At Trinity at the Academy

The article published below by Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop of Vereisky, and then Archimandrite, inspector of the Moscow Theological Academy, first saw the light in 1914 on the pages of the newspaper “Moscow Church Bulletin” (No. 42). It is a kind of review of the anniversary collection “At the Trinity at the Academy: 1814–1914” (M., 1914), dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Moscow Theological Academy. The article is interesting as a work in which the future saint had to defend the honor of both the monk and the academy. The article fully demonstrated his skill as a polemicist, able to objectively, gently, and comprehensively admonish an ill-wisher who tendentiously illuminates the state of the academy. The article was not included in the three-volume collection of the works of St. Hilarion, published by the publishing house of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery in 2004, and is offered to the modern reader for the first time. October 1 marked the centenary of the founding of the Moscow Theological Academy. The planned celebration of the centenary anniversary did not take place due to the exceptional events of the current year. But no events, of course, can shift the chronological date: from October 2, the Academy entered the second century of its historical life. For the anniversary, former students of the academy published a collection of historical materials; this collection is a huge volume of 48 printed sheets. The very fact that this collection was published by former students of the academy is very significant and can be called gratifying. Student years are the golden time of life. Memories of these years are always something cherished and dear to the heart. But our dear hero of the day has a special property: she, perhaps more than any other institution, binds her pupils to herself, and many years of everyday adversity at the end of the course are powerless to break the established connection with the academy. They often lament that the academy is somewhere in a suburb, in a monastery, and not in Moscow. But I think this is what makes the Moscow Academy especially close and dear to its students. The academy, which is far from the capital, keeps its students within its walls more than any other educational institution. Students of the Moscow Academy live together more than other students and therefore get along better with their home academy and with each other. That is why, perhaps, Moscow students always exhibit particularly strong academic patriotism, which outsiders are often surprised by. This collection is also evidence of the special love for the academy of its former students. If the academy prepares any publications for the anniversary celebration, then this is its duty, but if former students gather, discuss what to do, collect materials, print a huge collection - what is this if not disinterested, grateful love? But in terms of its content, the collection is a wonderful gift to everyone to whom the Moscow Theological Academy is dear and dear. The academy is closely connected with the Moscow clergy, in particular: several generations of clergy received their higher education there. The “anniversary commission” also deserves considerable gratitude from the Moscow clergy, which, of course, put a lot of work into collecting and printing historical materials. The contents of the collection can be divided into three categories: 1) memories of academic days in general, 2) memories and characteristics of individual academic figures, and 3) letters and other minor materials. The best articles are in the first category. The collection contains memories of those who studied at the academy in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 70s of the last century. Without exaggeration, we can say that it is difficult to tear yourself away from reading these memoirs. Academic traditions are revived; shadows of the past arise; glorious names, which one is accustomed to pronounce with reverence, are replaced in the mind by living images. After reading these memoirs, you still remain immersed in the past and begin to look at old academic buildings differently, because their long-dead inhabitants come to mind. Of the articles devoted to individuals, the essay on the life and work of Alexander Vasilyevich Gorsky, written even from documents unknown in the press, is especially outstanding. Actually, about A.V. Gorsky in the collection contains a whole study of 258 pages, since in addition to the mentioned sketch of his life and work there is a lot of different materials in the form of letters from Gorsky himself and other persons to Gorsky. Such special attention to A.V. Gorsky, of course, is quite understandable and completely natural: in the last century of academic life of A.V. Gorsky is an exceptional man and his name is the glory of the academy. This exceptional personality is characterized comprehensively: biographical information about A.V. is given. Gorsky, his character is presented, his personal scientific activities, his influence on the academy and church history in Russia are traced. The letters to A.V. printed in the collection are very important. Gorsky, luminaries of Russian science, contemporary to him. These letters clearly show what A.V. was. Gorsky for Russian science in general. Memories of individuals often relate to times close to the present day, and therefore are also read with great interest. One can only regret that some big names are left out. I would like to name two names: Filaret (Gumilevsky), friend of A.V. Gorsky, and prof. A.P. Lebedeva. After all, one correspondence between Filaret and Gorsky could provide material for a very interesting article. A.P. Lebedev is still in everyone's memory. His merits for church historical science are undoubted. The lack of memories of him seems inexplicable. Among the letters, the letters of P.S. attract attention. Kazansky 2, which fill five printed sheets in the collection. Letters to P.S. Much is already known about Kazansky. They are always interesting and, in our opinion, are of particular importance for the history of life of the Moscow Academy. They show what a wide range of interests the posad professors had and how they followed the life of both church and state from their rural wilderness. Some things in the collection can be called random, but the presence of a random element in such publications is perhaps inevitable. Undoubtedly, the collection will receive the widest distribution among former students of the Moscow Academy, and many will experience many pleasant hours not only during the reading itself, but also after, when memories of their student years go in an unbroken chain. A warm feeling of grateful love for the academy permeates almost the entire collection, and reading the collection can enhance this grateful feeling. But we cannot help but note something in the collection that may cause disappointment and that, in any case, does not increase the merits of the anniversary collection. We mean mainly the last article “For Thirty Years (1884–1914)”, owned by prof. Glubokovsky 3. The editor of the collection, it seems, is completely in vain to write in the preface: “It seems to sum up everything that was said in the collection” (p. IX). We failed to notice this, but we involuntarily noticed how this article violates the tone of the entire collection. All the materials included in the collection are either with the impartiality of Pushkin’s chronicler, or with the passion of a loving son, but the last article is written in an accusatory tone and tendentious in content. Why, first of all, should we despise the present and the recently past before the long past? But the professor writes: “The Academy, without its normal functions of life, atrophied, froze and seemed to be non-existent” (p. 750). The professor is inclined to attribute the destruction of the academy to the charter of 1884. But the “student of the 1870s” begins his memoirs like this: “When, at the end of the seminar course, I decided to declare my desire to enter the Moscow Theological Academy, warnings were heard from different sides in the sense that “now the Moscow Academy is no longer what it was before”” (p. 172). Who to listen to? One says that until 1884 everything was fine, and the other heard back in 1876 about the decline of the academy. It turns out that the academy existed for only 60 years. But let me! After all, the scientific activity of E.E. has fallen entirely over the last 40 years. Golubinsky, V.O. Klyuchevsky, A.P. Lebedeva. And these are nice names! Sighing about the “good old days” and deploring “our days,” let’s say, are natural. I remember the verses of Horace’s ode: "Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores, mox ages Progeniem vitiosiorem" 4 . But this pessimistic rehash could have been left for the anniversary edition! There is an article by Prof. Glubokovsky and even glaring tendentiousness. Although he reproaches the statute, seeing in it the root of all evil, it is also harsh and unfair towards the leaders of the supposedly “new academy.” For him, the last 30 years of the academy’s history are “the era of monastic bureaucracy” (p. 741), and therefore the monks were to blame for everything. It’s as if someone considered and interpreted the academy as “only a dead tool for party experiments and a convenient environment for testing the abilities of inexperienced mechanics from the Black Rides” (pp. 749–750). But did the “era of monastic rule” begin only after 1884? Indeed, over a century, out of 19 rectors, only two (A.V. Gorsky and S.K. Smirnov) were not monks; without monastic rectors, the academy lived for only 21 years (1862–1875 and 1878–1886). Consequently, the “era of monastic rule,” so hated by the professor, embraces 4/5 of a hundred-year period. For some time now, we have had a bad manner of portraying monks as some kind of moral monsters who must be guilty, “guilty without guilt.” This anti-monastic tendency unpleasantly strikes the reader in the final article of the collection. There's a lot of things that aren't blamed on the academic monastic bosses! Everything is bad for the monk: he is an “honest lawyer” (p. 748) - the professor is dissatisfied; the monk is easy in his dealings with students - again this is not good, this is “suspicious familiarity” (pp. 741, 747). You will involuntarily remember the verses from the Gospel: “We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; We sang songs of lamentation to you, and you did not weep” (Matthew 11:17). An inspector-monk monitors the students - this is “police supervision” (p. 741). Such supervision allegedly did not exist without the monks (p. 741). As luck would have it, the supervision was most strict with the secular inspector. The professor justifies him (pp. 741–742): this is not police surveillance. Alas! In the same collection, this secular inspector writes about himself: “Listen to what students on the side say about the power of my supervision. They say that nothing can be hidden from the inspector, that it is useless to try to evade the inspector’s eye and deceive the inspector, that it is in vain to praise the French police, that our academic police are no lower than the French. It is impossible to keep students in great fear of the inspector without careful supervision” (p. 660). I can imagine what reason for mockery there would be in these words if they belonged to an inspector-monk! After all, the inspector-monk was even accused of “secretly watching the walking students at the window of his apartment” (p. 748). But about the same secular inspector, another contemporary of his, who knew him for many years, in his memoirs (printed, but not yet published) says that he was “through and through with astringent formalism and callous exactingness,” that he gave reprimands “with some kind of special inspector’s relish,” and “annoyed him with prolonged and seemingly malicious repetition and the appearance of a disciplinary oversight.” We are writing this not at all with the aim of making worse the secular inspector personally unknown to us, but only to show how much impartiality the learned professor loses when he starts talking about the monk. And the professor’s dislike of monks sometimes reaches the point of ridiculousness. The monk speaks with an “o” - this is already a sin, and the professor considers it necessary to mimic: “M o kary, firstly, secondly” (p. 749). The monk is also to blame when nature denies him beauty and if his clothes don’t fit well. “The figure is pitiful, the manners are clumsy timidity in an unusual monastic robe that does not suit him, not the slightest lecturing talents” - this is how the monk-inspector is characterized (p. 747). Undoubtedly, it would be outrageous if someone started making fun of F.A. Golubinsky, who had an “ugly and even scary appearance” (see p. 68), or E.E. Golubinsky, who was not particularly talented as a lecturer. But since we are talking about a monk, then “everything is permitted”... We do not at all suspect the validity of everything that Professor Glubokovsky tells; we are only sadly surprised at its tendentiousness and remember the words of Archbishop Nikanor [Brovkovich; † 1890]: “In nature, man is always and in everything a man, not a perfect angel, always a mixture of good and evil, a mixture of spiritual perfections and infirmities. Is it a lie that the devil writes down for each of us on his charter? No, he writes the true facts, but he writes down only the bad of a person’s deeds and feelings, concealing and concealing all the good. That is why the devil is called a lie, just as in his nature he is a lie and a liar, and in every testimony he gives about the deeds of man, he is a slanderer and murderer” (Memoirs of a former alto soloist // Biographical materials. Vol. 1. pp. 10–11) 5. The professor admits that his pessimism regarding the academy “serves only as a subjective echo of advancing old age, which instinctively transfers its infirmities, sorrows and disappointments to everything around it, coloring it with sad tones of hopelessness and joylessness, and in the past finds good things because it itself was better - healthy, vigorous, cheerful” (p. 754). We sincerely wish him a vigorous and cheerful old age. Our only regret is that “pressing old age” made itself known when writing an article for the anniversary collection. The summary of everything said in the collection is in the article by Prof. We don’t see Glubokovsky. The bewildered disappointment that we experienced when reading the last article nevertheless drowns and dissolves almost completely in the feeling of pleasure that we received while reading the entire extensive collection. Archimandrite Hilarion (Troitsky) The extraordinary event that occurred in 1914 refers to the beginning of the First World War. Kazansky Petr Simonovich (1819–1878) - professor at the Moscow Academy of Sciences, who worked there for 30 years. He headed the department of general history. In addition to scientific works, he wrote several services, akathists and prayers, as well as a large number of spiritual and edifying articles. His letters were not published in a separate collection also because of extraordinary events: first because of the war, and later because of the revolution. Glubokovsky Nikolai Nikanorovich (1863–1937) – professor at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. He graduated from the MDA in 1889. His critical attitude towards monasticism and many inspector-monks of theological educational institutions, including the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, was manifested not only in this article, but also in other works. “The fathers, who were worse than the grandfathers, raised us to be wicked; our offspring will be even more vicious” (translated by N.S. Ginzburg) - lines from Ode 6 of the Third Book of Horace’s Odes. The quoted passage is from the work: Our secular and spiritual seal about the clergy. Memoirs of a former alto soloist // Nikanor [Brovkovich]. Biographical materials / Ed. [and with a preface] S.V. Petrovsky. Odessa, 1900. T. 1. P. 7–103.