky, entered into marriage with the prince of the Ossetians. Together with her hand, she delivered Christianity to the prince and his people. The pious queen spared neither labor nor expense for the establishment and establishment of the holy faith among the Ossetians. In the country, their numerous ruins testify to the large number of Christian churches that formerly existed in them. The creation of these churches is attributed by legend to Tamara.
Tradition claims that one of the ruins in the Kartalinsky Gorge constitutes the remnant of the church in which the icon of the Iveron Mother of God was placed and kept as a precious gift from the God-loving Tamara to the Ossetian people. Twice the church was destroyed to the ground by fire, and both times the icon of the Mother of God was found intact. For six hundred years the icon remained in the Kartalinsky Gorge.
At the end of the last century, Mohammedanism, through Turkish missionaries, invaded the Caucasus Mountains with the greatest fanaticism - more political than religious. It destroyed among the mountain peoples that weak Christianity that still clung among them - held more nominally than in reality. Ossetians leaned towards Islamism, like other mountaineers.
But they, like all the mountaineers, did not become real Mohammedans. Alkoran is unknown to them, due to the mountaineers’ ignorance of the Arabic language in which Alkoran is written. The Highlanders do not have a translation into Tatar. It is unknown to the mullahs of the mountaineers themselves - they consider it an inaccessible book of the highest wisdom. The Mohammedanism of the mountaineers consists in the observance of some external Mohammedan rites. They were inclined to accept some of the beliefs instilled in them by the missionaries. Most of the concepts of the former vague religion, in which signs of Christianity are still visible, remained with them. The main concern of the missionaries was to convince the mountaineers that their only legitimate sovereign was the Turkish Sultan.
In religiously troubled times, that is, during the preaching of Mohammedanism among the mountaineers at the end of the last century, the icon of the Mother of God kept many families of not only Ossetians, but also Circassians faithful to Christianity - it kept them faithful through wondrous signs. In 1763, our government invited Christian mountaineers and mountaineers who wanted to convert to Christianity to cross the Terek and settle near Mozdok. As a result of the invitation, in 1793, a party of mountaineers arrived at Mozdok on the eve of Pentecost, having with them an icon of the Mother of God.
The icon marked its journey and arrival in the Orthodox city with miracles. His Grace Gaius, Bishop of Mozdok and Madzhar, having learned about the arrival of the famous icon in the Caucasus, went out to venerate it with the clergy, with crosses and banners. The archpastor brought it into the cathedral, intending to give the icon a place of honor here. But the Mother of God, by a special miracle, informed the bishop that She wanted to stay outside the city, at the very place where She stopped and spent the night on a humble Circassian cart (that’s the name of the two-wheeled cart of the mountaineers).
The Reverend Gaius hastened to build a chapel at the indicated location. Subsequently, the parishioners built a wooden church in the name of the Dormition of the Mother of God.
The icon is one arshin and twelve vershoks in height, one arshin and seven vershoks in width. The icon, apparently, was painted on a gold background. Others claim that it was subsequently refinished with adhesive paints. But Mozdok Ossetians claim that it became covered with soot during the aforementioned fires in the Kartalinsky Gorge. The facial features of the Mother of God in the icon are strict, the character of the writing is Georgian. The icon painter of Queen Tamara, says legend, prepared to paint the icon with forty days of fasting and forty days of prayer.
Currently, the Assumption Church has 2,243 male and 2,155 female parishioners. Of these, there are Ossetians and Circassians – 1238 are males and 1153 are females. Ossetians recognize the icon as their property, have a fiery affection for it, which must be handled very carefully and prudently, due to the ardor, determination and ignorance of Asians. The icon is glorious in the mountains. Many Mohammedan mountaineers flock to worship her. Armenians of the Gregorian confession honor the icon along with the Orthodox. The icon performs many healings; under it on a cord hang numerous silver images of members of the human body, hung by those who received healings. Many Mohammedans, amazed by the miracles performed at the icon, converted to Christianity. Very many Mohammedans, for the same reason, having confidence in the icon, also have confidence in Christianity. Icon - apostle.
Exactly! The miraculous icon of the Mother of God performs the service of an apostle in this region, promoting Christianity and testifying to it with signs. It is necessary that people also make efforts, characteristic of them, towards the holy cause of enlightening the mountain people with the light of Christ.
The Assumption Church currently has 7143 rubles 29 1/2 kopecks in the Stavropol Order of Public Charity. Such insignificance of capital should not stop enterprises. Experience has shown that the construction of all churches, begun with insignificant capital, was completed with quite satisfactory success: why the spiritual authorities never stopped allowing the construction of the church, even if the main amount was very small.
The Church of St. Sergius in the Sergius Hermitage was started with a capital of thirty thousand silver rubles, despite the fact that the most valuable materials were used for this church. Its extensive iconostasis consists of expensive Italian and French marble, is decorated with mosaics, has bronze Royal Doors, and in front of all the icons are large bronze candlesticks. The floor is like a single, spread out patterned carpet: it is a solid multi-colored marble mosaic. Painting in the iconostasis and on the walls costs thirty thousand silver rubles, granite work - twenty thousand. The Church of St. Sergius is built in the likeness of the most ancient Christian churches built by the Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine the Great and his successors.
I believe that the new church in Mozdok will be given the same location as the cathedral church in the Great Tikhvin Monastery, where the famous miraculous icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God is present.
It must be borne in mind that at the church, in one connection with the church, there must be baptismal facilities for males and females. And the arrangement of baptisms, the arrangement of an extensive porch for the coming people is very convenient given the mentioned location of the church. In architectural terms, such a project can be poetically elegant. Economically, it will require the least cost, and can be finally built and finished, with the exception of wall paintings, in three years.”
The bishop's proposal was accepted and approved by the prince governor, who sought the highest permission to open a widespread subscription in Russia for the construction of this church. The subscription went very well. Professor Gornostaev sent the design of the building he had drawn up, which was submitted for approval to Prince Baryatinsky and, by his order - after the bishop’s departure to retire - was redone at the Main Directorate.
Having completed his review of the diocese in 1859, the bishop on November 9, No. 105, gave a proposal to the Stavropol Theological Seminary, in which he sets out the needs of the diocese, which he found on the subject of replenishing the personnel of the church clergy. 224
“The Caucasian diocese constantly suffers from a significant shortage of clerks. Inviting priests from other dioceses is associated not only with great clerical difficulties, but also with significant costs that fall on the guardianship, which is inevitably associated with sensitive deprivations for persons of clergy who benefit from the guardianship benefits. The reason for the lack of clerics is that theological schools and seminaries almost never supply them to the diocese.
Further: the diocese - I will say to my greatest consolation - has, with insignificant exceptions, very good priests, especially from the students of seminaries - both in the Caucasus, Tambov and Voronezh. But in relation to deacons, it turns out to be very desirable that they be more educated and more elevated in moral terms. The reason for this shortcoming in relation to deacons is that persons enter the diaconate only from the clergy, and not from the students of the seminary.
Due to these observations and the fact that at present all priestly vacancies have been filled, I propose to the seminary board to increase discrimination in relation to students of both the seminary and theological schools. Pupils with very good abilities, very good achievements in science and very good behavior should be included in the first category; insufficiently good behavior should deprive a very capable student of placement in the first category. Persons who deserve good certification in terms of abilities and successes, and very good ones in terms of behavior, should be placed in the second category. The third category should include persons of fairly good ability and success with very good and good behavior.
Upon the transfer of pupils from the educational department to the diocesan department, priestly places are initially provided to one student of the first category. When students of the first category are placed, then only applications for places of students of the second category can be accepted. Pupils of the third category are provided with full-time deacon positions.
In order to ensure that the diocese does not tolerate the need for clerics, I propose that the seminary board make an order that students both in the seminary and in the schools who turn out to be unreliable in behavior and unsuccessful due to laziness are immediately expelled from the seminary and school and transferred to the diocesan department. Although the works of students participating in the bishop's choir will be taken into account when providing places, but with a fair consideration of success in the sciences, especially good behavior. This proposal should be announced to the students of the seminary and a copy of it forwarded to the Consistory for consideration when I demand from the Consistory information regarding the submission of requests by students to provide them with places.”
In August 1859, with the capture of the Gunib fortress and the captivity of Shamil, the final act of conquest of the Eastern Caucasus was accomplished. The Order of St. Andrew the First-Called was a reward sent to the commander-in-chief who personally participated in this expedition. On August 25, this celebration was celebrated in the Stavropol Cathedral with a divine service and a thanksgiving prayer service. Following the prayer behind the pulpit, the bishop delivered a speech on the text: 225
“The Lord will give strength to His people, the Lord will bless His people with peace (Ps. 28:11).
Godly listeners! These holy and true words were spoken by the divinely inspired prophet, King David of Israel. He won many victories, humbled many of Israel's enemies under Israel's feet, and provided the state with borders that were indicated by the essential needs of the state. After completing a difficult, extensive, glorious feat, David seemed to look back at his victories and conquests and, having examined the goal and fruit of victories and conquests, he saw and recognized God’s blessing in the goal and fruit of them - in the world. The Lord, who gives His people strength on the battlefield, shows His blessing to them in a beneficial world.
Beloved brothers! A similar spectacle awaits our eyes. In the past we see a number of campaigns, a number of bloody battles, a number of loud celebrations. We see the strength of the Orthodox warriors that the Lord placed in their hearts, the Lord, girdle with strength for battle (Ps. 17:40). In the present we contemplate the beneficial action of the world. The event of the prophetic words is repeated before us: They will cleave their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, and the tongue will not lift up the tongue of the sword (Isa. 2:4), for the Lord will bless His people with peace.
What was the first deed of the hero of the king in the first, virgin minutes of the world given by God? Bring glory and honor to the Lord,” the victorious king called out to the victorious people he possessed! Bring to the Lord the glory of His name, worship the Lord in His holy court (Ps. 28:2). Due to similar events, we heard a similar call today and in response to the call we gathered in the holy church to bring thanksgiving and praise to the Almighty and All-Good God, who gave strength to His people, who blessed His people with peace.
The voice of the Lord is on the waters,” the prophet-commander exclaimed in sacred delight, reaching with sword in hand both the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the shores of the Euphrates. The voice of the Lord in the fortress. The voice of the Lord is in splendor, the voice of the Lord breaking cedars, the voice of the Lord cutting off the flames of fire! The voice of the Lord shaking the wilderness (Ps. 28; 3–8). The inspired prophet, in contemporary events in which he was the main figure, saw the will of the Lord, saw the action of the Lord, heard the mysterious but omnipotent voice of the Lord, controlling the destinies of kingdoms and peoples, the destinies of the whole earth.
At the present time, is not the same all-powerful voice heard by every pious listener? The Voice of the Lord on the countless mountains of the Caucasus! The voice of the Lord on the waters, frozen for centuries, with which the heads of the Caucasus are decorated, shining with whiteness and proudly rising above the clouds, as if with the intention of touching the sky! The voice of the Lord over the deep abysses of the Caucasus, over its impenetrable wilds, over sheer rocks and cliffs!
The Voice of the Lord over the diverse peoples of the Caucasus! In vain they hoped in high mountains, in dark forests, in impenetrable gorges, in walls of rocks and cliffs. It was in vain that they were considered insurmountable barriers of predatory self-will! The voice of the Lord!.. And the voice of the Lord changes what has not changed until now. The Caucasus bends the brow to the power that is beneficial to it. Savage peoples are forced to reject violent freedom in order to submit and, following submission, enjoy true freedom. True human freedom consists in man's acceptance and assimilation of the law of Christ (John 8:32).
Let us offer thanks and praise to the Lord for the blessings poured out on us! They are poured out in the strength given to our brothers, Christ-loving warriors, they are poured out in blessing us with the longed-for, happiest peace. Let us offer our warmest prayers for our most pious, autocratic, great sovereign, Alexander Nikolaevich! Through the supreme care of His Majesty, a trustworthy world came into our possession with all its abundant and varied consequences, flowing into one common consequence - the prosperity of the country.
Let us offer fervent prayers for the famous leader of the Caucasian army and ruler of the Caucasian region, who accomplished the great task of conquering the Caucasus - a task on which the first commanders of Russia worked for half a century! May the All-merciful God grant to the chosen leader, crowned with a brilliant feat, to create Christian prosperity on the basis of military success, so that an earthly matter will be at the same time a heavenly matter, a temporary matter - an eternal matter. Amen".
At the end of the year, around mid-December, the commander-in-chief governor passed through Stavropol to St. Petersburg. He remained in Stavropol for two days on military matters that required special attention as a result of the conquest of the Abadzekhs. During this stay, the bishop gave him a note about the needs of the Caucasian diocese with the following content: 226
"1. It is necessary to develop the teaching of the Tatar language at the Caucasian Seminary - as was envisaged when the seminary was established. The Tatar language is commonly used among mountain peoples. Knowing it will make it possible for the Caucasian clergy to have close relations with these peoples and introduce them to Christianity.
2. It is necessary to give salaries to the Orthodox clergy of the cities of Mozdok and Kizlyar. In these two cities, most of the mountaineers converted to Christianity, because of the icons of the Iveron Mother of God in Mozdok and the Life-Giving Spring in Kizlyar, which they respected. The Orthodox clergy in these cities is very poor, since the majority of the inhabitants are Armenians.
Due to the poverty of their contents, only clergy of the most moderate education, who have no hope of getting better places, accept places in these cities. In order to attract people to these places who are satisfactorily educated and therefore able to act with greater force in favor of the Orthodox Church, it is necessary to provide comfortable support. The Caucasian Bishop Ignatius made a presentation about this to the Holy Synod on April 30, 1859, No. 2058.
3. It is necessary for the Caucasian diocesan administration, that is, the bishop with his staff, the clergy of the cathedral, members of the Consistory and the Consistory Chancellery to provide salaries from Western dioceses, since the persons who make up the Caucasian diocesan administration do not have the same home sources of support that are used by the persons of the diocesan departments inside Russia, but are supported solely by the salary received from the treasury. In this respect, their position is exactly the same as that of the clergy of the Western dioceses, which logically proves that they should be given the same content.
Although the bishop's house received, instead of fish traps and mills (which all bishop's houses in Russia have), an annual monetary allowance of 3,800 rubles in silver, the smallest part of this money could be used for the maintenance of persons belonging to the house. All the money is absorbed by the demands of the house and will be absorbed by them for a long time. These requirements are as follows:
1. The bishop's temporary shelter needs to be plastered inside and out, decorated, and furnished.
2. The Church of the Cross needs to be expanded and made convenient for festive, highly solemn, solemn and mourning services in winter, for the city does not have a warm, decent church for these services. The city cathedral is cold, and serving in it in winter is impossible.
3. It is necessary to establish an appropriate sacristy for these services.
4. It is necessary to improve the fraternal premises and arrange a room for singers.
5. We need to start a library.
Upon completion of such installation, the repair of the mentioned buildings, the sacristy, the library, and the singer’s vestments should require the entire above-mentioned amount - 3,800 rubles.
For the purchase and arrangement of premises for the bishop, for the Church of the Cross, for premises for the episcopal staff, for the sacristy and the library, until now during the sixteen-year existence of the Caucasian diocese, not a single ruble, not a single penny has been released from the treasury, despite countless representations from bishops and repeated petitions from the secular Caucasian authorities. Everything that has been done to this day has been done with donations voluntarily brought and requested through collectors from the citizens of the city of Stavropol, from the villagers of the Stavropol province and from the Black Sea Cossacks. They did everything they could. Further burdening them with the delivery of offerings turns out to be quite inconvenient and even impossible.”
Upon the return of the prince governor from St. Petersburg to Tiflis, the Department of General Affairs of the Main Directorate of Relations dated April 13, 1860, No. 2283, notified, among other things, the bishop that the prince governor, while he was in St. Petersburg, petitioned for the assignment of salaries to the clergy of the cities of Mozdok and Kizlyar. The Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod informed His Excellency that the Holy Synod always had this in mind, but could not take any measures to satisfy this, due to the insufficiency of monetary means.
Notifying that this review of the Chief Prosecutor was communicated to him, the bishop, he, in his submission to the governor dated May 9, No. 19, adds 227: “As at present, after the pacification of the Left wing, you deigned to pay special attention to the spread of Christianity among the mountaineers, and Mozdok and Kizlyar are the only points on the Left wing of the Caucasian diocesan department in which appeal of the mountaineers, then I consider it my duty to ask your Excellency, so that you would be pleased to pay your merciful attention to this matter to speed up the issuance of salaries to the above-mentioned clergy. For the means to maintain it are so meager that none of the good-quality and satisfactorily educated members of the clergy expresses a desire to occupy priestly places in Mozdok and Kizlyar, with the exception of the Mozdok Assumption Church, which is more profitable than others.
For this reason, in Kizlyar and Mozdok the priests are of the most moderate education, far inferior to the rural priests of the diocese, and therefore the conversion of the mountaineers to Christianity cannot be accomplished by them with success. I would sincerely wish that Your Excellency, through one of your trusted representatives, would verify the position of the Kizlyar and Mozdok clergy. The poverty under which they groan in vain is incredible. I made a submission to the Holy Synod on the assignment of salaries to the Mozdok and Kizlyar clergy on May 2, 1859, No. 2058. A copy of this submission is attached herewith.
In the same above-mentioned message from the Department of General Affairs of the Main Directorate of the Viceroy of the Caucasus dated April 13, 1860, No. 2283, the department informed the bishop that in response to the petition of the prince governor to increase the salaries of the Caucasian diocesan administration, the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod responded to the permanent estate of the Holy Synod of this circumstance in view of the impossibility at the present time of increasing salaries due to insufficient funds ways. Pointing to this notice, the bishop writes to Prince Baryatinsky dated June 10, 1860, No. 20: 228
“From this, seeing that the Holy Synod finds the note presented by me to Your Excellency to be thorough, I recognize myself as obliged to submit the following for Your Excellency’s consideration.
From the very establishment of the Caucasian diocese, the civil authorities of the Caucasus petitioned (as can be seen from the correspondence preserved in the civil department and in the Consistory) that the required amount of money be delivered to the newly established diocesan department - both for establishment and maintenance. As a result of such petitions, my predecessors, the Right Reverends Jeremiah and Ioannikis, were given 1000 silver rubles in addition to their personal salary and 1500 silver rubles for the maintenance of the house. Nothing was allocated for the establishment.
In such an extreme situation, my predecessors had to resort to the only remedy: an invitation to donations. The Right Reverend Jeremiah was particularly active in organizing the diocese. With his departure, his activities weakened greatly, and many matters became confused. Everything that has been done for the diocesan Caucasus Department has been done using the amount purchased by donations. The diocese was established without any financial assistance from the government. Meanwhile, the capitalist from the merchant class Volobuev, who greatly supported the Right Reverend Jeremiah, died. With the death of Volobuev, donations decreased by much more than half, and subsequently, with the weakening of the activity of the spiritual authorities, they stopped altogether.
Upon my arrival in Stavropol, I found the diocesan department in the most dire situation:
1. Regarding the economic items transferred to the department of the bishop's house, without due certainty and finality, questions arose, and even a process arose regarding the forest dacha, which is briefly known to Your Excellency, since in order to resolve these complications I had to repeatedly turn to your person.
2. The temporary shelter of the Right Reverend - a cramped wooden hut donated by Volobuev, which was already quite dilapidated, fell into extreme disrepair. The bishop's house was in all respects in the poorest position (for, as stated above, the petition for the release of funds for the establishment remained in vain for fourteen years). The position of the people in the house was unspeakably disastrous, for poverty, poverty in the full sense of the word, affected morality, as it always does, harmfully, destructively. This is especially obvious in the case of officials serving in the consistory office, who, due to the poverty of their livelihood, are hungry and naked.
The situation became even more difficult because the issuance of the auxiliary 1000 rubles in silver, which my predecessors received, was stopped. I was left with 280 silver rubles for a year's allowance, while prices in Stavropol for all food items increased unusually after the war. Your Excellency's petitions to provide me with the aforementioned 1000 rubles, which my predecessors received, remained unsuccessful. 1,500 silver rubles, allocated for the maintenance of my own house, were allocated to me only for 1858. Then the release of this money was stopped in the hope that the house would receive money in return for business items from the Black Sea region.
When I arrived in Stavropol, I could not stay in the hut donated by Volobuev due to the complete state of disorder into which it was reduced. The merchant Mr. Stasenkov offered me his house for a six-month period, and the merchants of Stavropol offered to make a donation to repair the hut donated by Mr. Volobuev, for which they collected up to 4,000 rubles in silver.
When they touched the hut, it turned out that the wood in it was half rotten, that it was impossible to repair it, that it was absolutely necessary to build a new shelter. The amount delivered by the merchants turned out to be insufficient for a new building due to the extraordinary high cost of building materials in Stavropol. Why did I have to resort - as my predecessors did - with an appeal to the diocesan churches for all possible assistance from purse sums and collection through collectors. It was impossible to delay, because renting an apartment with a salary of 280 silver rubles, with the cessation of the issuance of auxiliary sums and with the complete breakdown of the economy, was impossible.
With such assistance, gleaned solely within the Caucasian diocese, a very modest, but very comfortable house for the bishop was built. There is no other bishop's house so modest in Russia. But this house, like a wooden one, could not be built and finished completely in one summer. Due to drying and settling, it needs sanding and other significant finishing, as well as furniture. The donated amount was sufficient only for the construction and the necessary furniture. For final finishing and furnishing, at least 4,000 silver rubles are required.
Moreover, the fraternal cells and other services belonging to the house are in very poor condition. It seems especially necessary to spread the Cross Church, located at the house, since the city of Stavropol has an urgent need for a spacious, warm church, in which officials and the public could gather in the winter on holidays and service days to participate in solemn services. Nowadays a solemn service is being held in the church, temporarily built in the hall above the shops of the Gostiny Dvor - extremely inconvenient and already falling into disrepair.
I would be very pleased if the situation I described of the bishop’s house and in general of the episcopal see in Stavropol were awarded the personal view of Your Excellency during your passage through Stavropol, or if it were entrusted to one of the trusted persons serving under Your Excellency. Reducing the needs of the home is impossible. For the number of employees under the bishop is calculated by the government, set according to the staff and cannot in any way be reduced, since with a decrease in the number of employees, the very rite of worship performed by the bishop, determined by the unchangeable charter of the Orthodox Church, would certainly have to change.
I considered myself obliged to present before Your Excellency in such detail the position of the Caucasian diocesan department and the episcopal see that serves as the basis for this department, in addition to the note I submitted to Your Excellency on your passage through Stavropol on November 15, 1859, for the important reason that between many matters and while satisfying all the needs of the newly emerging dioceses (this can be seen from the state of affairs of the newly opened Tauride diocese), Caucasian diocese, if it does not voice its needs and its extremely difficult situation, then its position may forever lose the beneficial attention of the higher authorities. Precisely because silence about a difficult situation can be recognized as eliminating this difficult situation using some home remedies.
On these grounds, I again submit before Your Excellency a most humble request: accept the work, which must inevitably respond spiritually and morally in the most beneficial way to the entire population of the Caucasus! Take upon yourself the work and concern to lead the Caucasian diocesan department from that position of painful uncertainty and hesitation in which it has suffered for seventeen years to its detriment, to the detriment of the Orthodox population, to the detriment of Orthodoxy itself.
With this, I have the honor to enclose:
1. A copy of the 3rd paragraph of the note (with its appendices), which I submitted to Your Excellency on December 13, 1859, for your passage through Stavropol.
2. No. 14 "S. - St. Petersburg Senate Gazette,” from which it is clear that the salary for which I am petitioning for the Caucasian diocese is precisely the one given for the newly established Tauride and was approved by the highest on November 16, 1859, while all food items are incomparably more expensive in the Caucasus than in Taurida.
3. A comparative statement that shows how much food prices have risen in the Caucasus over the past ten years. From this statement you can see in what extremes the people of the Caucasian Diocesan Department are in regards to their maintenance.
The situation of many of them can unmistakably be called disastrous.
Invoking upon Your Excellency the abundant blessing of Heaven with feelings of great respect” and so on.
At the same time, precisely on April 13, 1860, with this formal attitude, the bishop wrote a letter to Prince Baryatinsky in complete confidence. We present it in its full content 229:
“Dear sir, Prince Alexander Ivanovich!
Once again presenting to Your Excellency the petition for the appointment of satisfactory salaries for the Caucasian diocesan department as an urgent need, I consider it necessary to present here, in this confidential letter, some data that explains the matter, but does not have a place in the official paper.
I have no intention of complaining about anyone, like a monk, eliminating every complaint and every grumbling. At the same time, as a bishop, I must explain myself sincerely, because my position, if it acquires a false character, must certainly reverberate very unfavorably in the very performance of my duties, that is, the false position of a bishop must be very harmful for the diocese.
I humbly ask Your Excellency to destroy this letter or keep it without any publicity as written solely by proxy to your noble rules.
The civil history of mankind testifies by a continuous series of facts that human passions have constantly hindered the success of mankind. Envy, ill-will towards one's neighbor, short-sighted pride, seeking to do evil to a person, harmed the cause and society. Unfortunately, Christian church history presents the same sad spectacle.
The holy elder Seraphim of Sarov, looking at this spectacle with the eye of a mind purified and illuminated by holiness, used to say: “We must study the history of Christianity not out of empty and vain curiosity, but in order to know what kind of storms the Church and its various members have been subjected to at all times, and from this knowledge to draw the strength and wisdom necessary to endure modern storms and to control oneself during these storms.”
Strange is the desire of the human heart corrupted by sin! The desire to do evil to one’s neighbor, the desire to enjoy the contemplation of the difficult situation in which one’s neighbor has been placed by successful malicious intent! This desire is strange, but it exists.
Every Christian can and is obliged to give due value to this desire. The sign of a Christian heart is love. A heart filled with sensations contrary to love itself testifies to its dignity. Christianity requires patience towards neighbors who have strayed from love to malice. But it, like spiritual light, requires that the eye of the soul - the mind - clearly see evil and protect both man and society from it. Otherwise, you can easily get carried away by anger, sacrifice yourself to evil-intentioned people, sacrifice public benefit and well-being to them. You can even become a participant in their actions, because malicious people always cover up their actions with all kinds of lies, all kinds of cunning, and unscrupulous hypocrisy.
The Holy Apostle Paul said: Satan himself takes the form of a bright angel (for the most convenient destruction of people), and therefore it is not surprising that his servants take the form of servants of righteousness (2 Cor. 11; 14-15). Church history shows that patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, and other top spiritual dignitaries were carried away into the above-mentioned course of action. The reason for such passion in the spiritual world has always been the same: oblivion of Heaven and the desire to acquire earthly advantages.
Having spent a quarter of a century in the Sergius Hermitage on the very shore of the sea of life and, due to the position that involuntarily fell to me by lot, having aroused the attention of many (that is, envy and ill will), I look at the present behavior of many towards me not at all as news, not as an unexpected oddity. This must be so, because in this world it has always been so and will always be so. But let the facts say something.
My two predecessors were given an additional 1,000 silver rubles in addition to their annual salary of 280 silver rubles; in addition, 1,500 silver rubles were given to the bishop’s house. Leaving St. Petersburg, I asked that they continue to give me the 1000 rubles that were given to the bishop, since the Holy Synod knew that the diocese had generally fallen into significant disorder. I was given my word of honor that my request would be fulfilled.
After waiting for about a year and seeing that this 1000 rubles was not being sent, I again applied for its release. Your Excellency would also like to petition that it be provided to me. The petition remained in vain, despite the fact that the leading member of the Synod, Metropolitan Gregory, a righteous man, a seventy-eight-year-old old man, wanted the petition to be respected. Other money - 1,500 silver rubles, allocated for the maintenance of the house - was released only in the first year (1858) of my stay at the Caucasian See, on the assumption that Your Excellency would provide land for the maintenance of the house or money instead.
The 3,800 silver rubles delivered by Your Excellency for this item began to be issued in the middle of 1859. Please judge what a difficult position I was put in by such an order, in which one cannot help but see oppression and ill will, which, of course, belong to some individuals in particular.
Upon arrival from St. Petersburg to Stavropol, I asked for double passes and double pay according to the rule for everyone assigned to serve in the local region.
I was denied both. But the rector and inspector of the seminary, despite the fact that they receive a much larger salary than me, were given double passes and double salary. The same was done regarding the Secretary of the Consistory.
From this exceptional behavior towards me it is impossible not to see the purpose: the purpose is to lead me to extremes and involve me in some great troubles. But God sent good people who helped me personally and the bishop’s house. I stop to point out other facts about my service here, which lead to the same conclusions, so as not to make my letter too lengthy and not to sin against modesty.
Based on these facts, I have the right to unmistakably assume that the present evasive answer of the synodal chief prosecutor took place solely under the influence of the party, because the position of the diocese, for the establishment of which nothing was allocated, which was given an extremely meager content, such a situation cannot but be clear.
The position of all persons in the diocesan department is cramped; the situation of many persons is in the full sense of disastrous. So, for example, the housekeeper receives a yearly salary of 14 rubles 34 kopecks, a confessor - 8 rubles, each hieromonk of the cross - 6 rubles, each hierodeacon - 6 rubles, each cell attendant - 2 rubles. Do these salaries make sense? When I arrived in Stavropol, I found that the monastic brethren at home walked around the city every day, looking for lunch and dinner, because in the house, due to its poverty, there was no monastic meal required by the rules. What could be the morality of the monastic brethren given this disorder? What a temptation for residents to see monks in unkempt clothes, daily dragging around the city, looking for their daily bread! I immediately stopped this, but the meal for the brethren required significant expenses.
The officials of the Consistory are in a similar position. From the amount allocated for officials and clerical servants (1042 rubles 45 kopecks), an assistant secretary can receive 120 rubles, a clerk - 100 rubles, a clerk - 72 rubles per year. What is there to support here, especially for a family man? Due to such salaries, bribery was extremely developed in the Caucasian Consistory. With the curbing of this moral disease, especially shameful and harmful in the spiritual court, the officials of the consistory office are placed in a difficult position. I try to help them even with my crumbs, but my help cannot be insignificant. These persons are fed only by the hope that Your Excellency will ask for an increase in their salary. If they had learned about the recall of the synodal chief prosecutor, they would have become completely despondent, especially since prices for all needs are constantly increasing in Stavropol.
Archpriests and members of the Consistory need less than other persons in the diocesan administration, because they are given a parish from which they enjoy income from corrections.
It would be quite comforting for me if what I said about the difficult situation of the Caucasian diocesan department in formal terms and in this confidential letter was subjected to verification by Your Excellency through a proxy. This person would present to you a picture of the continuous work that lies on the diocesan department, and the extraordinary constraint in which it finds itself, a constraint unknown in secular circles.
From such a state, only you, Your Excellency, can extract the Caucasian diocesan department and eliminate the impossibility that is set out in the review of the synodal chief prosecutor, for if the Holy Synod does not currently have the amount, then, it seems to me, it would be possible to assign a salary for the Caucasian diocese from the state treasury, so that this salary, at the first opportunity, would be included in the amount that is allocated by the state treasury to the department of the Holy Synod. Otherwise, one can believe with certainty, judging by the previous course of action, that there will never be a free amount to meet the needs of the Caucasian diocese.
The bishop forwarded both this letter and the above-mentioned submission for No. 20, in reference to No. 21 on June 10, to State Secretary A. F. Kruzenshtern, the administrator of the civil part of the Caucasus, asking him to hand them over to the prince governor. This petition, supported by the participation of the field marshal, was crowned with success, but only when His Eminence Ignatius left the Caucasian See, now one of the most secure in material terms.
By letter dated January 26, 1860, No. 9, the bishop thanked the manager of the civil part of the Caucasian viceroyalty, State Secretary A.F. Kruzenshtern, for notifying him of the most merciful award of the Stavropol merchant, honorary citizen Derevshchikov, with the Order of St. Stanislav 2nd degree, decorated with the imperial crown, for his influential assistance, as a civil head, to monetary donations made by the society for the improvement of the temporary shelter that replaced the bishop's house in Stavropol.
Among the remarkable documents left in the draft papers after the death of the bishop, we find his report No. 12 in the last days of January 1860 to the Holy Synod with the presentation of the case of abuses by the rector of the Mozdok Assumption Church and the dean Archpriest Bratanovsky.
From the report itself it is clear to what extent, under the deputy of Bishop Ignatius, the diocesan administration was dissolved in favor of the influence of Krastilevsky, who in this matter patronized Bratanovsky as a close relative of his (his own nephew), against the most obvious abuses of Bratanovsky, which caused the personal intervention of the prince governor of the Caucasus, who demanded that the bishop withdraw Bratanovsky from Mozdok and who instructed the civil governor to monitor the fulfillment of his request and inform him about the time of execution. We submit this report in full. The entire draft presentation of the presentation was written in Bishop Ignatius's own hand 230.
“Entrusted to my management of the Caucasian diocese, the village of Kugulty, the Kazan Church, Archpriest Dimitry Bratanovsky submitted to me on January 20 of this 1860 a petition in which he, remaining dissatisfied with my decision in the case of abuses in the candle operation when he was Archpriest Bratanovsky, rector of the Mozdok Assumption Church and dean of the churches of the city of Mozdok and surroundings, asks for a review of the case in the Consistory. But since the matter regarding the Consistory is completely over, moreover, separately from the decision of the Consistory, it was completed by my resolution, which disagrees with the decision of the Consistory, and therefore can no longer be subject to any change in the diocesan department, I considered it necessary to submit the matter for the consideration of the Holy Synod, sincerely wishing that the opportunity would be opened to commute the court sentence over Archpriest Bratanovsky even more than this sentence was commuted by me.
I consider it necessary to supplement the circumstances of the case with the following explanation:
A. The insufficiency of the protocol drawn up by the consistory office was due to the fact that the order I made, depicted in my proposal to the Consistory dated January 13, 1859 No. 2, was omitted, according to which all protocols should be reviewed and put in order in literary terms by member Archpriest Master John Alexandrovsky.
Such an order turned out to be necessary due to my observation of the illiteracy of the clerical officials of the Consistory, due to which illiteracy it is very difficult for them to draw up protocols in a logical order, which is why the legal dignity of these acts is very poor, which is fully proven by the protocol of the case now being presented to the view of the Holy Synod. Also, when drawing up the protocol, no attention was paid at all to the case of the removal of Archpriest Bratanovsky from the Mozdok Assumption Church, nor to the case of the actions of Shatirov, a priest of the same Assumption Church, which should be considered counter to the case now being considered, and therefore having an inextricable connection with it.
B. The basis for the position of precisely the resolution with which I completed the matter, and not another, on the one hand, was the difficult position of Archpriest Bratanovsky, who was moved from the city to the village, deprived of the posts of rector and dean, with five children, which I personally saw when reviewing the diocese, and on the other hand, there were the following circumstances revealed by the case:
1) The priests of the Mozdok Assumption Church, Bartholomew Sinanov and Ioann Shatirov, noticed that the patron of that church, Nikita Klichev (now deceased), did not show in the books those candles going into secondary sale that remained unlit on the candlesticks due to lack of space, and therefore demanded that he notify such candles before selling them.
But Klichev did not comply with such insistence of the priests, why the priests Sinanov and Shatirov, as well as the lesser clergy, did not sign the articles in the receipt and expenditure books for the month of March 1856 and explained the reason for the non-signature to the dean Archpriest Bratanovsky in a report dated April 14 of the same year, No. 3 (the report is listed in the file on page 8).
Dean Bratanovsky not only did not eliminate the said disorder, which tended to a clear abuse of church interests, but, presenting to the diocesan authorities the explanations of the clergy and ktitor in the report dated April 21, No. 106 (report on sheet 6), he reported on the actions of priest Sinanov and other members of the clergy as violations of order.
2) For the month of April of the same year, the clergy and clergy again refused to sign the articles, having noticed that the patron Klichev had performed incorrect actions when selling cinders: for instead of one pood and ten pounds of cinders collected in March, Klichev showed only thirty-three pounds during the sale, including cinders for the month of February.
They explained this to Archpriest Bratanovsky with reports dated the 1st day of June, No. 16, and dated the 17th day, No. 19 (reports on sheets 21 and 24). Archpriest Bratanovsky, having taken away the explanation from Ktitor Klichev, presented it, along with the reports of the priests and clergy, to His Eminence Ioannikiy in his report dated June 21, No. 158 (report on sheet 19), in which, justifying the actions of Ktitor Klichev, he spoke about the priests and clergy as follows: “I am from the actions of the priests and clergy I see that all they are thinking about is to create unrest.”
3) For the months of May and June, the sacred months - and the clergy also refused to sign receipts and expenditure books and in their report on the 10th day of June for No. 29 (report on sheet 28) to the dean archpriest Bratanovsky explained “that for the indicated months they do not confirm the signature of the articles, because the ktitor Klichev for the month of May presented only one pound of candles, while they themselves were eyewitnesses the fact that the number of such candles on the 7th, 8th and 9th of May, during the prayer services they constantly sent, was very large - not a pound, but a pound and, perhaps, even more, although they did not weigh them at the same time due to lack of time.
They confirm this testimony with the following circumstance: on the 3rd of June, after the Divine Liturgy, they saw in one of the boxes where cinders are collected, many candles, in the presence of outside witnesses, such as the Ossetian Stefan Sakhugov, the Cossack of the Lukovskaya village Markin and the Ossetian Sergius Stefanov. It turned out that for one mass there were 210 nickels, thirty hryvnia in banknotes, and two ten-kopeck silver, which is more than three pounds” 231 .
Archpriest Bratanovsky, serving at the same church and directly managing the actions of the ktitor, could not help but see the disorder, which was repeatedly and so persistently pointed out by the priestly and clergymen, but he, presenting to His Eminence Ioannikiy the report of the priestly and clergymen and together with the explanation of ktitor Klichev, in his report dated July 15, No. 217, reported that priest Sinanov, and with him and other members of the clergy act against ktitor Klichev, allegedly solely out of dislike for him, and that such unrest will only stop when ktitor Klichev is replaced by another, newly elected ktitor.
4) The clergy and clergy complained about the incorrect actions of the church elder Klichev and the connivance of the dean archpriest Bratanovsky to the Caucasian Spiritual Consistory with reports: a) June 24th day for No. 18; b) July 23rd day for No. 31 and c) August 11th day for No. 34 (reports on sheets 16, 34 and 36). The consistory, after considering the reports of both the priests and clergy, and the dean Archpriest Bratanovsky, decided in a journal (journal on sheet 38):
“To order the dean archpriest Bratanovsky by decree, so that henceforth the church warden put aside the candles that remained unburned on the chandeliers after each service separately from the others, in a special place, and at the end of a month or less, depending on the arrival of such candles, hang them in front of the priests and clergy, and how many of them turn out to be recorded in the receipt and expenditure books in a special item, as well as the money received for them.”
5) The parishioners of the Assumption Church, suspecting ktitor Klichev of abusing the sale of candles, submitted a petition to the dean archpriest Bratanovsky (petition on sheet 51) on the 6th day of August, by which they asked him to allow them to monitor the actions of the ktitor when selling candles, especially on Sundays and holidays, for which they chose four people from among themselves, known for their impartiality.
Archpriest Bratanovsky not only did not allow the parishioners to monitor the actions of the ktitor, but, reporting this to His Eminence Ioannikiy in his report dated August 8, No. 229 (report on sheet 49), responded as follows: “That the parishioners themselves do not know what they write and what they ask for, and that such disorder in the parishioners depends on his colleagues, of whom he suspects Deacon Bradzelov."
6) The investigation carried out about priest Shatirov shows to what extent Archpriest Bratanovsky defended and condoned the illegal actions of ktitor Klichev in selling candles. On the 18th of March, the priests Shatirov and Sinanov noticed that Ktitor Klichev had collected quite a lot of unburnt candles from candlesticks, and therefore began to advise him that such candles should be made known to the priests and clergy by weight before using them for sale. Such advice from the priests was given in order to prevent abuses that could occur during the combined sale of profitable candles with unprofitable ones.
When the priest Shatirov, seeing the ktitor’s evasiveness from fulfillment, began to demand urgently, the ktitor Klichev filed a report full of slander against him to the dean archpriest Bratanovsky. Archpriest Bratanovsky, in retaliation against priest Shatirov for such actions against the ktitor, forbade him from serving in the priesthood and from performing religious services in his parish with deprivation of income, and informed His Eminence Ioannikiy that Shatirov was getting worse and worse by his actions and that at the present time, to the temptation of many, he had started a cry and riot in the church. Under which prohibition priest Shatirov was until then, until he was acquitted by the investigation (in the case of priest Shatirov, the report is on 1 sheet).
Priest Shatirov is allowed to serve in the priesthood, but as the diocesan authorities assessed the cruel and illegal act of Archpriest Bratanovsky against Shatirov, this is not visible in the case. In the protocol register for 1858, against the number under which the said protocol is recorded, there is a mark by the hand of the former secretary Vasiliev with the following content: sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod on May 24 as No. 47.
7) Archpriest Bratanovsky with ktitor Klichev, perhaps, would have continued to act to the detriment of the Church, to the frustration of the clergy and parishioners of the Assumption Church, if the parishioners themselves had not taken active measures to discover and eliminate the abuse. This is explained by the following facts: priest John Shatirov, in a report on April 22, 1856 for No. 2 (report on sheet 13), reported to the Consistory that on April 3 in the city of Mozdok there was a candle seller, the clerk of the merchant Kiselev, Stepan Poskrebetov, from whom he heard in front of witnesses that in the month of November of the past, i.e. 1855, the year ktitor Tapsiev, Klichev's deputy bought ten pounds of candles, and sold nine pounds of cinders to the merchant, but the books show only two pounds of cinders sold, and the purchase of ten pounds of candles is not shown at all. In addition, in addition to the ten pounds of candles purchased from Poskrebetov by the ktitor Tapsiev, in November of the same year, five pounds were purchased from the merchant Sukhov, which are also listed in the books.
As a result, Shatirov asked the Consistory to speed up the investigation of the prescribed circumstances in the respect that he, Shatirov, for pointing out the abuses committed by the newly appointed ktitor Klichev by order of the dean Archpriest Bratanovsky was under ban. The Caucasian Spiritual Consistory, on the basis of such a report, by decree of October 30 of the same year, No. 3582 (journal on page 14), ordered the dean priest Popov, now the cathedral archpriest, to carry out an investigation.
Upon the arrival of investigator Popov in the city of Mozdok, ktitor Klichev, on the advice of Archpriest Bratanovsky, this is clear from Klichev’s explanations, sent the candles hidden in his house for secret sale, as well as cinders, fearing a search, to a farm located outside the city of Mozdok. Residents, constantly monitoring the actions of the ktitor, carried out a search in the designated farmstead, where, having found hidden candles and cinders, these candles and cinders, and with them the ktitor Klichev himself, were presented to the police department. The candles found turned out to be: six pounds of white wax of various sizes and five and a half pounds, and one pound of cinders (candle verification report on sheet 138).
Ktitor Klichev, after such clear evidence of his abuse, in an explanation submitted to the investigator, dean priest Vasily Popov, on December 22 (explanation on sheet 102) testified that after the month of March he, Klichev, reported to Archpriest Bratanovsky about the increase in the profitable amount, that Archpriest Bratanovsky ordered the balance of the money that was not included in the entry in the book, received for put away candles, store them separately in the pantry, and also reduce the sale of candles. From this money, Archpriest Bratanovsky, when leaving Mozdok for the city of Stavropol, took one hundred rubles from Klichev for unknown expenses.
In addition, in November, from the same amount, firewood was purchased for Archpriest Bratanovsky for four rubles in silver, in December for two rubles seventy-five kopecks, sugar for seven rubles and fifty kopecks, and upon his arrival from Stavropol, by his order, fifty rubles were given to him, a total of sixty-four rubles twenty-five kopecks in silver. He expressed this testimony in even more detail during his interrogation by the investigator, under priestly admonition (testimony on sheet 227). After such an inquiry carried out by ktitor Klichev, one cannot help but see the reason that prompted Archpriest Bratanovsky, defending the actions of the ktitor, to act in bad faith against his colleagues, slander them and in various ways contribute to their removal from the parish.
Ktitor Klichev, who had just taken office, could not act independently, without the guidance of the rector of the church. The parishioners of the Assumption Church, upon exposing the ktitor Klichev of sacrilege, immediately removed him from office, electing Dmitry Bugulov from the Ossetians in his place (the choice of the new ktitor is on sheet 53). But since Archpriest Bratanovsky, by his actions, brought upon himself strong suspicion of participation with Klichev in the abuse of church funds, the said parishioners in a petition submitted to the Most Reverend Ioannikiy on December 29, 1856 (petition on page 77), complaining about the archpriest’s dishonest actions, asked to remove him, since they could no longer have due respect for his person.
The parishioners addressed the same petition to the Governor of the Caucasus, Prince Baryatinsky. From the attitude of the Stavropol civil governor dated May 8, 1856, No. 2030, to the Right Reverend Ioannikiy, it is clear that his Excellency, having taken into account the complaint of the parishioners of the Assumption Church, when meeting with the Right Reverend, deigned to personally explain to him about this complaint and, at the same time, instructed the civil governor to inform him of the consequences of the orders from the spiritual side. As a result of this insistence of the governor of the Caucasus, Archpriest Bratanovsky was taken from the city of Mozdok to the village of Kugultu.
8) From a comparison of church incomes - both candles and purses, which were during the service at the Assumption Church of Archpriest Bratanovsky with Ktitor Klichev, with the income that appeared after their removal and continues to this day, a significant difference can be seen. In 1856, under Archpriest Bratanovsky, the profit from the sale of candles was shown to be 722 rubles 2.5 kopecks, but after removing him from Mozdok, the profitable amount for 1857, under the new rector of the church and ktitor, turned out to be 1,869 rubles, 61 kopecks, and in 1858 - 2,032 rubles, 8.5 kopecks.
The same difference is visible in the purse collection. Candles with cinders on sale in 1856 were shown to be 30 poods, 21.5 pounds, with a change in the archpriest and ktitor of candles with cinders on sale it turned out: in 1857 97 poods and 1 pound, in 1858 98 poods, 37 pounds.
9) Ktitor Klichev in his testimony, when admonished by his spiritual father, says this: “He, on the orders of Archpriest Bratanovsky, secretly from the clergyman took candles from the seller Pavel Romashev, after two months - half a pound, ten pounds and a pound. The actual number of them was recorded by the archpriest himself, and selling these candles on the same basis as church candles, he set aside money for them separately, not putting them in a mug, but storing them in the church pantry” (testimony on sheet 228). According to the clergy records for 1859, Archpriest Dimitry Avraamov Bratanovsky is listed as 44 years old, of very good behavior. With the exception of the circumstances stated here, I was not convicted or fined in other cases.
In conclusion of this report, I consider it my duty to bring to the attention of the Holy Synod that the cathedral archpriest Vasily Popov, very familiar with the matter, avoided participating in the judgment about it, since he was conducting a study on the abuses of the ktitor of the Assumption Church Klichev (sheet 267). Two members, the rector and the inspector, were not familiar with the case in connection with other, explaining it, cases completed long before their receipt by the Consistory. The present case itself was recognized, according to the views of the Consistory in its previous composition and direction, as completed: it was initiated, by the way, at the insistence of Archpriest Bratanovsky himself, who wanted to remove any stain from himself and gain the right to awards.
The secretary of the Consistory was in the same attitude to the matter as the rector and the inspector were: this is clear from the explanations given to me about the rector and the inspector, as well as the secretary of the Consistory, which explanations are attached. The head of the Judgment Table, Zaitsev, mentioned in the secretary's explanation, belonged to the system of Archpriest Krastilevsky and the official Albanov, but could not be dismissed soon from the Consistory, which was extremely difficult to find officials for its office, due to the meager salaries, but was dismissed at the first opportunity.
In addition to the three explanations mentioned, the following cases of the Caucasian Consistory are presented in a special bundle for verification of my report:
1) a case of abuse of church candle funds and other church things in the Mozdok Assumption Church;
2) the case of the allegedly illegal actions of the priest of the Mozdok Assumption Church Ioann Shatirov and the prohibition of him, Shatirov, from serving in the priesthood by the dean Archpriest Bratanovsky. In this case there is no protocol of the Consistory, which, as stated in the case, was forwarded by the former secretary of Mr. Vasilyev to the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod;
3) the case of the removal of Archpriest Bratanovsky from the city of Mozdok to the village of Kugultu;
4) an extract from reports on the number of candles sold and the amount received for them in the Assumption Mozdok Church from 1850 to 1859.
The cases shown here under Nos. 2 and 3, as well as the extract shown under No. 4, were presented to me in the report of the Secretary of the Consistory Tikhon Grigorevsky dated January 28 of this year, 1860, No. 6, which report I added to the mentioned cases. The information, mentioned twice in this report of mine and found in the report of Secretary Grigorevsky, that the original protocol from the case of the priest Shatirov was forwarded by the former secretary Vasiliev to Mr. Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, is very important, because this protocol and Mr. Vasiliev’s criticism of it can largely explain the case.
When I personally visited Mozdok in 1858, I found the Ossetians and Circassians, parishioners of the Assumption Church, in a state of the greatest Asian indignation against Archpriest Bratanovsky. This feeling of indignation was also expressed against Archpriest Krastilevsky, whose nephew Bratanovsky was. Such a moral state of the Ossetians and Circassians, who could decide on the most unpleasant and loud act, forced the Caucasian governor, Prince Baryatinsky, to urgently ask my predecessor, the Most Reverend Ioannikiy, to remove Bratanovsky from Mozdok and entrust the head of the province with monitoring the fulfillment of this request.
Your Holiness, etc.
At the end of 1860, His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, in a note dated October 7, No. 2263, forwarded a copy of the project drawn up by Admiral Count Putyatin for the transformation of maritime educational institutions with the establishment of a new gymnasium in St. Petersburg, asking the bishop, as a special personal favor to His Highness, to communicate to him quite frankly his comments on this project no later than the 1st of the coming January 1861, which was fulfilled by the Eminence. Letter from the Grand Duke:
“By forwarding to Your Eminence a copy of the project drawn up by Admiral Count Putyatin for the transformation of maritime educational institutions with the establishment of a new gymnasium in St. Petersburg, I ask you to take the trouble - as a special personal favor to me, to communicate quite frankly your comments on this project. I would be especially grateful if I received them no later than the 1st of next January.
No. 2263. October 7, 1860. The original is signed: Konstantin.”
Fulfilling your will, I have the honor to present my notes on the project for transforming maritime educational institutions.
The project was compiled with such an abundance of theoretical knowledge, with such an abundance of practical knowledge brought by experience and observation, that it appears to those who read it carefully to be elegant, harmonious, whole, pleasing to the eye of the mind with its strength, definiteness, and size. Sound criticism should, in my opinion, not make futile efforts to find shortcomings, but evaluate the work and express to the public full sympathy for it as one of the guarantees of state welfare.
It may very well happen that when carrying out a project, some little things will require changes, but changes will require insignificant little things, which can only be noticed when applying the project to the case. The project can be likened to a ship, carefully built on the shore and secured in good time against the difficulties of navigation, against storms and winds. This is the project both in relation to its implementation and in relation to objections if they arose against it.
I could limit myself to this brief review: it fully and with all sincerity expresses the consciousness that formed in me from reading the project, but I cannot forbid myself the following indications of certain particulars of the project that aroused in me special comforting sympathy. The instructions will serve as factual evidence before Your Imperial Highness that I am carrying out your will - I speak with all frankness. These instructions are few in number: show the most merciful indulgence to a non-specialist! Thirty-three years have already separated me from worldly life and its activities, even scientists.
1. The project eliminates the previous procedure for admitting students and allows those who consider themselves capable to take, so to speak, a placement in the building by storm in a public competitive examination. One cannot help but rejoice at this measure, the results of which should be filled with abundant benefits, public and private. Only those capable of naval service and only lovers of the sea will appear for the exam. If someone comes to the exam who has a false concept of himself, recognizing himself as capable and being incapable, he will be given a correct concept of himself. This is a great blessing for a young man.
The previous admission procedure is completely unfounded. They were accepted for the merits of their father, uncle, under the patronage: many children ended up in a special school without any vocation, without any ability for the sciences taught at the school. What were the consequences? Of the approximately forty students in the class, ten studied properly. Others did not study or studied superficially, due to lack of ability or being carried away by a calling to other subjects. The death of those who are incapable and unwilling to learn has a very harmful effect on the capable and lovers of science.
Upon graduation from a special school, everyone who did not feel a calling to a branch of service and was incapable of it, hastened at the first opportunity to move to another branch of service for which they felt inclined and capable, especially since those incapable of one category of science are often very capable of another. The government was wasted, laboring in vain for the special education of many young people who were incapable of it, and for these young people the precious years spent in school were irretrievably lost.
The new method of admission eliminates disadvantages – both official and private. A group of young people with a one-sided exclusive direction, with abilities corresponding to the direction, enters maritime schools. This will bring unity to the society of students: it, as a like-minded society of living members, should have incomparably better success in science than a society with a diverse direction and many dead members. In order to preserve energy in the society of students, it is necessary, without any hesitation, to exclude from it those members in whom deadness begins to be noticed.
2. Just as important in relation to official and private benefits is a thorough medical examination of those entering an educational institution. Parents, relatives and protectors send their child to school just to place him somewhere, for the most part not knowing the state of the child’s health, the amount of his bodily strength and what kind of strength and what kind of health the type of service intended for the child requires. For this reason, it happens that children of weak strength and health, but capable and diligent, learn well, make good progress, are supported by their superiors, but gradually, inconspicuously, become exhausted, completely lose their health and become useless for themselves and for society for the rest of their lives.
3. One cannot help but rejoice from the heart at the proposed combination of theoretical teaching with abundant practical teaching in maritime schools. This assumption of the project should be accepted by all special military educational institutions - it is so true! Such abundant fruit is clearly seen in its results by anyone who is experienced in the shortcomings of previous teaching!
In ancient times, an engineering officer first saw the fortress when he came to it for active duty. What was briefly known to him from science and from drawings was made completely new when he saw this briefly known in nature for the first time. This is the property of a person’s ability to perceive impressions. Getting impressions from drawings is not at all the same as getting impressions from the objects themselves. One who has acquired impressions from drawings and has only impressions of drawings. He needs to acquire impressions of objects again, because the object and the drawing of the object are two objects that differ from each other, and are by no means the same thing.
This applies to the entire material side of fortification, artillery, and naval art. Even the study of active theology is completely different in its results when one is not content with the theoretical study of Christian virtues alone, but adds practical to the theoretical. Drawings are very helpful for the most accurate study of an object when it is known in kind. For this reason, when examining objects, it is especially useful to photograph them by hand, as experience itself has decisively proven. Such photography does not take much time, but usually enhances the impression made by objects, develops the concept of objects and sharpens abilities.
For example, whoever has become acquainted with artillery pieces from science and examined them from the drawings has a theoretical complete knowledge of them. Whoever, moreover, had the opportunity to examine the tools in nature, has a more distinct and independent knowledge of them. Whoever bothered to take pictures of the guns by hand only - it can be said with certainty - studied them completely and quite satisfactorily. Proper shooting takes a lot of time for one particular subject and prevents familiarization with other subjects that are just as necessary. It should be known to officers not assigned to the drawing room to a certain extent, but freehand photography should be developed.
The ability to obey impressions is so important in a person that even in the study of mathematics, those students who study it solely from a book have much less success than those who take the trouble to practice mathematical deductions with their own hands on paper or on a slate board. Those who practiced this method confessed and assured that the analysis of a theorem, carefully written by them on paper or on a board, was imprinted like a picture in their imagination and contributed to the clearest understanding of the truth contained in the theorem.
The ability to accept impressions is especially powerful in children and young people. This ability, although greater, but limited, due to the limitations of all human properties, must be used very prudently and carefully, not wasting it in vain, not allowing it to be distracted by a variety of subjects, but focusing it on what is essential for the person’s purpose.
One should expect the greatest benefit if the walls of rooms in maritime schools are dotted with correct drawings of the most famous European ships, harbors, and seaside fortresses. A child, in moments of freedom, looking at drawings to satisfy his curiosity, unnoticed by himself, is exposed to the most useful impressions. The drawings must be correct. Looking at drawings, in the composition of which the artist’s freedom of imagination is allowed, is just as harmful to the correctness of concepts about objects as reading historical novels for acquiring and preserving correct knowledge of history.
The very parade ground or yard where children play should be filled with models of cannons, batteries and other objects, the impressions of which should fill the children’s imagination. If possible, all these items should be in their natural form for the correct impression and should be so easy to work with and cheap in price that they can be conveniently repaired and replaced with new ones in case of damage.
At that time, the Engineering School had very expensive, intricate models of some European fortresses; even the houses that were in the fortresses had models, and the houses had furniture. These expensive models were carefully shown to visitors to the school, and the students hardly saw them, being not allowed to see them for the purpose of lest one of them inadvertently damage a table or chair in some house of the precious model.
4. The number of sciences laid down in the project for maritime educational institutions and the distribution of their teaching deserves full approval. Until now, due attention has not been paid to the fact that excess knowledge takes away its quality. The human mind, if presented with a vast field of activity in length and breadth or on the surface, cannot in any way act in depth. Or the mind, acquiring a multitude of knowledge, cannot acquire solid knowledge.
With such, one might say, magnificent improvement that awaits maritime educational institutions, one cannot help but wish that in due time educational manuals would appear in printed books, and not in just lithographed notes. Printed textbooks will be compiled according to the natural course of human affairs incomparably more clearly than notes unknown to the public. Teaching will gain greater certainty and positivity.
5. The project shrewdly discerned an important condition in the human soul, its natural logic, abolishing corporal punishment, giving other punishments the noble character of the necessary consequences of justice and the purpose of correction, which is respect and love for humanity, prohibiting the action of inciting passions, which is contempt and hatred for humanity.
One who is carried away by passion and thoughtlessness when reprimanding or punishing, firstly, humiliates and tramples upon humanity in himself, and then in the person subjected to punishment, confusing vice with man, while the essential goal of any correction is to separate vice from man. It has been noted that a reprimand has the most salutary effect when the person giving it energetically exposes the black side of the vice and its harmful consequences to the person who has fallen into the vice, expressing at the same time a sincere feeling of regret and goodwill towards the person who has fallen into the vice. The effect of punishment is just as salutary when, when prescribed and executed, its effect flows from the above-mentioned view and feeling.
One who acts in this way can be likened to pulling out someone mired in a swamp, cleansing him of the dirt and mud in which he has fallen. But the one who, when reprimanding and punishing, confuses vice with a person and attributes what belongs to vice to a person, in all fairness can be likened to someone who found his neighbor mired in a swamp, became indignant with his neighbor for this and then trampled him even deeper into the harmful mud and mud, in which one can even drown. 232 And they drown their neighbors, not suspecting this property in their actions, many who think of correcting them.
With a thorough, long-term practical study of punishments for young people, it must be recognized that only two punishments should be allowed as essentially necessary and useful: reprimand and arrest. Arrest must certainly be accompanied by a diet and withdrawal from any, shortest-term, communication with comrades and with any person who could damage with reckless condolences and advice the way of thinking that should be formed in the arrested person during his arrest.
The diet is necessary for the reason that with it only the mind of the guilty can prevail over his emotional agitation and bitterness. Removal from communication with comrades and with all strangers is necessary because it is extremely harmful for a person who is reasonably punished when he hears that he was punished too severely, that he suffers innocently, that those who subjected him to punishment are such and such. Reckless condolences destroy the purpose of the arrest, which is for the young man to come to his senses, recognize his action and repent of it. To help him in this, his mentor must visit him, who must humbly impress upon him all the incongruity and baseness of his act and advise him to bring sincere repentance, because only with sincere repentance is lasting correction possible.
When dealing with someone who has been arrested, it is necessary to observe meekness combined with firmness. Meekness has a saving effect on the punished, actually confirming to him that there is no hostile feeling towards him, and firmness is necessary for the punishment to bear fruit. Otherwise it can only be harmful. The length of arrest must be determined by the repentance of the arrested person. When he brings repentance, this serves as a sign that the healing - the punishment - has produced a saving effect; further use of the medicine would be completely illogical. On the contrary, release from arrest before the arrested person has repented can have a very harmful effect on his morality.
In a certain monastic monastery, the abbot, according to the tradition of the Orthodox Church, was engaged in the moral education of young people who entered this monastery. His assistant was a hieromonk of a very pious life, who sympathized with him in his occupation. The punishments were reprimand in the above spirit and arrest. The hieromonk visited the arrested person three times a day, providing him with everything he needed, ensuring that the prescribed diet was maintained exactly, so that exclusion from communication with everyone who did not understand the mysteries of the correctional system was observed with all severity, admonishing the arrested person with the most meek and edifying conversation, so that he recognized himself guilty, and repented of the punishment with a fair measure.
After each visit, the hieromonk came to the abbot and told him about the condition of the arrested person, calling him immature or ripe. The one who admitted that he was right, who was punished too harshly, who condemned his superiors was called immature. One who came to the consciousness of his guilt and repentance was called mature. Having matured, according to the report of the hieromonk to the abbot, he undertook to write a letter to the abbot, which set out the view acquired by the arrested person during the arrest on his act, repentance and the promise of correction.
After this, the hieromonk took the prisoner out of his solitude and introduced him to the abbot, who, with all his love and sympathy, gave him instructions about the advantages of a virtuous life and about the means to help the young man acquire good morals. After severe punishment, the manifestation of love is necessary, albeit in a very serious form, just as after an operation emollient and healing plaster and ointment are needed. This is the advice of St. John Climacus. 233
To release an immature person from arrest means to cause him and his comrades the greatest harm, as all experiments have unanimously proven. Those who emerge from solitude with feelings of conceit and bitterness internalize these feelings. The assimilation of these feelings puts a stamp on his character and further behavior. He receives dislike from his superiors; he communicates the mood of his spirit to his comrades.
“They took something! - This is how someone who is immature is usually expressed upon release from arrest in front of his comrades. - They stared for a whole day or two, under arrest, godless! You yourself should try to live on cabbage soup and bread and water alone! They questioned and interrogated - he said nothing! Right, right, and that’s all! I tell you that such and such a beggar brought me vodka! The beggar will be sent away, left without daily bread and the loophole will be tightly sealed - and then everyone will perish.
It is a strange and stupid demand of people who are dying out that a young man should never have fun in the spaciousness of his soul. Without space there is no fun. I told them: even if it’s a week, I don’t know anything - you thought I was drunk! You have the worst thoughts about me, I don’t know why! Meanwhile, I received a letter that my uncle, who was like a father to me, had died, and from sadness I became not myself... At these words, I burst into tears. I cry, but I laugh in my heart! The fools believed them and released them. Here's what to do with them! Not like so-and-so: he sat for only eight hours and blurted out, told them everything, and they, as you know, decided in their own way.”
Sin has its own logic, its own truth, its own power of speech! Such poison quickly spreads in the society of youth, and therefore one condition for release from arrest is true repentance, which is actually proven by immediate correction. Anyone incapable of repentance should be immediately excluded from society, just as he should know about himself that he is incorrigible, and as a sure guarantee of social damage. Young people are smart. If she sees that the power of the boss and educator, despite its meekness, is filled with firmness and determination, that it is not shaken by tenderness or flattery, forcing the boss to deviate from the demands of prudence and true love, then she receives respect and trust in the authority and accepts a relatively harmonious, respectful position. A meek, polite request from a superior is recognized as an order that must be followed and carried out.
It is human nature to think about one’s neighbor the way they thought or are thinking about him, to act towards one’s neighbor the way one has treated or is treating him. A child in particular almost always looks at his educators and teachers without analysis, with gullibility, and assimilates their concepts and rules for the rest of his life. For this reason, the head of the educational institution and his assistants have an important duty to acquire Christian moral rules and carefully observe, firstly, themselves, restraining themselves from being carried away by passions, especially restraining themselves from any action at the moment of being carried away by passion. A person cannot help but have passions; one must learn to control them.
The manner in which teachers act and act towards their pupils will subsequently serve as a guide for the pupils in their treatment and in their conduct towards humanity. You must have the conviction - and this is very quickly acquired by observing yourself and others - that when carried away by anger a person says and does nothing but stupid things, that when he is carried away by vanity, then he becomes ridiculous and very capable of seduction. Bosses who indulge in these two passions in front of their subordinates lose their respect and destroy the sincerity in their relationships with themselves. Corporal punishment, severe reprimands, the manifestation of passions in the teacher, the manifestation of his selfishness have a devastating effect on the morality of the pupils.
The wrong view of a person saw in such treatment a necessary condition for subordination - experience shows the completely opposite. There is nothing more harmful to subordination and to a person’s morality in general than the deprivation of his rights that belong to him, perhaps not clearly understood by him, but certainly felt in his soul. A person whose rights are violated loses respect for the rights of others. A pupil, child and youth have their rights as a person and a citizen. He must be given a correct understanding of these rights, introduced to the correct knowledge of the rights belonging to his neighbors, and learn respect for rights. For him to respect the rights of others, his rights must be respected.
What kind of civil society should be recognized as truly free? The one who has been granted all the rights that human society can enjoy on earth without harm to itself; whose members have received a correct understanding of their rights and sacredly preserve these rights in all their mutual relations. Society cannot achieve such a state except through the correct moral education of youth.
A young man brought up in this direction will become the best subordinate. Understanding and respecting the rights of civil society, including his own, he will understand and respect the rights of his boss, he will inviolably preserve them, carry out his orders equally both before his eyes and outside his eyes. This type of education creates noble characters, with sincerity and directness, incapable of flattery. The educator has the necessary need to learn to distinguish between sincere and direct words and daring words, to distinguish between respect and politeness from affection, which is certainly combined with ill-intention.
All this can be taught by observing oneself in the light of the Gospel teaching. He who has undertaken the study of a high science in himself - Christian psychology - no matter how much he improves himself, will always find even greater improvement necessary and will use all the methods that provide him with perfect knowledge. One of the most important means for studying a person in himself is the sincerity of our neighbors with us. One should not be offended by a direct word in any way, as long as it is not combined and impudent. He who rejects the sincerity and directness of his neighbor rejects his own moral improvement and, just as morality cannot exist without movement, is subject to moral decline.
When, during upbringing, with the teacher’s incorrect concept of subordination, all the rights of the pupil are trampled upon, the respect that he should have for himself as a person, as the image of God is trampled into the dirt, then the sense of honor in the pupil is destroyed. This is not about vanity and love of honor, but about consciousness and a sense of one’s purpose and dignity, one’s rights. With the loss of a sense of honor, with the loss of consciousness of his rights in a young man, the consciousness of the rights of all humanity is destroyed.
Conscientiousness, good intentions, and the desire for the public good are replaced by humiliating, petty selfishness. Subordination is replaced by mere people-pleasing, so much condemned in the Holy Scriptures, 234 consisting of pleasing the passions of the boss with complete contempt for him, for all his plans, orders and orders. People-pleasing grovels before his superiors in his eyes, flatters him, is hypocritical and pretends. She mocks him behind his back, boasts of her ability to deceive, to fool him with her violations of his will, her skillful distortion and destruction of his plans.
The well-being and property of neighbors, the well-being and property of the state do not constitute an inviolable shrine for someone who has lost honor and conscience, for someone who has lost the concept of rights. He laughs at everything, as if he has lost respect for everything, and considers it stupid not to sacrifice, when the opportunity and opportunity presents itself, the public benefit of his selfish, vile, in their baseness and evil, views. The whole concern of one who has lost honor is to maintain some appearance of appearance with the help of lies, hypocrisy, deception, slander and all other baseness.
The education that the project proposes to provide to young people in maritime educational institutions guarantees that these institutions will provide the state with officials who highly value the good of their neighbors and the public. It has been noticed that those who do not study science are usually naughty. The saving measure for a society of young people is to immediately exclude from this society members who turn out to be unreliable in abilities and behavior, and not waste time and effort on correcting the incorrigible, poisoning the entire society.
They will say: such exclusion from society can make society too small, and those who want to join it can be frightened and turned away from joining. Experience proves the opposite. We repeat: young people are smart. We can guarantee, based on experience, that the exclusion of a few members will lead those remaining to extraordinary vigilance over themselves, will make punishments almost unnecessary and extremely rare, and through this will elevate society morally, instill respect and trust in it in the public, and attract many of the most useful members to it.
This is where I limit my comments. It remains for me to express my utmost gratitude to Your Imperial Highness for giving me true heartfelt consolation by introducing me to the project for transforming maritime educational institutions. In him I found support for many of my thoughts, I found clearly stated what I was unconsciously aware of, I found many instructions that will be useful to me, if God’s favor follows, in my ministry. It remains for me to wish that the destiny of Your Highness will be crowned with the most prosperous success, according to the testament of the Holy Scripture, which says: He who began a good work in you will do it (Phil. 1:6).
Invoking God’s abundant blessing for this matter, with feelings of deepest respect and all-perfect devotion, I have the happiness to be Your Imperial Highness.”
But sorrows did not leave to haunt Bishop Ignatius. The aforementioned circular, which exposed the direction of the journal of the Kazan Theological Academy, armed against him almost all the bishops, students of the Theological Academies, and the death of Metropolitan Gregory of Novgorod and St. Petersburg deprived him of the only person who took a friendly and sincere part in it, based on spiritual unity. In this summer of 1860, Krastilevsky's wife found access and protection for her husband from Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow. The same patronage was found in the person of the Moscow saint and the rector of the seminary, Archimandrite Epiphanius Izbitsky, who stood in the ranks of the dissatisfied and was looking, so to speak, for an opportunity to publicize his dislike for Bishop Ignatius.
The displeasure of the defenders of the Kazan Academy against the bishop was aggravated by a circumstance that the bishop did not consider possible to hide and had to bring to the attention of the Synod as a fact announced throughout the entire educated society of Stavropol. Professor of the Kazan Academy Gusev, sent in 1859 to revise the Stavropol seminary, during the testing of students, in the presence of all the seminary teachers and students of the theological department, spoke blasphemously about the biblical stories. His words were repeated by some blasphemously, and by pious Christians - with great sorrow. Gusev, however, received an award - the Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree, and immediately, however, had to leave service at the academy.
The successful influence of the intrigues of the rector Archimandrite Epifaniy in conjunction with Archpriest Krastilevsky under Metropolitan Philaret was expressed, on the one hand, by the immobility in the Synod of the outcome of the Krastilevsky case, on the other, by the impudently impudent unpunished actions of Archimandrite Epifaniy, who was so forgotten that on one of the highly solemn days, at the end of the Divine Liturgy in the summer cathedral cathedral, he, who served with the bishop, as a result of a dispute with the cathedral clergy, in the presence of the commander of the troops, Adjutant General Count Evdokimov and all the military and civil authorities who accompanied the bishop to the carriage, ran up to the carriage door and, stopping the entire journey, with great irritation began to explain his complaint.
The bishop said: “This is not the place - we are detaining everyone” and ordered him to go to the bishop’s house to explain to him what had happened. It turned out that the archimandrite arrogantly insulted the cathedral clergy and therefore received an offer from the bishop not to leave his home for two weeks. This exaction, naturally, did not pacify Archimandrite Epiphanius, who relied on the long-standing patronage of Metropolitan Philaret.
Metropolitan Isidore's relationship with Bishop Ignatius was also unfavorable. They expressed themselves quite harshly in the metropolitan’s journey from Tiflis to the Kyiv See. In order to encourage and further develop the senior seminary students, Bishop Ignatius introduced the custom of calling to him for spiritual conversation and discussions on the subjects of faith theological seminary students who are distinguished by their good behavior and success in the sciences, as certified by the rector, and accompanied by professors. These conversations took place over evening tea, accompanied by fruit and various sweets.
Such treatment of the bishop with his subordinates seemed to Metropolitan Isidore to be indecently familiar, and he, when meeting with him in the city of Georgievsk, did not stop to give him a verbal stern reprimand, to which the bishop responded with nothing but silence. The particular inappropriateness of this circumstance and the tactlessness, not to say thoughtlessness, of the reprimand was that it was made in the presence of the head of the province, Lieutenant General Volotsky, who found it necessary to reassure the metropolitan, convincing him to be satisfied with the bishop’s silence.
When the Right Reverend Metropolitan Isidore soon took the place of the deceased Metropolitan Gregory of St. Petersburg, Bishop Ignatius wrote a letter asking Metropolitan Isidore to transfer him to one of the dioceses of eastern Russia, where he could look for a monastery to settle in for his rest. Metropolitan Isidore was pleased to give this request the meaning that the Right Reverend Ignatius had asked to clear a vacancy for him in the Voronezh See, and therefore, since this See is occupied, the Right Reverend’s request cannot be satisfied. The ironic tone of the letter left no misunderstanding. In vain was his request for the same to Filaret of Moscow.
Meanwhile, the bishop suffered a very serious illness - smallpox, accompanied by a severe fever. The illness lasted, although recovery came, but slowly, his strength began to visibly weaken, and he decided to ask directly to rest, in the Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery of the Kostroma Diocese, which was already familiar to him. At the end of July 1861, he submitted a report about this to the Synod and addressed a most loyal letter to the Emperor.
Here is the content of this letter 235:
“August monarch, most merciful sovereign!
Feeling exhausted from illness that had lasted for about forty years, and constantly nurturing in my soul the desire to end my days in solitude, I submitted a report to the Holy Synod in which, reporting on the state of my health, I ask to be dismissed from the management of the diocese and to be given the management of the cenobitic Nikolo-Babaevsky monastery on the Volga, in the Kostroma diocese, according to the same model as was done for many bishops dismissed from diocesan affairs. The gracious attention that your august parents honored me with, calling me their pupil, allows me to turn to Your Imperial Majesty with the most submissive and most convincing request.
Without taking into account any merit or dignity that I do not have, in memory of your deceased parents, show me mercy, order me to satisfy my request, grant me the requested shelter in which I could end my days, offering unworthy and wretched prayers to God for the well-being of you and your entire august house, for the peace and eternal bliss of your ever-memorable parents.
I have the good fortune to be with loyal feelings of the most reverent respect and perfect devotion, etc. July 24, 1861."
On August 5th, the dismissal took place with the assignment of a pension of one thousand rubles per year, which was subsequently increased by the highest order by an increase of five hundred rubles per year.
On September 19, 1861, the Emperor visited the Caucasus, but was not in Stavropol, but, inspecting the newly conquered lands beyond the Kuban, asked Count Evdokimov (whose main apartment was in Stavropol) about the Right Reverend and through him sent him the order of St. Anna, 1st degree, which no longer found the Bishop in Stavropol, but was sent to him by mail to a new place residence.
When leaving Stavropol, just as before from St. Petersburg, the Right Reverend did not have his own funds. He had to again resort to outside help to pay off some debts and cover travel expenses. On his way through Moscow, he stopped with an old acquaintance of his Eminence Leonid, Bishop of Dimitrovsky, vicar of Moscow. 236 When presented to the Metropolitan of Moscow, he reported to him his comments about the sad and inappropriate education of youth preparing for the service of the Church, and about the disastrous invasion into the environment of educators, and therefore those being educated, of the most hostile ideas, contrary to the spirit of Christianity in its Church-Orthodox teaching.
The Bishop of Moscow, His Eminence Philaret, recognized the truth of this phenomenon, evidenced by many facts, and at the same time justified his non-interference in spiritual-educational matters by his old age and his distance from the spiritual-administrative center.
The day after his meeting with the Eminence, Bishop Ignatius suffered a nervous blow to his right leg (ichias), which forced him to seek medical help and extended his stay in Moscow for two whole weeks. Although many leeches placed weakened the effect of the blow, from that time on the Reverend constantly felt weakness and pain in this leg.
To fully outline the fruits of the activities of Bishop Ignatius at the Caucasian see, it would be appropriate to say here that a lot of investigative cases, often protracted on pretexts that were not only disrespectful, but even deliberately unkind, a lot of displeasure between parishioners and the clergy, and an even greater number of cases that arose from hostile clashes between district civil authorities and ecclesiastical authorities - or were terminated by the reconciliation of the warring parties. parties, or sorted out and resolved finally. Of the many of them, by the time the bishop retired, a relatively insignificant number remained unfinished, so that in general, one might say, all branches of diocesan administration were revived with the most energetic and beneficial activity.
Classes on managing the diocese did not change his usual cell work, his main monastic feat in constant self-observation. He continued to carefully study the life of monasticism as a science of life leading to Christian perfection. Here, in addition to the teachings he spoke orally, mainly from the experiences of ascetic feat, he wrote the entire book, entitled: “An Offering to Modern Monasticism,” which constituted the 4th volume of his works, published in 1867. 237 In it he teaches modern monasticism advice on monastic life in the rules of outward behavior and in internal spiritual activity, in relation to those many different ministries that are entrusted to monastics in our time.
Here he composed the words: “On the various states of human nature in relation to good and evil,” 238 “On the sensory and spiritual vision of spirits,” 239 and “On salvation and Christian perfection.” 240 The discourse on the vision of spirits was compiled by the Right Reverend on the basis of the teachings of the holy fathers of the Universal and Eastern Church, confirmed and clarified by his own experiences. He was introduced into these experiments by the finger of God's Providence and, having experienced them for more than half of his spiritual life, depicted them in his books, examining and describing them from both the spiritual and physical sides.
Here in Stavropol, regarding the new dogma introduced by the Roman Church into the doctrine of the Nativity of the Mother of God, at the request of local pious Orthodox Christians, 241 he expounded: “The Teaching of the Orthodox Church about the Mother of God,” 242 placed at the end of the “Ascetic Sermon,” which constitutes the 3rd volume of the works of Bishop Ignatius, published in 1867.
Notes from St. Ignatius on the needs of the Caucasian Seminary on the subject of its educational improvement (dated May 4, 1859, No. 38). Response to the demand of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod A.P. Tolstoy. PST. T. 2. pp. 543–544.
Presentation of St. Ignatius to Prince S.N. Urusov, who is correcting the position of chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod, about the rector of the seminary, Archimandrite Herman (dated June 18, 1859, No. 54). PST. T. 2. pp. 546–547.
Petition of St. Ignatius to the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod A.P. Tolstoy about the teaching of the Tatar and Ossetian languages in the seminary (dated September 21, 1859, No. 94). Right there. pp. 557–559.
Attitude of St. Ignatius to the correcting position of Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Prince. S. N. Urusov in the case of Archpriest Krastilevsky (dated June 5, 1859, No. 48). Right there. pp. 544–546.
Rector and inspector of the seminary, especially the first.
Presentation of St. Ignatius to the Holy Synod with affairs about Archpriest Krastilevsky (dated June 22, 1859, No. 59). Right there. pp. 548–550.
There is no copy of this letter left in the bishop's papers.
St.'s proposal Ignatius of the Caucasian Spiritual Consistory on the case of Archpriest Krastilevsky (dated July 6, 1859, No. 65). Right there. pp. 552–554.
Report of St. Ignatius to the Holy Synod on the case of Archpriest Krastilevsky (dated July 6, 1859, No. 64). Right there. pp. 550–551.
Report of St. Ignatius to the Holy Synod on the transfer of Archpriest Krastilevsky to another diocese (dated September 7, 1859, No. 88). Right there. pp. 556–557.
Attitude of St. Ignatius to the head of the province [P. A. Brianchaninov] about the construction of a stone church in the city of Mozdok for the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God (dated January 1, 1860, No. 1). Right there. pp. 563–564.
Ignatius (Brianchaninov). A note about the miraculous icon of the Iveron Mother of God in the Mozdok Assumption Church and the need to replace the wooden church with a stone one (dated January 1, 1860). Right there. pp. 565–568.
St.'s proposal Ignatius of the Stavropol Theological Seminary on the needs of the diocese to replenish the personnel of the church clergy (dated November 9, 1859, No. 105). Right there. pp. 559–560.
Under the title “Speech of His Grace Ignatius, Bishop of the Caucasus and Black Sea, on the celebration of the conquest of the Eastern Caucasus, delivered on August 25. 1860 in the Kazan Cathedral of Stavropol Caucasian” published in the book: Sokolov. Part 1. pp. 295–296. (Sunday); Right there. pp. 554–556.
Note from St. Ignatius to the governor of the Caucasus, Prince. A. I. Baryatinsky about the needs of the Caucasian diocese (December 1859). Right there. From 561563.
Presentation of St. Ignatius to the governor of the Caucasus, Prince. A.I. Baryatinsky on accelerating the payment of salaries to the Mozdok and Kizlyar clergy (dated May 9, 1860, No. 19). PST. T. 2. pp. 568–569.
Presentation to the Viceroy Prince. A.I. Baryatinsky about the plight of the bishop's house and the episcopal see in Stavropol (dated June 10, 1860). Right there. pp. 569–573.
Letter (confidential) to St. Ignatius to the governor of the Caucasus, Prince. A.I. Baryatinsky on the situation of the Caucasian diocesan administration (dated June 10, 1860). The specified date is April 13. 1860 - probably a copyist error. Right there. pp. 573–577.
Report of St. Ignatius to the Holy Synod with the presentation of a case about the abuses of the rector of the Mozdok Assumption Church and the dean archpriest Bratanovsky (Jan. 1860, No. 12). Published for the first time.
Lifetime publication of the answer to St. Ignatius, see in the book: Comments of various persons on the projects for the transformation of maritime educational institutions of Admiral Count Putyatin, 1860–1861. 4.2. Genuine reviews in alphabetical order. St. Petersburg, 1861, pp. 499–510. Also published in the book: Sokolov. 4. 2. pp. 48–58; PST. T. 3. pp. 506–517.
This idea belongs to St. Anthony the Great. See “Memorable Tales of the Fathers,” chap. 29.
Ladder. A word to the shepherd.
Ps. 52; 6. Gal. 1; 10. Eph. 17; 6. Col. 3; 22.
The letter was published in the text “Biographies of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov,” published in 1881, and the first volume of “Ascetic Experiences” in all collected works of the saint, starting in 1886. In response to this letter, “by the highest decree given on August 5, 1861, Bishop Ignatius of the Caucasus, according to his request, was most mercifully dismissed from the administration of the diocese and, according to his personal desire, by the determination of the Holy Synod of August 9. 1861, No. 1752, he was assigned to stay in the Nikolaev Babayevsky Monastery of the Kostroma diocese, which was provided to the Right Reverend Ignatius in the main administration so that the abbot and brethren of the monastery would have the same relationship with him as if they were a diocesan Right Reverend, with the use of the best cells, heating, lighting, servants and crew, but without a staff member for the monastery content" (Sokolov. 4. 1. P. 297).
His Eminence Leonid (L. V. Krasnopevkov, 1817–1876) – Bishop of Dmitrov, Archbishop of Yaroslavl. In 1836, in the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage, he met Archimandrite Ignatius, who set him on the monastic path. He died while touring his diocese in the Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery, having served a memorial service at the grave of his spiritual mentor the day before. 8 letters to him by St. have been published. Ignatius for 1859–1867 (Collected letters. 1995. pp. 56–66).
T. 4. An offering to modern monasticism, containing rules of outward behavior for novice monks and advice regarding spiritual monastic work / Preface. and note. auto St. Petersburg, 1867.
A word about the different states of human nature in relation to good and evil // Ignatius (Brianchaninov). T. 2. Ascetic experiences. M., 1993. pp. 362–412.
A word on the sensual and spiritual vision of spirits//Ignatius (Brianchaninov). T. 3/4. A word about death. Ascetic sermon. M., 1993. P. 3–67 1st page.
A Word about Salvation and Christian Perfection//Ignatius (Brianchaninov). T. 2. Ascetic experiences. M., 1993. pp. 328–361.
Mainly, Grigory Ivanovich Philipson, who then commanded the troops of the Right Wing of the Caucasian Line.
Exposition of the teaching of the Orthodox Church about the Mother of God // Ignatius (Brianchaninov). T.. A word about death. Ascetic sermon. M., 1993. pp. 398–437 2nd page.