Church and religious life and theological thought in Russia according to Palmer's notes

Paragraph I II III IV V VI VII The forties constitute a remarkable period in the history of the mental development of the Russian people. It was a time of rich flourishing of original Russian thought, which, still free from the deadening shackles of foreignness, freely fed on the juices of its native soil and was expressed in a whole galaxy of talents, a few representatives of which still serve as the best and highest exponents of the original Russian genius. If not science, which has a universal human character, then our literature, in which the national genius naturally finds its highest expression, can proudly point to this period, and when comparing with it the current time we are experiencing of an almost incredible impoverishment of Russian literature, our criticism should not indulge in fruitless complaints about the very fact of impoverishment, but boldly look at the reasons due to which Russian thought became impoverished and shredded. The very fact of impoverishment is beyond doubt. It is recognized by everyone and is repeated in every way in countless jeremiads of sincere and hired mourners of our literary criticism. But the reasons are still far from clear and there is such a confusion of concepts regarding them that in most cases they are sought in what constitutes our national strength, and the cure for evil is in what serves as the source of evil. We mean that literary party, unfortunately predominant at the present time, in whose mouth the very concept of originality, on the basis of which only a healthy national genius can develop, has been turned into the flatly ironic nickname of “originalists.” Meanwhile, in originality only a healing remedy can be found against the meanness of modern Russian thought, languishing under the yoke of foreignness. Recently, apparently, there has been a turn in the consciousness of the best part of our intelligent society and, one can hope, in the near future we will again enter the norm of our natural development, Russian thought will recover from its weakness and public consciousness will clear up so much that such facts of insane self-spitting, which we recently witnessed on the occasion of the centenary anniversary of one of the giants of Russian original thought, a typical genius of the forties, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow. The image of the great metropolitan, living majestically in the healthy consciousness of the Russian people, but fading into a ghostly shadow in the thoughtlessness of our liberal intelligentsia, is great because it is made up of the highest elements of the national spirit, which was freely expressed during the forties. In view of the above, this period undoubtedly has high historical interest and any material that can serve to better familiarize itself with it constitutes a valuable contribution to the treasury of our self-knowledge. But the interest of the material rises even more when it is given by a person standing outside the sphere of ordinary relations, which often leave an overly ordinary stamp on the most prominent phenomena. Such material is given in the recently published book by the Englishman Palmer, which has already been briefly discussed in our magazine. This book, which constitutes Palmer's diary during his stay in Russia in the early forties, introduces us to the inner sanctuary of the then theological ideas and religious views of both representatives of the Church and people of secular society. Both in general literary and theological terms, the forties also constituted a period of remarkable work of original Russian theological thought. Our best theological thinkers belong to this period, leaving us an instructive and at the same time comforting monument that our Orthodox theological thought can be completely independent and can develop from original Orthodox Russian principles, and the more of them, the better, since the slavish dependence into which our theological science has recently become from foreign and predominantly German theology is killing our own theological thought. The material given in Palmer's book is all the more interesting because it deals with such an important question, which is always capable of arousing the greatest energy of theological thought, namely, the great question of the union of churches. In our author’s notes, all the best representatives of our theological thought of that time, with Philaret of Moscow at the head, speak out on this issue, and we now move directly to the book itself, apologizing to the readers for unintentionally distracting them from the book with accidentally inspired thoughts about the ways of our mental development. Palmer's book is a simple diary of the author in his relations with contemporary representatives of the Russian Church and society, and therefore is distinguished by all the artlessness and at the same time spontaneity of this kind of work. It is all the more valuable for us, and when presenting it we will adhere to the same spontaneity, simply following the author’s diary and reporting from it everything that is most outstanding and characteristic. However, we will accompany this presentation with our own comments, necessary for a better understanding of the guiding views of the author himself, which were determined by the well-known trend of contemporary theological thought in England. Religious movement in England. Direction of Theological Thought at Oxford University. The theory of branches of a single Catholic Church. Palmer and his thought about a closer acquaintance with the Orthodox East. Petition to the late Sovereign Alexander II. Trip to Russia. In the thirties of this century a significant religious movement took place in England. The Anglican Church, gradually developing in the direction of Protestantism, finally brought the process of Protestantization to such an extent that all its best friends involuntarily shuddered, wanting to see in it not any of the ordinary Protestant sects, but one of the branches of the Catholic or universal Church. As a result of this consciousness, a reaction naturally began, and it was expressed in the well-known so-called “Oxford” movement. This movement originated in the classical seat of English learning, at Oxford University, which not only then, but even now, one might say, has an exclusive monopoly on the initiative of the intellectual movements of the English people. Among his professors, among whom, thanks to the peculiar system of their election by the board of trustees, only serious and therefore conservative thinkers can be found, the abnormal conditions into which the Anglican Church was becoming due to the excessive admission of elements of Protestantism were first of all realized. Indeed, a simple, naked eye was enough to see how much the Anglican Church at the beginning of this century deviated not only from the Roman Catholic Church, from which it had separated only two centuries before, but also from the type of independent “Catholic” church that it should, in theory, be after liberation from the ecclesiastical monopoly of Rome. This alarmed the serious, conservative scholars at Oxford. In order to stop, as far as possible, the further development of Protestant principles in the Anglican Church, university professors formed a society among themselves, the purpose of which was to spread sound church principles among the people. But where was one to look for these sound church principles? As serious people, Oxford scientists turned for them to the inexhaustible source of universal principles, to the works of the fathers and teachers of the undivided Church. A thorough study of these creations began, which had suffered significant oblivion under the influence of the prevailing ideas of Protestantism. And the work turned out to be very fruitful. As soon as the Oxford scholars touched this living source of true church principles, their eyes, one might say, began to see clearly, and they no longer saw through the mirror of fortune-telling the abnormal position of the Anglican Church, but with their own eyes and, moreover, with the torch of authoritative guidance. The vast horizon of the universal Church opened up before the Oxford scholars, and its principles, so lofty and great in comparison with the sectarian narrowness of Anglicanism of that time, made a charming impression on them and decided the final character of the entire movement. The whole movement turned into a search for a universal Church, and the further the Oxford theologians delved into patristic literature, the more charming the idea of ​​the Catholic Church, in the precise symbolic meaning of the word, became for them. This was fully reflected in those treatises 1 through which Oxford scientists shared the results of their research with society. The first of these treatises bear traces of indecisiveness and traditional attachment to the form of modern Anglicanism, but as time goes on, the more strongly the abstract catholic element appears in them, and finally, the last treatises express the complete sympathy of the Anglican theologians for the catholicity they sought, the sacrifice of which they were ready to sacrifice the symbolic members of the Anglican Church. Thus, the movement of theological thought at Oxford University led to a decisive crisis. Modern Anglicanism has turned out to be inconsistent with the ideal of the Catholic Church, which flows from the writings of the fathers and teachers of the universal undivided Church. What was to be done? The true idea of ​​the Catholic Church, found in patristic literature, was too abstract to be able to dwell on it completely. If this idea is true, then it must be real, and therefore there must necessarily be a real embodiment of this idea on earth, the absence of which would be a violation of the great promise of the permanence of the Church on earth. This path of logical thinking naturally led to the search for a truly Catholic Church on earth, fully corresponding to the principles of the true Church of Christ. And here two currents of theological thought emerged, which divided among themselves Oxford and other thinkers interested in the movement. According to some, the cause of the evil that depressed the Anglican Church and plunged it into the whirlpool of Protestantism lay in the very root of the Reformation movement. In their opinion, the Reformation itself, which gave impetus to the separation of the Anglican Church from Roman Catholicism, was a fatal historical mistake, and therefore the sooner we return to the former alma mater, the Roman Catholic Church, the better, since it still represents the most perfect type of the universal or catholic Church. No matter how incongruous such a conclusion was, apparently, from a careful study of patristic literature, it was at the same time the most natural one in the given state of affairs. The Roman Catholic Church, with its harmonious organization, elaboration of form and hierarchy, with its worldwide prevalence and the charming power of its historical past, in the search for a truly universal Church, most likely could have presented itself to the imagination of Oxford scholars. If we add to this the commonality of Latin civilization, which necessarily connected England with the Roman Catholic continent, and historical disunity with the little-known and little-cultured east, then the inclination of some Oxford scholars in favor of the Roman Catholic Church becomes natural and understandable. But among them there were also people who valued the benefits of national and religious freedom too much and had a deeper understanding of the process of historical development to dwell on this thought. For them, the ideal of the one true Catholic Church was also fascinating, and they wanted to find its implementation on earth, but, at the same time, being more strict in considering the existing churches, they could not immediately give the monopoly of truth to any one of the existing churches. They saw that not a single existing church corresponds to the real ideal of the apostolic, catholic church; nevertheless, it must exist in reality, according to the promise of the Savior. Following this path of logical development, these scientists came to the conclusion that the true Catholic Church is not represented separately by any of the three main churches taken separately, but by all of them together. The Catholic Church is like a tree, which, having one root and trunk, branches out as it develops and grows, so that each branch, upon superficial observation, appears to have nothing in common with the other branches, but in fact they all have the same main trunk, feed on the same juices and have the same vital root. The three main churches - Greek-Eastern, Roman Catholic and Anglican, which, thanks to historical development, have separated into separate communities, are only branches of one Catholic Church. Each of them, taken separately, does not constitute the Catholic Church in the proper sense and is only a part of it, and, moreover, has violated the purity of its prototype under the influence of various historical and national elements. But if we take them all together and, through a certain logical process of abstraction, bring them down to general principles, with the abstraction of particular national elements, then these general principles will be the catholic tree on which individual churches are located as separate branches of the same tree. No matter how artificial this theory is, it found many adherents who saw in it the only way out of the contradiction between the ideal of the Catholic Church and the inconsistency of existing individual churches with it 2. Palmer also belonged to this party. He was, in the words of the publisher of his book, Cardinal Newman, who was also an ardent participant in the Oxford movement, “one of those serious and pious men who, being deeply convinced of the great truth that God founded, and still recognizes and maintains, a visible church - one, individual and integral - catholic as widespread throughout the universe, apostolic as contemporary with the apostles, and holy as the dispenser of His word and sacraments - it was thought that this church now exists in three main branches, or rather in a threefold form - Latin, Greek and Anglican, these forms constituting one and the same church, differing from each other only in secondary, accidental and local, although important, features. And since the whole church in its entirety, in their opinion, is at the same time and separately Anglican, Greek and Latin, then in turn each of them is a whole church. It followed from this that when one of them is three in appearance, then the other two, in essence, are absent, and therefore all three cannot have direct relations to one another, as if they were three independent bodies, since there is no real difference between them, except for the external sign of spatial location. Then, since, in their opinion, in a given territory there could not be more than one of the three churches, it followed that Christians in general, wherever they may be, are obliged to recognize and have the right to be recognized by such a church in the territory of which they are currently located, so that, being in Rome, they must cease to belong to the Church of England, and must reject Rome when they are in Moscow. Finally, not to recognize this inevitable conclusion from the basic idea of ​​the church, namely that it is both ubiquitous and united, in their opinion, would mean revealing bad logic, and to oppose it would mean rebuilding the altar against the altar, that is, it would be the dark sin of schism and sacrilege” 3. “This, in my opinion,” adds Cardinal Newman, “is the formal teaching of Anglicanism; We held to such and such a doctrine and preached it at Oxford forty years ago, and Palmer deeply believed in such and such a doctrine and energetically advocated it when he traveled to Russia. This was the motivating reason for him to go there, because he hoped to receive from the Imperial Synod such recognition of his right to the sacraments of the Greek-Russian Church, which would be irrefutable proof that the teaching of the Anglican theologians is not a mere theory and that the Anglican is ipso facto at the same time Orthodox. Thus, these are the views and goals with which Palmer went to Russia. His trip was, so to speak, an attempt to boldly apply the ideas of the Oxford movement to reality, which was supposed to pronounce one or another verdict on the theory itself. Since this reality was the Orthodox Russian Church, Palmer’s book is of primary interest to us in terms of how this church, represented by its best representatives whom Palmer met in Russia, reacted to the Oxford doctrine, which undoubtedly constitutes an important step in the consciousness of the Western European world in the direction of true church principles. The author’s entire book consists of a transfer of his theological conversations with various representatives of Russian theological thought, but at the same time it is peppered with the author’s remarks about our church and everyday order, as they appeared to his direct view. And the very publication of his book by Cardinal Newman was undertaken, according to the cardinal’s own consciousness, not for the sake of the cause of Anglican doctrine, which for Newman with his transition to Roman Catholicism became a dead fact, but for the sake of “that living picture that this book paints, for better or worse, about the Russian Church and which was produced by the author without any effort, thanks to his relations with the clergy and laity and with the population in general” 5 . The first reason for Palmer to become acquainted with Orthodox Russia was a completely exceptional case. When the Oxford movement had already, one might say, reached its decisive point, when the idea of closer acquaintance with other branches of the universal Church in order to understand their views on Oxford doctrine had already matured, and when the gaze of Oxford theologians for the same purpose was directed to the Orthodox East, which, despite its cultural backwardness, nevertheless continued to retain some kind of mysterious charm for all those seeking church truth in the world. west, at this time, precisely in May 1839, the late Sovereign Emperor Alexander II, who at that time was still heir to the throne, arrived in Oxford. Oxford hastened to take advantage of this opportunity for their own purposes, and when the distinguished Russian guest visited the university, Palmer, who was entrusted with meeting him, presented him with a petition with the following content, in its main features: “Although it may seem presumptuous, I nevertheless dare to present the petition to Your Imperial Highness. It consists in sending here some Russian theologian capable of studying the theology of our churches. He could live in the Magdalenian college (which I am authorized to declare) and I myself would teach him English, so that through his medium the contents of our best books could become known to His Imperial Majesty and the bishops of the eastern community. And if, in time, I had to go to Russia to study the theology and rituals of the Russian Church there, then, I hope, I could receive the favor and patronage of Your Imperial Highness. Surely, if the whole Catholic Church is to long for unity, nothing can be more worthy of the piety of a great prince than to endeavor to promote the reunification of two communities separated only by misunderstandings and want of intercourse. While the Church of England constantly defends the rights of Christian princes, threatened alike by the ambition of the Roman pontiff and by democratic licentiousness, she herself is now in great danger, isolated in the corner of the West, and threatened by the hatred of all the sects allied with the schismatic Papists for her overthrow. If Your Imperial Highness would deign to treat our request favorably and be sympathetic to the plight of our churches, then this would be a boon for the cause of public order, submission and humility in the West; and at the same time, by promoting the unity of the churches, Your Imperial Highness would bring joy to all who pray for the peace of the Christian world. May the Most High throne bless the Emperor of Russia and may all the peoples subordinate to him obey him as a father. May he never see the invasion of the anarchic principles of heretical Protestantism to disturb his empire and his churches, and may it be given to him, if the opportunity arises, to free the East from the yoke of the infidels” 6. It should be noted that this petition, before being presented, was subjected to a careful examination by the President or Rector of the Magdalen College, the aged Root, who recommended that all expressions in one way or another not consistent with the dignity of the Church of England be excluded from it, and, incidentally, the last expression of the petition, which he found “un-English,” was remarked on his part. The petition, apparently, made a favorable impression on the late Sovereign Emperor, whose noble and humane soul was sympathetic to any idea that would promote the establishment of peace and unity on earth, and several years after the petition was submitted, there was a rumor in Oxford that Emperor Nicholas I intended to found a department of the Russian language there at the university; but the matter was slowed down by the fact that he wanted to reserve the right to appoint a professor to it, which, apparently, was at odds with the traditional view of English universities on their independence and with the well-known political suspicion of the British in matters of this kind. So the matter remained unrelated, despite the undoubtedly important significance of his idea. This idea, however, soon found a rather happy application when, under the influence of strong religious movements in the West, which necessitated the need to become familiar with them, according to the idea of ​​Chief Prosecutor Count Protasov, Russian Orthodox churches were opened in the main centers of the European world, the rectors of which were persons of solid theological scholarship. These persons, among whom there were indeed many worthy and, one might say, selected persons, taking advantage of the assistance and encouragement of the chief prosecutor, provided an irreplaceable service in familiarizing themselves with the state of the Western European Christian world, and one cannot but regret that this mission of our foreign churches soon lost its original character, and they, with the ebb of the first phalanx of leaders, turned into ordinary exacting parish churches, with ordinary correctional superiors, in which position they, unfortunately, find themselves now. But if Palmer’s thoughts regarding the introduction of Anglican theology into the consciousness of representatives of Russian theological thought were not realized, then he tried to compensate for this omission by completing the opposite side of the scheme and decided to familiarize himself with the principles of Russian theological thought and church-religious life. To this end, he began to prepare for a trip to Russia. His idea found sympathy among the majority of members of the professorial corporation of the Magdalenian College, of which he was a professor; a special society was formed to implement his idea. The greatest support for Palmer was provided by the president of the college, Ruth, according to whom the Anglican Church, in essence, never, by any open or conciliar act, rejected communion with the Eastern Church, just as it itself was never excommunicated by the Eastern Church. However, the matter did not go unchallenged by individual members. It was essentially so new and so unprepared historically that the very idea of ​​it for some seemed chimerical and even somewhat offensive to the dignity of the Anglican Church, especially in view of the prevailing prejudice at that time against the Eastern Church as a soulless body. In this sense, one of the members of the college corporation, Sibthorp, when at the meeting it was discussed about issuing a letter of recommendation to Palmer when sent to Russia, he sharply protested. “I protest, Mr. President,” he said in an excited voice, “against this society giving any encouragement to the idea of ​​​​intercourse with the idolatrous Greek Church.” However, the letter was given to Palmer with the following content, on behalf of the president of the college: “To all the faithful in Christ who will receive this letter – grace, health and salvation. Since it was stated to me that one of our members, William Palmer, M.S. I wish that he, having asked the permission of the most powerful and pious Emperor, if the piety of the Emperor deigns to grant his request, presents himself with all respect to the Russian bishops and especially to the Holy Spiritual Synod, so that with their permission and assistance he can become familiar with the teachings, forms and rituals of the Russian Church, and study the Russian language - in some theological academy or somewhere else location as deemed most convenient. Then I ask and even conjure in the name of Christ all the most reverend archbishops and bishops and especially the most holy Synod, that they test him regarding the Orthodoxy of his faith with the spirit of love for mankind, and that if they find in him everything that is necessary for the integrity of the true and saving faith, they also allow him to communicate in the sacraments. I wish that he would submit and conform in everything to the suggestions and instructions of the Russian bishops, only without affirming or doing anything that would be contrary to the faith and teaching of the British churches. To this document I willingly sign my name and affix a seal on the 4th day of August, in the year of Christ 1840. Martin Joseph Root, President of the College of St. Mary Magdalene at Oxford University" 7. Having secured, after some formal difficulties, the approval of the primate of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Palmer went to Russia. The English envoy to the Russian court, Lord Chanricard, being in London at that time, gave him several letters of recommendation to various high-ranking officials in St. Petersburg and, above all, to the Chief Prosecutor of St. Synod to Count Protasov, about whom he casually remarked to Palmer: “You will be surprised when you see a hussar general, in his uniform, adjutant of the Emperor, presiding over the Synod, disposing of the bishops and governing the church” 8 . Arrival in St. Petersburg and first impressions. – Features of church and religious life. – The wealth of external forms and their significance for religious life. – The character of the Russian people and the position of the clergy. - A searching Englishman and a theological general from the hussars. – Letter from Palmer to Count Protasov. A few days later, Palmer, with the curiosity of a foreigner, was already walking along the streets of St. Petersburg and delving into the peculiar features of Russian life. It must be said that Russian life in general is so unique and, moreover, so little known in the Western European world that every foreigner is involuntarily amazed by the richness and diversity of its original features, which truly represent for the observant eye inexhaustible material for ethnographic study. When you move from one state to another in Western Europe, you can hardly notice any ethnographic or cultural transition. Everything is covered with the monotonous coloring of Romano-Germanic culture. Russia immediately amazes with the typicality of its ethnographic and cultural originality, and every foreigner with a feeling of extraordinary interest peers into all its individual features - from the “blue caftans and magnificent,” as Palmer puts it, “beards” of Russian men, from the peculiar harness and thunderous musical ringing and chiming of Russian bells to the most complex manifestations of our social and state life. For Palmer, of course, the manifestations of our church and religious life were of primary interest, and he dwells with curiosity on all its outstanding features. He visited churches, peered at their external and internal features, and for the first time they produced on him a mixed impression of external greatness and internal materialization of the religious spirit. The excess of external forms of our churchliness apparently confused his conscience, since at first he could not discern beneath them the rich inner content that fills them. He conveys the impression he received from visiting the Kazan Cathedral in the following terms: “There was an excess of pious gestures, the people bowed and crossed themselves, kissed icons, sank to the ground and touched the floor with their foreheads (sometimes with an audible knock), bowed and crossed themselves again and again - men and women, old and young. Small candles were bought at the door at a special counter, lit and placed for burning (as if in the name of those who placed them) on large candelabra in front of the iconostasis. There were many poor people inside and outside the church, and many beggars stood at the door, to whom passers-by generously handed out pennies. – The general impression produced by this church was one of great splendor and splendor, as well as grace. The impression made on me (on my first visit) by the external piety of the people was one of amazement, curiosity, suspicion and a certain embarrassment (everything was so unlike English customs, and so far went even in comparison with the customs of the Roman Catholics), which, however, at the same time was mixed with respect for the simplicity, reverence and generosity in alms with which this popular piety was accompanied. 9. The external side of the religiosity of the Russian people, which, in essence, is a natural consequence of the richness of their inner spirit, striving for an external corresponding manifestation, will probably remain mysterious for a long time to foreigners accustomed to the meager forms of Protestantism, meager in the truly religious spirit. As a result of this, it is self-evident that Palmer found it very curious the incident he recorded in his book when his cab driver, who brought him to the Kazan Cathedral, receiving money from his rider, returned him a penny back with the words: “for a candle to church.” “That is,” explains the perplexed Englishman, “since the driver himself could not leave his horse to go into the church to pray, his prayer could be represented in the church by his candle.” Obviously, the entire internal moral and religious meaning of this fact escaped the superficial gaze of a foreigner, and it remained in his memory as a simple everyday curiosity. Nevertheless, Russian church and religious life is so rich that at certain moments even the prejudiced feeling of a foreigner cannot free itself from its charm. Palmer also experienced such charm when visiting the Church of the Ascension. “I could not,” he says, “get far inside the church, since it was overcrowded with people; but for me there was so much new and amazing in the singing, sweet and clear, not accompanied by instruments, and in the very animation and feeling with which the people joined in the singing of the often repeated exclamation: “Lord have mercy,” that I remained in a state of enchanted attention for a whole hour or more, although I did not understand anything. The paintings (icons) were brilliant and all illuminated. The sharp, fluttering voices of the boys, combining with the low tones of the older singers, were very pleasant. The bells on the towers buzzed from time to time. The serving priests were invisible to me as I stood behind. Never before have I heard anything so amazing and so public in worship." 10 Those Englishmen and foreigners in general who stay longer in Russia and take a closer look at our church and religious life become significantly accustomed to it and themselves assimilate some of its features. So Palmer talks about one Anglican lady who did not hesitate to make the sign of the cross while at the Russian table, and about one even pastor, in other respects a very strict Protestant, who did not find anything superstitious in this, contrary to the general Protestant view, considered the sign of the cross completely harmless and edifying, and confessed that “he himself often made the sign of the cross, only secretly, under his dress, for the sake of fear Jewish" 11. In fact, the English themselves are often aware of what an important advantage their church was deprived of when, under the influence of the extreme Protestant trend, it lost its rich external forms. When asked by a Russian whether the Anglican Church was really different from the Lutheran Church and closer to the Russian Church, the English envoy, Lord Clanricarde, remarked: “If you examine our statutes and the writings of some of our former bishops and theologians, you will find much in them that will justify this idea of ​​​​the Anglican Church. But if you go into our churches, you won't see anything like that at all. In fact, everything there has become so meager and ordinary that religion has become repugnant to the upper classes of the people.”12 Palmer's observations extended to all aspects of the life and character of our people. Finding our people very religious, at the same time he does not lose sight of the ugly features of their concepts and life. Thus, he was struck by the sad weakness of our people to commemorate their holidays with excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages. This custom is so ingrained in the consciousness of the Russian people that, for example. On Easter, Prince Golitsyn’s servant asked his master for permission to go “drink like other Christians.” Our peasants, according to Palmer's observation, observe with extraordinary strictness the oath taken on an icon or cross. Therefore, when one Englishman wanted to force his Russian servant to swear on the cross that he would not drink, he refused this, but swore as much as he could. From his English compatriots, Palmer heard numerous complaints that Russian servants refused to share the ordinary fast table with them at their posts and demanded fast food for themselves, which is why keeping servants is much more expensive. The Russian people strictly observe fasting, but “fasting produces a reaction among them and, with the cessation of fasting, turns into excess, even among the upper classes and the clergy.” As for the very state and position of the clergy, Palmer’s observations are no longer of interest, since they point primarily to such features that are already a property of the past, such as for example. system of receipts to places with taking. By the way, he notes this fact with curiosity. The priest's daughter, who had received a better education than was usual among the clergy, was forced to marry a young man who was supposed to take her father's place, despite the fact that she wanted to marry a military man or a secular man in general. "However, she continues to go to dances and other parties, which is unusual for a priest's wife, and some of the officers like to tease her by calling her matuschka when chatting with her or asking her to dance." The social position of our clergy at that time, as we know, was far from enviable, and Palmer notes cases in which even bishops were forced to humbly wait for a reception from dignitaries in the antechamber. Having looked around in St. Petersburg, Palmer finally decided to begin implementing his main mission and for this purpose went to the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Count Protasov, and presented him with his letters of recommendation, and together with a letter from the president of the Magdalenian College. Count Protasov kindly received Palmer, who developed before him his theory of the universal Church and the relationship of the present three main communities both to it and to each other. This theory served as the subject of a rather long conversation, in which Count Protasov discovered that for a “general from the hussars” he had heard quite a lot about church and theological subjects. “I am not a theologian, but a soldier,” he told Palmer, “but, constantly moving among the clergy, I cannot help but know something about matters of this kind. If I were a bishop, I would first of all ask you regarding your teaching and symbol; and if you were to speak of a union with us on the same grounds as it might have been 1000 or 800 years ago, then, in view of the fact that since that time many divisions have occurred in the West and many questions have arisen that have never formally reached us, I would ask for further research and agreement. “That’s quite reasonable,” Palmer replied. “In that case,” the count continued, “what do you say about the sacraments?” – About the Eucharist I will say that bread is used, becomes and is the very body of Christ spiritually and supernaturally, without ceasing physically, in the order of nature, to be bread. By this we deny the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation. And I noticed that in the Russian translation of the XVIII members of the Council of Bethlehem in 1672, the assumption of these two correlative terms - “essence” and “signs” was eliminated; the last word is also not allowed in the Russian catechism, so that neither of these two Russian documents is in conflict with Orthodox doctrine. In order to more clearly understand this tirade in Palmer’s speech, one historical reference is not superfluous, namely regarding the fate of the decisions of the mentioned “Bethlehem” Council of 1672. This council, known to us as the Jerusalem Council, took place under Patriarch Dositheos, who, zealous for Orthodoxy, tried to determine the exact principles of Orthodoxy at it, as opposed to the previous council, which took place under Cyril Lucaris, who was accused of a clear inclination towards Calvinism. The Council of 1672 actually condemned the decisions of the previous Council; but if Cyril Lucaris leaned towards Calvinism, then Dositheus, in zealous opposition to him, fell into another, opposite extreme, and in the presentation of the Orthodox faith too carelessly succumbed to the influence of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, he overstepped the boundaries of Orthodoxy in presenting the teaching of the Orthodox Church about the sacrament of the Eucharist, adopting completely Latin terminology regarding transubstantiation, allowing the canon of St. The Scriptures are quite according to the definition of the Council of Trent and some other Roman Catholic views, such as. limiting the reading of Holy Scripture by the laity. The definitions of this council were sent to Russia by the Greek patriarchs in 1723 along with a letter from Patriarch Jeremiah, which expressed fraternal recognition on the part of the Eastern patriarchs of the church-administrative dignity of the then newly established body of Church administration in Russia, the Holy Synod, and as a result they received special significance for the Russian Church. Their importance required appropriate dissemination, and therefore the definitions or so-called XVIII members of the Jerusalem Council were translated into Russian to disseminate them as a symbolic document of the True Orthodox Church 13. But when they began to publish them in Russian, the keen eye of the strict guardian of Orthodoxy (Metropolitan Philaret) immediately saw the dogmatic inaccuracies that had crept into these terms, and therefore it was found necessary to make some changes and corrections in their Russian edition. It was the provisions regarding the canon of Holy Scripture that were corrected and the extremes of the Roman Catholic view of the sacrament of the Eucharist were softened. This fact undoubtedly expressed a certain bifurcation of Greco-Russian theological thought, and at the same time some uncertainty and instability was revealed in the positive dogmatic views of the Orthodox Church, so that it is easy for people of other faiths of different faiths to find in the Orthodox Church one or another church-dogmatic principles that are of interest to them only at the moment. Palmer also took advantage of this split, which he noted in a conversation with Count Protasov. As is known, the Anglican Church denies transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Eucharist in its extreme Roman Catholic sense, however, allowing it, so to speak, in a limited spiritual sense, as can be seen from the above definition made by Palmer. Therefore, it was very important for its representatives to find confirmation of their views in the teaching of the Orthodox Church, but the original decrees of the Jerusalem Council, which, among other things, were sent to the British bishops, who in 1716 established relations with the Eastern patriarchs about the union of churches, as the most accurate statement of Orthodox teaching, obviously took away any possibility of this. This explains the interest with which Palmer points out the changes made in the Russian edition of these definitions against the original, and precisely in the sense of cleansing them from Roman Catholic influence. Count Protasov, apparently, was surprised that Palmer knew about the changes made in the definitions of the Jerusalem Council, but confirmed this fact, and for his part noted: “It is possible that between these churches (Orthodox and Roman Catholic) there are shades of difference in a subject that stands above our understanding; but as for me, without pretending to speak positively, I think that the Greek Church agrees (that is, agrees without restriction) with the Roman teaching. The difference is noticeable in the fact that the Greeks make an invocation of the Holy Spirit, and not a simple repetition of the words of Christ, to accomplish the consecration of gifts.” The Count then turned to the question of the veneration of icons, and found Palmer rather liberal in not calling him an idolater. “After all, this,” the count added, “is an ordinary slander against us (from the Gentiles), although they do not call us idolaters because we bow to the Emperor or even to the image of the Emperor.” Having then listened to the presentation of Anglican teaching in general, Count Protasov marveled at him a lot; it was so new to him that he was not content with talking about the Anglican Church with Palmer, but decided to talk about it also with his wife’s governess, an Englishwoman by birth. “My wife,” said the count, “has an English bonna or companion, a rather good woman. I’ll talk to them about this again - it’s all new to me” 14. Throughout the conversation with Palmer, Count Protasov tried to strictly adhere to the soil of the Orthodox Church and did not fail to express regret that even the best of our hierarchs, who should have known Orthodox dogma more thoroughly than a general from the hussars, easily leave this soil. Pointing to the Calvinistic sympathies of the British, Count Protasov noted: “We also had a Calvinist or Protestant scent that wafted from Metropolitan Plato. Philaret of Moscow was also inclined in this way, and especially Michael, the late Metropolitan of Kiev. But all this was corrected, and now the Orthodox reaction began. We told the Metropolitan of Moscow that if he wants to show himself to be a good and humble Christian, then he must, with the help of his brethren, review and correct his previous catechism; and he did so, correcting him and making up for his previous omissions” 15. What Palmer thought about this tirade of a hussar general, zealous about Orthodoxy and accusing the best hierarchs of the Russian Church of deviating from it, he modestly keeps silent, and conveys only the further theology of Count Protasov. In conclusion, the Count expressed his desire that Palmer would set out in writing his plans and his mission. “I will translate your paper,” he said. “The court will soon return here, and then I will show it to the Emperor when I make my next report, or I will generally mention it and draw his attention.” Meanwhile, since your intentions are apparently good and your enterprise is unusual, we will do everything to assist you. As for your expressed desire to settle in a theological academy, I have some doubts in this regard, although, of course, the white or lay clergy are less bound by instructions than the black ones. But we'll see. If you come to the Synod at one o'clock tomorrow, I will introduce you to my comrade, Muravyov, who, although a secular man, has great knowledge in church affairs. We consider it our duty to do everything that depends on us for you, since unity is the duty of the church, and we all pray for it.” According to the wishes of Count Protasov, Palmer on the same day wrote him a letter in Latin, which said the following: “Your Excellency, you are asking why I came to Russia and what I am trying to achieve from the mercy of the Sovereign. I answer: Having become a member of the Magdalenian College at Oxford University, I thought that it could not be better to obey the statutes of the founder of our College, or to prepare for the ecclesiastical and academic life that lay ahead of me, or to better serve the needs of the British Church in which I was baptized, than by traveling abroad while I was still young, and by carefully examining those theological questions which were the cause of such unfortunate and long-lasting divisions between the apostolic churches. Since I knew that I was baptized not into the English, or Roman, or Western, or Eastern, but into the Catholic or universal faith, religion and church, and at the same time I saw that this Catholic and Apostolic Church, according to the definition of it that I received from my immediate mother, the British Church, was divided into various and (what is scary to think about) even hostile communities, it seemed desirable to me to know exactly the truth concerning the accusations made against us by foreigners, and not only to read it from the polemical writings of our own writers, but also to hear it with my own ears from hostile parties, and then to acquire as accurate a knowledge as possible of the theology of other apostolic churches, so that later, in my scientific studies, I will be better able, with God's help, to treat the scientific questions raised in the Oxford University, and all this with the hope and purpose that with a more accurate understanding of the causes of difference and hostility It was easier to limit and eliminate mutual suspicions and perhaps even errors, opinions about unimportant subjects (after all, I am not talking about the necessity of faith itself), in a word, so that a better attitude towards those issues would become possible, with the clarification of which, whether in our time or in the time of our descendants, the most desired unity of the church could be restored. Beginning in 1833, for this purpose I first visited the churches of the Latins on the continent and became acquainted with their theology (that is, with the teaching of the Pope, to which they are subject), and then studied the opinions of the Calvinists and Lutherans. Now, with the approval of the president of my college, I have arrived to become acquainted with the Eastern and, in particular, the Russian Church. I humbly ask the Sovereign for merciful attention to my enterprise, so that he deigns to recommend me to the revered clergy of his empire so that, living in a theological academy, or in some monastery, or with a bishop, or in some other way, according to his discretion, I can, with the help and in the company of clergy, study the Russian language and explore the teaching, discipline and rituals of the church. If permission is given to me for this request, I hope subsequently, through the translation of Russian books into English, to contribute somewhat in England and, in particular, at Oxford University to a more complete and accurate knowledge of the apostolic churches of the East, to strengthening through familiarization with the Eastern catholicity of our own church, which is now under attack both from the papists and from heretical Protestants, and is no longer protected by the state, as it was before, and, finally, through the alleviation of prejudices and antipathies, to the healing of the present local dismemberment of the Catholic Church and to the reunification of the whole body in mutual love... Having learned that at the Theological Academy in St. Petersburg there are people who read English, I brought with me several selected books, the works of our best theologians, as a gift to the academic library. Some of them were given for this purpose by their authors and members of the Oxford University, who, knowing my intention, wished to show that they were working and praying not only for their people, or only for the Western world, but also for their Eastern brothers, as well as for the entire universal church. As for me personally, I consider it necessary to add that since my entry into the diocese of Russian bishops, I do not recognize any other church as true and legitimate in these countries except the Russian one, and I am not subject, at least within the limits of my will, to any other jurisdiction other than the jurisdiction of the Russian bishops. This does not mean that I came from any heresy or schism to seek reunification with the Church of God in Russia, but myself, being a Catholic Orthodox Christian, as I believe, and coming from the Catholic Orthodox Apostolic Church, I seek from the legitimate and canonical bishops of the country, in whatever country I may be, and from each of them separately in his own diocese, the customary right of communion. This is the answer I had to make to your Excellency; and to your discretion and the merciful favor of the Sovereign, I entrust my request, praying to our Lord Jesus Christ for nothing other than that which leads to peace and harmony not only of all churches, but also of all Christian states. I have the honor to be etc. "St. Petersburg, August 27, 1840" This letter sets out quite fully Palmer's own views on the relationship between the three main Christian churches. How these views were received by representatives of our theological thought will be shown next time. Palmer's meeting with A. N. Muravyov and theological conversation with him. The attitude of churches and obstacles to their union. Armenian heresy. The connection between the religious movement in England and the political revolution. Theological conversation with Archpriest Kutnevich. English theory and Orthodox reality. Two directions of Russian theological thought. At the time appointed by Count Protasov, Palmer appeared at the Holy Synod or, as he put it, at the Synodal Chamber, and there he was introduced to Comrade Chief Prosecutor A. N. Muravyov. After meeting with Count Protasov and thanks to the obligatory warning of the English envoy, Palmer was no longer surprised when he also met a cavalry officer in the chief prosecutor’s comrade, and Muravyov therefore struck him not with the relationship of his military rank to his church position, but “only with his gigantic height, which required a strong horse to carry such a cavalryman” 16. Be that as it may, A. N. Muravyov is undoubtedly one of the remarkable people of his time. If Count Protasov, occupying a high church-administrative position, was nevertheless not a theologian, but - as he himself put it - a soldier, then his comrade was not only a theologian in the good sense of the word, but also a man in the full sense of the church. He was one of the few and, unfortunately, increasingly rare representatives among us of that type of educated secular people who know how to find under the dry, apparently scholastic forms of our church-religious life a spring of living water and refresh their entire moral being with it. In Western faiths, where religious life, for well-known historical reasons, gives more scope to personal religious consciousness, such people are a common phenomenon, and this fact serves as one of the most striking proofs of the living interaction between life and the church. In our country, on the contrary, theological questions constitute the almost exclusive property of spiritual or professional theologians, who by their very essence cannot often go beyond the limits of dry subtleties inaccessible to the consciousness of an ordinary, middle-educated society. Therefore, our secular educated society lives, one might say, outside the influence of church-religious ideas, as can be judged even by the well-known fact that our spiritual periodicals circulate almost exclusively among the clergy and struggle in vain with the inexorable indifference of secular society. Without spreading throughout the mass of this society, Orthodox theological thought sometimes concentrates with greater energy in a few individuals, usually distinguished by strong talent and a philosophical turn of mind, and thanks to them, our theological thought not only finds an appropriate conductor for penetration into public consciousness, but also makes, so to speak, the history of its development. To a large extent, all this applies to Muravyov, to whom the Anglican theologian now introduced himself. At the first meeting, the conversation, naturally, could not be long and was limited to a few remarks from both sides. As a man of strict, one might say, exclusive Orthodox spirit, Muravyov was somewhat distrustful of Palmer, referring to the invasion of extreme Protestant ideas into the Anglican Church. Palmer quickly understood his meaning and replied: “Whatever dangers threaten the Church of England, Protestantism is not one of them: this monster is dead. And here we can even provide some service to the Russians and Greeks. They now make too much use of Papist, Lutheran, and Calvinist books—and their desire to be more spiritual than formal or superstitious in matters of religion has given rise to Protestant tendencies, the dangers of which they do not know. We know this danger from long and sad experience, and now, finally, we know how to find, even in the free use of the Bible, counteraction to the abuse of the Bible” 17. This warning of Palmer about the danger of Protestantism, having its own independent basis, was hardly applicable by the time he was in Russia. The period of mystical infatuation had already passed and, as a reaction, the opposite period of Romanesque infatuation began, the immoderate representative of which was Count Protasov, and in a high church-administrative post, not freed from the traces of his upbringing in the Jesuit college 18. As a theologically read and educated person, A. N. Muravyov could only make a favorable impression on Palmer, and the Anglican theologian took the first opportunity to talk more seriously with him about his business. On September 21, Palmer went to Muravyov’s house, and there they began a long theological conversation. First of all, they touched upon the issue of relations between church and state, and here a misunderstanding was discovered on both sides, which, however, still exists today. Muravyov argued that the Anglican Church has a secular sovereign as its head, but to say the same about the Russian Church would be a highly absurd slander. How independent and high the ecclesiastical authority is in the Orthodox Church can be seen from the fact, said Muravyov, that even Peter the Great, a sovereign with an unyielding, iron will, submitted to the authority of the Eastern patriarchs and observed all due forms when establishing the Holy Synod. And at the present time, consecration of a bishop is carried out not in the name of the emperor, but in the name of Christ; the emperor only elects one of the three candidates presented to him and cannot decide anything in spiritual matters, while in England everything depends on royal power. “I noticed,” writes Palmer, “that we Englishmen often talk about the relationship between church and state in Russia in the same way as he (Muravyov) spoke about the relationship between church and state in England - but the truth is the same on both sides: the state undoubtedly violated the rights of the church” 19. When, for his part, the Englishman began to limit the extremes of the Russian view of the position of the Anglican Church in relation to the state, Muravyov exclaimed: “Ah! You begin to deny this now, when not only in England, but everywhere they begin to rentrer dans l'ordre, se torrent du protestantisme est passe (enter into the usual order, with the ebb of the stream of Protestantism). It’s the same thing here in Russia.” Palmer then handed his Russian interlocutor several works by English theologians, the Anglican missal (Common Prayer Book) and promised to deliver an exposition of the Scottish liturgy, wanting Muravyov not only to become thoroughly acquainted with the dogmatic teaching of the Anglican Church, but also to become convinced how the widespread opinion of it as a purely Protestant community does not find justification in its symbolic and liturgical books, which (eg Scottish liturgy) clearly allow for transubstantiation in a close to Orthodox sense of the word. When then it came to the beginnings of the unification of churches and Palmer proposed his well-known principle: in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas (in the essential, unity, in the doubtful, freedom, and in everything, forbearance and love), which, with the light hand of the Tractarians, became the motto of all subsequent attempts to unify the churches 20, and when he added to this that this principle corresponds to the spirit of the church primitive, apostolic, then Muravyov answered him: “At present, the church is no longer what it was in the first centuries. Then there was so much vitality and strength in it that everything remained without precise definition; and now everything has been distributed, classified and brought within known boundaries, and we should no longer change these boundaries. I know, he continued, that abroad, and, by the way, in England and, especially, in Oxford, there is now a tendency to spread very broad principles of catholicity, but I think that the Greek Church is in some respects less capable of meeting your principles and adaptations than the Latin. The Latin Church has a central authority in the pope, to whom everything must obey, and he can easily enter into negotiations and explanations, and can even make certain concessions; for the Greeks this is impossible - they are uneducated, both clergy and laity, and are blindly attached to everything that is accepted among them, even to the smallest details of their rituals. If, in this state of affairs, the Russians entered into any agreements with the Anglicans, then the only consequence would be that they would lose the communion of the Eastern patriarchs. “If the matter is not conducted recklessly,” Palmer noted, “but provide evidence for each point of the agreement on both sides, from St. fathers recognized by both sides, then the Greek patriarchs, one hopes, will not be so unreasonable.” But Muravyov shook his head and said: “You have no idea to what extent the Greek clergy is ignorant and uncivilized; And we, however, in Russia have a lot of ignorance, but, be that as it may, anyone who wants to enter into communion with the Eastern Church must take it as it is.” To illustrate his point, Muravyov told the following incident. One day he asked the Patriarch of Constantinople what exactly the heresy of the Armenians was, which seemed completely elusive to Muravyov. “The Armenians,” he explained to Palmer, “are in fact almost the same as us, and now that Etchmiadzin belongs to Russia, they could easily be united with the Orthodox Church, since they do not in the least adhere to the real Eutychian heresy.” But the patriarch gave this answer to Muravyov’s question: “Oh, don’t ask me about this, my son! Just know that all the heresies of the world, no matter how destructive and evil, are united in the heresies of the Armenians” 21. Pointing out to Palmer the obstacles standing in the way of the union of churches, Muravyov continued: “Such communication as you are looking for now would be impossible. If the Russian clergy allowed you to communicate (in the sacraments), then the Anglicans themselves, who consider Russians and Greeks to be barbarians and idolaters, would raise cries against you for accepting the rites of the Greek Church, just as the Greeks would raise cries against us, Russians, if we entered into an agreement with the Armenians. You look at this subject in a special way. You see what the prejudices are here, and would like to agree on both sides by explaining. It is clear to you that some items are not particularly important here, others can be agreed upon, and others are both true and false - from different points of view. But people don’t see this at all, on either side” 22. A few days later, Palmer met with Count Protasov at the Synod and informed him that he was translating into English the “Orthodox Confession” of Peter Mogila. The count remarked that it would be better for him to translate the catechism of Metropolitan Philaret. But Palmer had his own idea. “We mean,” he said, “to publish all essential documents in order to give a complete understanding of the actual state of theology in Russia. But there appears to be some discrepancy in these documents. Not only in your catechism do you avoid defining transubstantiation by means of “essence” and “signs,” but even in the recently published translation of the 18th Council of Jerusalem, the members of the Council of Jerusalem changed the text of the original to avoid mention of “accidents” found in the Greek text 23 . Meanwhile, in the Russian translation of the Orthodox Confession, from which the XVIII members borrowed this term...” “We have retained the term that was eliminated in the XVIII members - this is true,” Count Palmer hastily finished his thought, and then, moving on to characterize the general state of the East, he continued: “We are trying to raise education and sound teaching as much as possible, but the prevailing ignorance is great, especially in Greece and the Levant - the people do not reflect, but blindly cling to everything to which they are accustomed. And in Greece itself such a movement also began. For our part, we are making publications in both Slavic and Greek and sending them freely to the churches of the Levant, with which we hope to strengthen the local Orthodox population from the onslaught of the Latins and Methodists. We thus published the church canons in Slavic and Greek, in two columns, the “Orthodox Confession”, the long and short “Catechisms” - in Greek. If you could assist us in this regard, it would be so much the better,” the count added. Palmer replied: “We, on our part, should be prepared for this, because we desire only truth and unity of the church; but we have no other strength or help than that which prayer and the grace of God can give us, since the civil government of England is now, rather, on the side of the papists and Protestant sectarians” 24. Having brought the conversation to the question of the church-religious state of England, Count Protasov asked Palmer which of the Anglican elements is the most catholic? Palmer remarked to this that it would be easier for him to indicate those who are the least catholic. “While our church,” he said, “was under the exclusive protection of the state, even well-meaning churchmen called the church, both verbally and in writing, mainly a “sacred institution,” although sometimes one could hear the name “apostolic church.” But when in 1828 and 1829 a change took place - Protestants and Dissenters were admitted to political power, and especially when the Reform Bill of 1832 gave the triumph to the Whig party that supported them, then in the church itself began a revival of those catholic and apostolic ideas which our Protestant politicians for a century and a half constantly tried to exterminate, calling to the throne first a Dutch Calvinist, then German Lutheran." This political change, expressed in the deprivation of the Anglican Church’s exclusive privilege and right to state patronage, had a beneficial effect on the church-religious consciousness of the British, in whose minds, with the complete suppression of the church by the state, the very concept of the church was obscured and even the very name of the church was lost, turning into a simple “institution”, like one of the departments or ministries of the royal government. “The people of the last generation,” continued Palmer, “all, or almost all, still call their church a Protestant or an established church, or simply an institution (estab. listment); but the growing generation of clergy more and more abandons the use of these suicidal and ambiguous names and finds that they should call their church simply Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic and nothing else, that in all their thoughts, words and actions they should care about the unity of the whole, and not simply treat the national church, in the local, sectarian sense of the word” 25. Count Protasov hinted that this Catholic movement was the work of a learned circle at Oxford University and therefore could not have much chance for the future, but Palmer hastened to assure him that this movement had a much deeper source and was spreading throughout England, independently of Oxford. Secular representatives of Russian theological thought, no matter how high their ecclesiastical position, could not, of course, completely satisfy the English theologian, and therefore he tried to come into contact with actual representatives of the Russian church. The first such representative with whom Palmer had to meet and exchange theological views was a member of St. Synod, Archpriest V. Kutnevich, chief priest of the army and navy. He was a well-educated theologically educated man who entered into an explanation with Palmer with interest. The conversation took place in Latin. In the past, the inability to express oneself in new languages ​​found a happy counterbalance in the excellent knowledge of Latin that was given by our old theological school. In the West, Latin still enjoys the right of citizenship in scientific circles, and at various scientific congresses, where scientists of various nationalities gather, speeches are often spoken in Latin as the international and, so to speak, neutral language of the scientific world. In our country, after the expulsion of Latin, under the influence of a falsely understood realism, a very uncomfortable void was formed in this regard, and the representatives of our theological thought of the old time, thanks to their Latin, had, one might say, more means for mental exchange with the Western European theological world. If it were not for this Latin, then Palmer, who failed to acquire a thorough knowledge of the Russian language, would not have had any means of penetrating the inner sanctuary of Russian theological thought, as it was expressed in the person of its original representatives. In Latin, he had, as we said, a long conversation with Archpriest Kutnevich, to whom he was introduced to St. Synod. Kutnevich said that he had already read the letter of recommendation from the Magdalena Collegium and Palmer’s letter to Count Protasov, and was generally familiar with Palmer’s intentions, and regarding his desire to receive communion in the sacraments of the Russian Church, he immediately noted to him that this was only possible under the condition that the person desiring communion professes full faith in everything that the Orthodox Eastern Church teaches. The archpriest emphasized the name eastern, and this immediately affected Palmer’s catholic idea. “Everything,” he objected, “is what the catholic or universal church teaches, and not what any particular, Western or Eastern or any other local church requires to be recognized.” “He must profess,” repeated the archpriest, “the same faith that the Eastern Church professes.” “I profess, in my opinion, the same faith with the Eastern Church,” said Palmer, “because the Catholic faith is one, whether in the West or in the East. If there is no agreement between the Eastern and Western churches on the essential principles of faith, then one of the two sides must be heretical. But I believe that the church from which I came, and I myself, are Orthodox and Catholic, and we consider the Eastern Church also Orthodox and Catholic. Consequently, the British Church finds that there is no disagreement between it and the Eastern Church regarding the essence of faith" 26. On this occasion, a long theological conversation ensued between Archpriest Kutnevich and Palmer, touching on all the subtleties of dogmatic science, but we do not need to follow it in all its details. The conversation took on the most lively character on the question of transubstantiation, to which Palmer returned with particular constancy, trying, on the basis of the difference he discovered with the original in the Russian translation of the 18th members of the Jerusalem Council of 1672, to prove the difference in the teaching of the Orthodox Church on this point from the teaching of the Roman Church and thereby bring his Anglican teaching closer to it. But Palmer's attempt, both before and now, remained in vain. Archpriest Kutnevich defended the complete similarity of Orthodox teaching in this regard with the Roman one, and since Palmer did not agree with this, then Archpriest Kutnevich decided negatively on the very question of admitting him to the sacrament of the Eucharist in the Orthodox Church. And it’s hard to say that he was wrong in this regard. The question of transubstantiation is of much more importance in the system of the Church than it might seem at first glance. One or another view of the sacrament of the Eucharist determines one of the most essential principles of the church - it, one might say, constitutes its vital nerve, which revitalizes the entire church organism. Protestantism, which rejected transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Eucharist, thereby undermined this nerve of truly organic church life, and in Protestantism church life in the proper sense of the word ceased and simply social life began, left to all the conditions of ordinary life. As an insightful theologian, Palmer understood the importance of this issue in the work he had undertaken, and therefore the persistence with which he returned at every opportunity to an accurate understanding of the views of Russian theological thought on this subject is understandable. And, it must be said, representatives of Russian theological thought constantly demonstrated a strong justification for their convictions and, despite all Palmer’s assurances, stood firmly on the basis of the doctrine of transubstantiation, to the considerable embarrassment of the Anglican theologian, who, with such an attitude towards his view, lost all hope of being admitted to communion in the sacraments of the Russian Church. When, at the conclusion of his conversation with Kutnevich, Palmer once again expressed his desire to be allowed to communicate in the sacraments as an Orthodox Christian, the archpriest simply remarked to him: “You have your own chaplain here, you don’t need to come to us.” – How can there be an English church in your diocese? - exclaimed the affected supporter of ideal catholicity or universality. - Yes, but it is here, - in everything agrees with your church in England, using the same rituals - as there are Lutheran, Calvin, Latin, Armenian churches here - in total, perhaps, up to twelve different churches and confessions. “I do not recognize any such confessions,” answered Palmer, “but only one confession, one faith - symbolic.” There cannot de jure be two confessions or two bishops in one place. Now I am a member not of the English Church in Russia, but of the Russian Church - at least in desire and intention. If the English people who live here are really separated, I cannot justify them in this respect, any more than I can justify you. Your bishop thinks that if in the world and even in his diocese there is not one church, but several, then this does not seem to concern him at all. Likewise, our people, upon arriving here, do not pay any attention to the bishop of the area, but live and act as if he had brought England itself with him on the ship. “Of course, there should be one church in one place,” answered Archpriest Kutnevich, “and we pray for this to happen.” But if, on this basis, we allowed the English into church communion, given their differences of opinion with us on important points of faith, then this would be extremely dangerous and would confuse our people beyond all measure. It would be the same even with you; your people would also doubtless be embarrassed and think that their bishops and pastors had entered into an alliance with heretics and idolaters. Oh, this would cause terrible embarrassment!... 27. Thus, at his first meeting with a professional representative of Russian theological thought, Palmer was defeated, and his vague idea of ​​​​a theoretically created catholicity had to give way to the fact of living, practical church self-consciousness. However, theological thought in Russia has never been limited to one strictly designated direction, which would exclude any possibility of differences in views. On the contrary, there have always existed in it, at least since its meeting with Western theological thought, two main directions - two, so to speak, channels in its flow - the primary exponents of which are typical representatives of theological thought of Peter the Great's time. Coming from the same source, the original Russian church consciousness, these two movements, under the influence of the special conditions of our cultural life, are directed against two opposing systems of Western churchliness - Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, which is why each of these movements receives a special, unique flavor. In the absence of developed schools of theological thought in our country, these two directions are important in the development of our religious and theological consciousness, just as our existing Westernizing and Slavophile directions are important in the development of our social and literary self-awareness. At first, Palmer had to meet with representatives of both of these directions. If in Archpriest Kutnevich he met a man of the strict form of the orthodox type, before whose church view Palmer’s “catholic” theory was lost, then on the other hand, in the priest of St. Isaac’s Cathedral Malov he met, so to speak, a Western theologian who in his views boldly transgressed the limits of strict orthodoxy. When the conversation turned to the true church and the relationship of existing religious forms to it, Palmer became quite embarrassed when Fr. Malov expressed that, in his personal opinion, true Christians are found in every church and community, since the religion of the heart is most important. Russian monasticism in comparison with Western. – Palmer’s visit to the Sergius Hermitage. – First impressions. – A look at the attitude of churches. – Exclusiveness of worldview. – A look at the relationship between church and state. – Characteristics of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow and members of the Synod. – Oxford doctrine on the meaning of church forms. – Russian prayer service at the Lutheran super-intendent. – Failed attempt at church fellowship. Soon after his first meetings with secular and spiritual representatives of Russian theological thought, Palmer had to become acquainted with Russian monastic life. Russian monasticism is, undoubtedly, one of the most unique manifestations of our church and religious life. If one of the distinctive features of Russian and Eastern religious life in general is commendable firmness in keeping traditions, then in monasticism this firmness reaches the highest limits, in which, under certain conditions, it even takes on the character of inertia of religious feeling and inertia of theological thought, which often gives rise to subsuming the very essence of Orthodox monasticism under the categories of these concepts. This is how foreigners look at our monasticism, for whom the inner meaning of this kind of life is incomprehensible, and behind them are some of our Westernizing thinkers. Russian monasticism differs sharply from Western monasticism and, at first glance, it is far inferior to the latter in its importance as one of the powerful factors of moral and religious life. But in order to correctly assess the comparative importance of these factors, it is not enough to simply compare the actual fruits of their external productivity, but one must take into account the religious, everyday and cultural conditions under which institutions have to live and operate, and mainly the idea from which this or that institution emerges. We are amazed at the extraordinary energy of the monastic orders of the Roman Catholic Church, their extensive charitable and pedagogical activities, when compared with the corresponding activities of our monasticism, a smile of contemptuous indignation involuntarily breaks from the lips of our Westernizing press. But such a view reveals a complete misunderstanding of the essential character of Orthodox monasticism in comparison with Roman Catholic monasticism - a character that, first of all, is determined by the difference in the fundamental idea underlying both church systems. Roman Catholicism in its essence is a system of church oligarchy, in which the ecclesiastical element is strictly distinguished from the public with the aim of concentrating all exercises of power in the church hierarchy, with its highest personification in the papacy. In order to finally break the organic connection between the church oligarchy and society, the papacy introduced compulsory celibacy in the clergy, making the latter an obedient instrument of the church administration and giving it a supervisory role in relation to the religious conscience of the parishes to constantly maintain it in a state of superstitious reverence before the highest exponent of the church system. But social life is not limited to the elementary functions of the parish; its manifestations are infinitely varied and go far beyond the boundaries of the parish sphere. If the agents of papal power were limited to only monitoring the administration of parish life, then all the more general and important functions of social and national life would be outside its control - according to the natural law of development, the needs of social life would develop their own independent agents, whose activity would be determined solely by these living needs, regardless of any extraneous system, in this case - the papacy. Among these complex functions of public life, public education stands in the foreground. In whose hands is popular education, in those hands is popular power: this truth is too real for the papal system to lose sight of, and since ordinary church forces would be far from sufficient to capture this source of popular power, the papal system put forward legions of its male and female orders for this activity, which, abandoning the original idea of ​​monasticism, completely devoted themselves to practical activities in the sphere of the most important functions people's life. This activity is undoubtedly respectable and serves as a powerful lever for the cultural uplift of the lower classes of the people, who find a free school for themselves in countless monasteries. But as soon as this activity crosses the elementary limits of public education, its internal character is immediately revealed, determined by its service relationship to the papal system. All the educational and charitable activities of the Western monastic orders, so brilliant in their alluring appearance, in their final conclusion, are nothing more than the colossal work of the papacy in favor of its dominance over the conscience of the peoples subject to it. That is why, with every awakening of the national spirit, the people strive, first of all, to free themselves from this gratuitous school of monastic orders, and the persecution of the Jesuits in France in recent times serves as clear proof of this. Orthodox, and in particular Russian, monasticism has a completely different character. While Western monasticism, having become a service instrument of the papacy, took on a practical character and took over various public functions in order to direct them in the spirit of the papal system, Orthodox monasticism invariably retains its original character of purely religious communities, having as their ultimate goal the exclusively religious and moral education of the people. And such a character is completely consistent with the internal essence of the Orthodox system. Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are two completely opposite systems, two opposite worldviews, a unclear understanding of the essence of which produces unimaginable confusion in the concepts of those who take it upon themselves to treat serious church and social issues in our literature. If the papal system, based on the ruins of the pagan Roman empire and having adopted the idea of world dominion rooted in the latter, represents an ecclesiastical oligarchy, sharply separated from the “world” and looking at the latter as the object of its exclusive domination, for the implementation of which it set in motion the entire complex mechanism of its administrative forces, then, in contrast to this, the idea underlying the Orthodox church worldview is quite an idea public. The Orthodox Church is not some kind of hierarchical corporation, which, due to its corporate alienation from the rest of society, would be forced to arrange various modus vivendi, as is constantly the case with Roman Catholicism. On the contrary, our church is a church in the full and original sense of the word, it is Ἐχχλησ ί α in the ancient Greek, popular sense 28 . It is society itself, albeit a society of the elect, that is, believers. The hierarchy in it, in its essence, is not opposed to the rest of society, but is only its highest representative, the highest organ of the religious consciousness of this very society, and has the basis of its existence in that unchangeable law of social development, according to which every society has a highest organ of its self-consciousness, just as every organism has a head, or the central point of its life and movement. With such a coincidence of the idea of ​​the church in the Orthodox sense with the idea of ​​society, naturally between them, in the healthy state of the entire social organism, there can be no antagonism, and therefore the church, in a specific sense, there is no need to intensify to seize certain functions of social life into its own hands to direct them in the spirit of its exclusive system. She can easily leave all these functions to society itself, reserving only the most general supervision over their moral development and that special part of them that is undoubtedly of an ecclesiastical or religious-moral nature, such as, for example, in the public education system the teaching of the Law of God 29 . Hence, our church does not need to entrust monasticism with social and practical activities unusual for it, and it can unhinderedly serve its original idea - to give an outcome to those contemplative, gentle, enthusiastic natures, whose soul cannot put up with the vulgarity of everyday social life and strives into the peaceful kingdom of solitude - into the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe life of the spirit and contemplation. The modern reality of Russian monasticism, of course, is far from its ideal, but it must be judged not from the point of view of narrow practicality, as is usually done, but from the point of view of its actual Orthodox ideal, from which it has deviated and fallen into a state of inertia of thought and dullness of living religious feeling. Nevertheless, in our monasteries the contemplative work of the mind is still going on invisibly and the best works of speculative theological thought have hitherto come out and are coming out of the monasteries, and if in very recent times a sad impoverishment of pure theological thought has been noticed, then this impoverishment goes in parallel with the impoverishment of the intellectual element in our monasteries, the outdated organization of which is little conducive to the free life of the enlightened spirit. As a foreigner accustomed to Western European forms of church and religious life, Palmer, of course, found it difficult to form a completely impartial and objective view of Russian monasticism, although this is much more forgivable for him than for our Russian foreigners. Nevertheless, his feeling, enlightened by the “catholic” theory, gave him the opportunity to grasp the main motive of this side of our church life and saved him from gross blunders in judgments about it, so common in foreign literature. This, perhaps, is partly explained by the fact that he had to form his opinion only on some major observations, the scope of which included, one might say, exemplary forms of our monastic life in both of our capitals. During his stay in St. Petersburg, Palmer had the opportunity to become quite closely acquainted with the life of the Sergius Hermitage, located several miles from the capital, and memories of it occupy several chapters in his book. There he became close friends with the abbot of Pustyn, the famous Archimandrite Brianchaninov, and several monks who spoke French, and spent several days in pleasant conversations with them, studying the worldview of Russian monasticism and its everyday life. Palmer had to get to the Sergius Hermitage for one of the solemn monastic holidays, when many visitors from the capital arrive there. He went there with A.N. Muravyov, attended mass, during which he was allowed to stand in the altar, and then participated in a common snack and lunch prepared for visitors by the hospitable brethren of the Desert. Palmer notes with visible pleasure this sociability of our monasteries, with curiosity describes the “pirogi” that he ate there, and the “quass” that he drank, noting that quass is the most beloved drink in Russia, but not at all intoxicating, and if you can meet a lot of drunk people among Russians, then this does not depend at all on the fact that Russians love quass, as the learned English theologian first thought, but on the fact that they also love “vodka.” Thanks to the kindness of the monks, Palmer received a separate cell at his disposal, from which he made theological excursions to Archimandrite Brianchaninov and other monks. In their conversations, the monks revealed a more definite and strict view of church relations than Palmer had previously encountered, and even some features of corporate exclusivity in their worldview. When, in a conversation with the archimandrite and other monks, the question turned to the relationship of the churches and Palmer outlined his theory of the branches of the Catholic churches, his Russian interlocutors resolutely denied this theory and argued that their church is the entire Catholic Church, the only church representing the ecumenical councils and containing the true Orthodox Catholic faith, integral and unchanging, while the Latin community and all Western Christians are guilty not only of minor errors and abuses, but also of heresy regarding the doctrine of the origin of St. the Spirit and from the Son, who they willfully included in the Creed. The apostasy of the Western world from the true church, according to Palmer’s interlocutors, did not occur immediately, but gradually, over different periods. They accused the Latins of distorting all those places in the works of the Latin fathers who lived before the division, on which Latin teaching is now based, and did not believe that Pope Leo III, condemning the insertion into the Creed, at the same time admitted, as the Latin writers claim, that the very teaching of this insertion is true. As for the relationship of the churches, it was expressed in their communication with each other from time to time even after the discovery of this difference in doctrine, but this is explained by the fact that the Latin heresy had not yet received its full development, and moreover, with every attempt at reunification, the Latins tried to disguise the true essence of their teaching, and the Eastern ones, accustomed to communication and little coming into actual contact with the Latins, due to the difference in language and rituals, could not immediately understand that the error has become common and incorrigible in the West. “If this is so,” objected Palmer, “then why do you still call your church Eastern, when you should call it the Catholic or universal Church and should be zealous in prayer and action for the instruction and return to the true teaching of such a huge part of the Christian world, which, in your opinion, has fallen into heresy?” It should be noted that Palmer, who was ideally tuned by the Oxford doctrine in relation to the view of the church and was looking for a catholic or universal church, constantly became quite embarrassed when, in conversations with Russians, he had to constantly hear from the latter the name of his church not catholic or universal, but simply Eastern, Russian, Greek-Russian or Orthodox. The last name, in Palmer’s opinion, still somewhat pointed to catholic consciousness, but at the same time it was so general and vague, due to the fact that every church and community calls itself Orthodox or Orthodox (orthodoxe), that it was still impossible to see in it a specific consciousness of catholicity. As for the other names, to the ideally tuned ear of the Oxford theologian they sounded positively like some kind of local separatism, national and religious exclusivity, which had nothing to do with catholic consciousness. But what embarrassed Palmer even more was that his Russian interlocutors constantly applied the sacred name “Catholic Church” not to their own church, but to the Roman one, calling the latter the “Catholic” Church. Palmer repeatedly points out this incorrect use of words, says that it reveals a complete discrepancy between thought and word and feeds the proud feeling of the Latins, who see in this an involuntary tribute of respect on the part of Eastern schismatics to the true catholic, that is, the Roman Church. This word usage among Russians, however, became so ingrained that Palmer’s remarks were not immediately understood by his Russian interlocutors, and only after Palmer developed his theory of catholicity did explanations begin, in turn little understood by the English theologian, that in Russian the words catholic and catholic have a special specific meaning, different from the original Greek meaning of this word 30 . To the reproach now expressed by Palmer for narrow nationalism, which is supposedly expressed in the name of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the monks thoroughly responded: “Our church is truly the entire Orthodox Catholic Church and it calls itself so distinctively; and the name eastern, which we now use, does not denote any spatial limitation, as it once did, but rather means a historical and local origin, because Christianity comes from the east: Ex Oriente lux; we pray to the east, we expect Christ from the east, and Christ Himself is the eternal East. The catechumen turns away from the West when he should be baptized, and thus renounces the kingdom of darkness.” To this, for his part, the English theologian said: “If this is so, then you should send missionaries to convert us. And yet, doesn’t it seem very difficult to assume that half of the visible church really fell into heresy a thousand years ago, and for all that, for so many centuries, not only continued to exist, but also grew far more than the true Orthodox Church, so that it is now treated as two-thirds to one-third? And besides, she has produced so many men of remarkable holiness, shown so much powerful and varied energy, and survived so many storms and hardships since the separation?” To this tirade, Palmer heard from his interlocutors in response that they did not recognize the Western Church, since its separation, either saints or miracles; but nevertheless, they recognized some church existence for it and compared it with the ten tribes of Israel, which separated from the kingdom of Judah, and even hinted at the possibility of a new ecumenical council that would restore unity. In their opinion, the Roman Church, with the pope at its head, could eventually restore its full rights and its place in the universal church if it corrected its mistakes and submitted again to the ecumenical canons against which it rebelled 31 . Delving into the internal life of the Russian monastery, Palmer noticed in it the predominant dominance of the spirit of asceticism, which flowed not from the external conditions of life, but from the very inclinations of its inhabitants. The abbot of the Desert himself, who exchanged his shiny military uniform for a monastic mantle, was a strict ascetic by vocation and ascetic theology, according to Palmer's observation, was his favorite subject. While observing the English theologian, the Western theory of monasticism did not fail to slip through, and he was curious to learn about the literary and pedagogical works of the inhabitants of the monastery. To this, the Russian monks answered him that they had few books in the library and scientific activity did not relate to their direct responsibility, that their business was not to engage in scholarship or any activity at all, at least in the service of religion, but to worship and live, first of all, for the salvation of their own souls and then also to pray for the rest of the world. When Palmer then expressed the idea that it would be much better to turn some of the monasteries into learned and active communities, the monks persistently repeated that prayer and piety are much more valid than any learning and activity of any kind. If Palmer correctly conveyed these thoughts of his interlocutors (some expressions directly reveal tendentious embellishment, inevitable for a foreigner), then one cannot help but see the inertia of theological thought into which our monasticism has fallen. The idea of ​​an Orthodox monastery, as a refuge for enthusiastic natures from the harsh conditions of everyday life, does not exclude science at all, but on the contrary, in this kingdom of the spirit science and all book wisdom should primarily flourish, since here thought is most free from the heavy chains that often fetters and slows it down in ordinary practical life. After all, there was a time in Rus' when our monasteries stood at the head of intellectual and literary movements, and if now, with the development of social consciousness, mental activity has specialized and found in society itself various organs of its manifestation and development, then theological thought should still have its source in our monasteries, and if theological thought is impoverished in them at the present time, then this serves as a sufficient sign of their abnormal state. This lack of mental life in our monasteries led to that exclusivity of the monastic worldview, according to which everything non-monastic began to be subject to some disdain and suspicion. When Palmer remarked to the monks that the church needs not only prayer, but also mental activity, his interlocutors, defending their view, showed some hostility to the modern demands of mental life. “The white clergy,” said one of them, “is infected with liberalism. It reads Lutheran and other harmful foreign books, and the bishops themselves, although they are now better than they were in the last century, do not sympathize with monasticism in the true sense of the word. Only five out of fifty (among them the Metropolitan of Kiev) patronize monks, and this is because, although by rank they themselves are monks, they are mostly academicians and are under secular influences.” 32 And another time this exclusivity of the monastic worldview was expressed even more sharply. When it came to the general moral and religious state outside the monastic world, the monks said to Palmer: “The morality of the capital is worthy of Babylon; there are theaters, balls and masquerades, which were unknown in Russia before Peter I. Our clergy is extremely easy to succumb to new and strange opinions, read books by non-Orthodox and even unbelieving writers, Lutherans and others. The Theological Academy is infected with innovative principles, and even Christian Reading is infected with them, although it publishes many translations from the ancient fathers. Russia, perhaps, is, as far as we know, not far from the explosion of heretical liberalism. We have a good appearance: we have preserved all the rites and symbols of the primitive church; but all this is a dead body, there is little life in it. The white clergy is forcibly restrained in hypocritical Orthodoxy only by fear of the people” 33. The above tirades smack of such exclusivity that even Cardinal Newman found it necessary to make the remark about them that “every people has parties and classes with their own special esprit de corps (corporate spirit), with their own traditions, antagonisms, etc., and therefore one cannot take literally everything that these good monks said” 34. But thanks to this very exclusivity, the tradition of the old church system lives more firmly in the consciousness of monasticism and the deviation from it is more painfully felt. When, in response to a complaint from one of the monks that the government had taken property from the monasteries, Palmer expressed the idea that it would be desirable to again give the monasteries estates in order to make them more independent of secular power, his Russian interlocutor replied: “Uh, what we need is a patriarch. At the present time, Protasov is our patriarch, although he is a soldier, and this is because he is a representative of the sovereign. He goes to balls and theaters, dances beautifully and is generally un tres galant homme - but...” Palmer began to explain that Count Protasov, by his position, was nothing more than the ancient Greek great Logofet (ὁ μεγας Λογουέτης), but the monk stood his ground and said that “in the current order of things, if, for example, all the bishops rebelled against some dangerous innovation, it would be useless, unless there is a Synod on their side; and if the Synod, under the influence of secular power, decided to do something harmful in church terms, then it would have to be obeyed, only if this would intensify the schism. Speaking about the current composition of the Synod, the monk finds it bad that two priests were allowed to be among its members, on an equal footing with the bishops. “The only justification for this,” continued Palmer’s interlocutor, “can be that these priests in the Synod can be useful as representatives of the married clergy, in understanding the needs associated with his condition, since all the other members of the Synod are monks.” Having spoken about the members of the Synod, the monk, naturally, could not help but characterize for a foreigner the most remarkable member of it at that time, Philaret of Moscow. “Filaret of Moscow,” he said, “became an archbishop at the age of 30, whereas according to the regulations of Peter the Great, a monk at this age could only become a hieromonk. He is subtle and resourceful, so that he can twist the entire Synod around his fingers and force it to recognize black as white. Whatever he undertakes, everything will be done, that is, if Count Protasov approves. He is unusually good in his current position, precisely in his second position; but God save us, so that he becomes Metropolitan of St. Petersburg! He is ambitious, and I fear that if Count Protasov conceived some innovation, he would take his side and drag everyone else along with him. But he is completely Orthodox. Old Metropolitan Seraphim is zero. Metropolitan Philaret of Kiev is the patron saint of monks, an excellent and strictly Orthodox man, but he loves solitude and is not eloquent. Muravyov leads a strict life, different from others, and, perhaps, is not far from entering monasticism. He is a comrade of the chief prosecutor, and being a comrade of the chief prosecutor is better than being an archimandrite, or even than a bishop, even an archbishop or metropolitan,” Palmer’s interlocutor said, laughing, in rapid progression. In general, in his opinion, the current relations between church and state in Russia have deviated far from their ideal, which was once realized in history. “The true type and beau ideal of proper relations between church and state, in his opinion, was represented in Russia by Patriarch Philaret and Tsar Michael, when the son had secular power, and the reverence, respect and sincere obedience due to the father were fully shown to him” 35. In such conversations, Palmer spent several pleasant days in the Sergius Hermitage. The monks, for their part, became interested in the learned foreign theologian and bombarded him with questions about the peculiarities of the Anglican Church. Does it recognize the sacraments and how many? How is the Eucharist celebrated - on unleavened bread or leavened bread? Is communion given under one or both types? What kind of attire do the Anglican clergy wear, what kind of miters, crosses, candles? Is incense used during worship? Is the invocation of saints, the veneration of icons and relics recognized? These and many other similar questions interested Palmer’s Russian interlocutors, and they were probably quite surprised when the Anglican theologian sadly answered that the Anglican Church, thanks to constant Protestant violence and other influences, had completely lost most of the mentioned church accessories 36 . One of the main tasks of the Oxford movement was precisely the restoration in the Anglican Church of the old church forms that it had lost, for which Oxford scholars recognized the great educational significance in religious terms, and therefore Palmer with curiosity entered into his diary an incident told by the abbot of the desert, indicating precisely this significance of church forms. Once, the archimandrite said, the priest of one of the St. Petersburg parishes, where the Lutheran super-intendent (dean) lived, was called to the super-intendent’s house to serve a thanksgiving prayer service on some family occasion. The priest, of course, assumed that one of the Russian tenants of this house needed a prayer service, but imagine his surprise when he later learned that the Lutheran super-intendent himself wanted the prayer service. When the priest expressed his surprise, he replied: “Oh, father! We have none of the consolations that can be found in your rites and ceremonies” 37. Finally, Palmer tried to touch on the issue of communication. To this end, he asked the archimandrite if he could accept alms from him for the monastery, in order to pray for the Anglican Church - to deliver it from its enemies and unite it with the Eastern Church. The archimandrite replied that he could not do this without first asking the chief prosecutor and the Synod. “But you accept alms from individuals or families and pray for the salvation of their souls; Why don’t you do the same for the Church of England or any of its members who want it?” “No,” the archimandrite said decisively, “this is impossible 38. In matters concerning other churches, we cannot do anything without the permission of the bishop and the Synod. We pray every day for the unification of churches, but special prayer is a different matter. If the union of the Eastern and Anglican churches took place, we would rejoice more than the reunification of the Uniates. The world could not be more divided." “To start this business, you need to learn to seriously desire it and pray for it,” Palmer said. “You are now leaving for St. Petersburg, and may God help you in this,” the monks said at parting to their foreign guest 39 . Palmer's attempt to get closer to the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. – A. N. Muravyov’s view of the state of academia. - Conversation between Palmer and Archpriest Pavsky. – Conversation with Archpriest of Sidon. – Theological views of the latter. – Visit to the Theological Academy and impressions made. – Professional worldview. Upon returning from the Sergius Hermitage to St. Petersburg, Palmer met with A. N. Muravyov and, conveying to him his impressions from observing Russian monastic life, he remarked to him: could it be possible to turn two or three monasteries into learned communities, like the Benedictine monasteries? Muravyov replied: “Much cannot be done at the present time. If compulsory celibacy is the burden of the Latin Church, then compulsory marriage is the same burden of our church, especially since the latter is contrary to the spirit of the canons, contrary to the instructions of St. Paul, and is simply based on local custom. Almost all of our clergy are of class origin and form a closed caste. Nobles, merchants, and the upper classes have access to holy orders, but they do not accept it. What should we do? We do not live in the age of councils, when it would be possible to change this order of things. As for our monasticism, it all, with few exceptions, consists of peasants who have no time for science” 40. Not finding enough competent representatives of theological thought in the monastery with whom he could exchange the highest theological views, Palmer expressed to Muravyov a desire to get closer to the theological academy in St. Petersburg and even, if possible, to settle in it for a while. But Muravyov advised him against it. “It’s always busy there,” he said, “and you won’t see anyone. The inhabitants of the academy do not form a society; these are the lower clergy and their children, with all their characteristics and prejudices. For them you will be an overseas monster. They would look upon you as a heretic, and the very fact that an English deacon was among them would be a scandal. They do not have your ideas about unity and will not understand them.” “They seem to be able to penetrate Protestant ideas,” Palmer objected, “why shouldn’t they also enter into Catholic ideas?” It seems to me that something could be done to reconcile them and change their attitude towards us. But Muravyov stood his ground and continued: “You won’t get along among them, even if you adapt to all their habits and concepts.” Moreover, Russian youth are very playful and sarcastic, and can cause you a lot of trouble 41 . Palmer, however, did not give up his desire to see the theological academy, and soon a convenient opportunity presented itself to him. In the meantime, he continued his relations with the highest representatives of Russian theological thought of that time and compared their views with his Oxford doctrine. Now he had to meet with famous learned theologians - Archpriests Pavsky and Sidonsky. Archpriest G. P. Pavsky occupies a prominent place in the history of the development of our church identity and theological thought, and although he did not express his worldview in any major work, he nevertheless served as a vivid exponent of one of the two directions of our church theological thought. He was a theologian, so to speak, of the Theophanian school and was distinguished by a certain freedom of theological views, which were perhaps broader than the Catholic doctrine of Oxford, so that Palmer had to again adjust his theory to bring it into agreement with the Orthodox worldview in his new original representative. When Palmer started talking about his favorite subject - the disagreement he noticed between the Russian translation of the 18th members of the Jerusalem Council of 1672 and the Greek original - Pavsky immediately agreed that indeed some changes had been made in the translation, and stated that in his opinion they were caused by the essence of the subject, since traces of Roman Catholic influence were obvious there. This same influence, Pavsky noted, was reflected in the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogila, in which the term transubstantiation (transubstantiatio) was directly borrowed from the Latins, which is explained by the very upbringing of Peter Mogila in the Roman Catholic colleges. Palmer responded to this by saying that, in his opinion, Peter (Grave) is zealously Orthodox, except in those places where he did not suspect danger, but Pavsky summarized the entire worldview of the Western Russian Church and noted: “The entire Church of Little Russia was in contact with the Latins and Uniates and nothing that came out of it could be free from suspicion. The Russian Church has always kept away from all innovations, but the term “transubstantiation” is now finally admitted by Metropolitan Philaret into his Catechism, and thus the Synod sealed it with ecclesiastical authority. However, we are not bound by its Roman Catholic meaning." 42 Such an unexpected view apparently coincided with the view of Palmer himself, but in the mouth of the Russian theologian it was precisely too unexpected for Palmer not to cause some embarrassment in him, and therefore he remarked: “After all, Philaret’s catechism represents only a new form of the Orthodox Confession, and I do not understand how one can deny the authority of the Orthodox Confession when it was formally corrected at the Council of 1642 in Iasi and approved in the presence of the Patriarchal Exarch, and subsequently by the Eastern Patriarchs themselves, and especially since it was originally compiled in Russia and for Russia”? – Pavsky explained to his interlocutor that it was compiled exclusively for the western outskirts of Russia and did not at all express the theological views of the Russian church itself, which has always shunned the acceptance of Kyiv theological opinions. As for the Greeks, they, Pavsky noted, easily fall into error. “The XVIII members,” picked up Palmer, “undoubtedly contain one absurd error, namely in the doctrine of the canon of St. Scripture, which St. The Synod corrected it." Pavsky confirmed this remark and then proceeded to present his theological views, which again led Palmer to some confusion with their unexpected boldness and breadth. So Palmer found that Pavsky’s views on the church were not entirely Orthodox, because he, like all Russians in general, called the papal church Catholic and expanded the concept of the true church so that all Christian denominations containing the basic essence of Christianity fit under it. When Palmer noted that it was impossible to expand the concept of the church in such a way that Lutherans, for example, could not form a church due to the denial of an essential element of the church - apostolic succession, expressed in episcopacy, Pavsky said that for this it is enough if they recognize the Symbol accepted by all Christians, and as for apostolic succession, then the Anglicans themselves have no more rights to apostolic succession than Lutherans. “If I thought so,” said Palmer, “I would not be a member of the Church of England. And the Lutherans, instead of protesting against the unjust excommunication, announced that they had left Babylon and founded new human churches based on the Bible. The very names that are given to the clergy in them show that they are not the essence of the church.” Palmer was hinting at the well-known fact that in Protestantism, which rejected the priesthood in the sense of a sacrament, the very word “priest” gradually began to fall out of use and instead simple titles became common - pastor, preacher - denoting only a certain social position of a person. But here, too, Pavsky turned out to be broader in his views than the Anglican theologian and not only said that a pastor and a priest are one and the same, but also argued that Protestant pastors, installed through the laying on of hands, could themselves convey the initiation they had accepted in the same way to others, which completely confused all of Palmer’s theological arguments. – Did you find Pavsky too Protestant for you? – the chaplain of the English church in St. Petersburg asked Palmer. “Yes, I found him quite unorthodox (heterodoxe),” Palmer replied. “I thought so,” he remarked, “with all this, I will tell you that he is a most excellent person and is very loved and respected.” He is undoubtedly a man of high intelligence and education 43 . Archpriest F. F. Sidonsky, whom the English theologian later met, had a somewhat different character. If Pavsky was distinguished by the courage of his judgments and the breadth of his worldview, which at first glance gave the impression of some ease in relation to important subjects, then Archpriest Sidonsky had a completely different mindset. He was a theologian of deep philosophical ferment; his religious worldview was based on enormous philosophical erudition, which was embedded in his being to such an extent that philosophy and theology for him became like one organic whole at various stages of his development. As a result, the higher clergy, as Palmer noted, did not treat the archpriest particularly favorably, and precisely because he “mixed human philosophy into religion.” It is clear, therefore, that Palmer’s conversation with Sidonsky should have taken on a serious philosophical tone. The conversation took place in Latin and Archpriest of Sidon immediately asked Palmer a question: what philosophy do they follow in England - Leibniz, Descartes or some other? “We don’t particularly like new and, moreover, foreign writers,” answered Palmer. – We read Aristotle and Plato and some of the works of our theologians to bring them into connection with Orthodox theologians. The Germans are smart and hardworking, but, thanks to their unfortunate condition, all their books are infected with heresy. This has always been the case from the moment they accomplished this unfortunate feat – the exodus from Babylon.” When the Archpriest of Sidon remarked that in our present state there was nothing to fear from philosophical opinions and that everything was so quiet that there was nothing to fear from any influence of Western religious errors, Palmer went into a long reflection on the state of the Orthodox Church and its relation to Western faiths. “If it were not for the civil power, which is currently restraining, but on which it is also not entirely safe to rely, you would soon see,” he told Sidonsky, “how internal division would begin to intensify and spread among you, and besides, you would not be able to counteract even the power of pseudo-Roman Catholicism. If you are only part of the church, where is the whole? Show us that Mother Church, which we profess in the creed and to which both you and we are obliged to obey. A part cannot exist without the whole. There is a community that encroaches on the title of the whole, and from the point of view of the prevalence and number of members has more rights to this than any other; This community you call with your own mouth the Catholic Church, as do all its other enemies, and it boldly says that you belong to it, that you are nothing more than a separated part, an alienated member, a spoiled child, a lost sheep. Don't you justify its claims by your name and your attitude towards it? You admit that you are only a part; she says that she makes up the whole. And, apparently, you admit this, since you call this community the “Catholic Church”, and you yourself never really figure out for yourself what this whole is, of which you form a part? Doesn't it look like you really are what she says you are? You, of course, can say that you call yourselves capholics, and the Latins Catholics. We also sometimes make a similar justification when we say that they are only Roman Catholics, and we ourselves are real Catholics or Catholics. But, despite all these excuses, the vernacular has its own serious weight. Suppose, however, that you turn the front and begin to assert, according to the teaching of your church books and statutes, that your Catholic Eastern Church is the whole universal church and that Catholicism is Eastern in its very origin, just as Rome says that it is Roman in subjection. However, wouldn't you be a strange people, laying claim to the entire Catholic Church! In the Russian Empire there are millions of Lutherans and Calvinists whom you should try to convert to the true faith and church. Then there are the Latins, who make up two-thirds of the entire Christian world, and you not only showed no zeal or activity to convert them, but you yourself in fact constantly followed and imitated them, seeking from them learning and theological knowledge, adopting their scientific innovations and even drawing up your definitions of faith at councils under their leadership and influence. But so be it; Let us also not talk about the extreme inconsistency of the assumption that half of the church fell away as a community and since its falling away has grown in spiritual strength and prevalence much more than the Orthodox; Let us only take into account that here, in this one city, there has always been an English colony of two or three thousand people, since the very foundation of the capital. Well, what have you done in these 130 years to save their souls and have you done anything more than for some herd of pigs? Such is the zeal and love of the one, holy, catholic Apostolic Church!” Archpriest of Sidon noted that our church has always been distinguished by moderation and tolerance and has always tried not to condemn others in their religious teachings; but Palmer replied that “such moderation is cruel in relation to others and suicidal in relation to oneself.” In response to the archpriest’s remark that zeal for religion caused the shedding of streams of blood, Palmer again said that “the kind of jealousy that causes shedding of blood is bloodthirsty and satanic jealousy, but true zeal would rather cause an outpouring of prayers and tears,” and then again spoke about the internal situation of the Russian church: “The civil government is a very unreliable ally, as we are now beginning to learn from experience in England. When it happens, you will have a liberal sovereign, surrounded by ministers like our Lord John Russel and Lord Melbourne, and not the Protasovs and Muravyovs, and when they give free rein to schismatics and “Catholics” to attack your church, you will no doubt discover that it would be much better, instead of hiding behind the most autocratic sovereign, to try to think and act like true Catholics, not while reading only the symbol of faith, professing the unity of the church, but believing in your heart and demonstrating this faith in words and deeds” 44. If in these judgments of Palmer there is a lot of one-sidedness, due to his favorite theory of catholicity and his sympathy for the church that subsequently accepted him into its fold, which had already begun to manifest itself, then some particulars are not superfluous to keep in mind when understanding the shortcomings that plague our church-religious life. Certain facts of modern times provide considerable justification for Palmer's opinion that it is inconvenient for the proper development of church life to rely too much on civil government. When, under the spirit of modern times, the protective system of the state in relation to the church weakened significantly, all elements hostile to the Church were not slow to take advantage of this weakening to attack it or its representatives in the person of the clergy. The entire orgy of newspaper and magazine detractors of the clergy that we are experiencing is one of the manifestations of this hostility, and one cannot help but admit that at first our clergy turned out to be completely unprepared to repel this hostile opposition in a worthy manner, and only now is it recovering and, relying on revived initiative, begins to restrain the hostile pressure of the opposition. In order to study practically the Russian language and become more familiar with the life and views of the Russian clergy, Palmer settled with the priest Fortunatov, on the Vyborg side. He was still a young man who had just completed a course at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and therefore could serve for Palmer as an indicator not only of the views of the clergy, but also of the state of higher theological education in Russia. Through Fr. Fortunatov Palmer satisfied his desire to enter the theological academy, and met its rector, Archimandrite Afanasy Drozdov (1841 - 1847), who was later the bishop of Saratov and then the archbishop of Astrakhan. He was, as we know, a very educated man, a learned classicist and a profound theologian, although he did not leave any printed works. He received the Anglican theologian with interest, read his introduction to the XXXIX members of the Anglican Church and, finding a conciliatory tone in him, wished to see the members themselves. Palmer's introduction, written from the point of view of the Oxford doctrine, is much closer to the teaching of the universal church than the teaching of the XXXIX members, and when the rector Athanasius drew attention to this, Palmer hastened to make the reservation that “the members in no way constitute a general confession of faith and that they must be considered in view of the special circumstances in which they occurred.” These terms contain the Western doctrine of the “Filioque,” ​​and when Palmer began to explain the reasons for including it in the Anglican symbol, Athanasius remarked that it was “profundissima et difficillima quaestio.” The rector asked Palmer to visit him more often and, taking advantage of this kind invitation, Palmer managed to get acquainted with the external and internal life of the academy. The state of our higher theological schools at that time was not enviable. The extreme poverty of support for both mentors and students was capable of killing all energy, and one must only be surprised that with such a material state of higher spiritual educational institutions there were still people who devoted their whole lives to their service. And these people were not some kind of losers who devoted themselves to serving the highest theological science only because they were not capable of any other public service; on the contrary, among them are names that undoubtedly serve as an adornment to our theological and philosophical literature. In the St. Petersburg Academy, the teaching activity of Archpriests Pavsky and Sidonsky, Professor Karpov, Makariy Bulgakov and others dates back to this time, and around the same time, most of its current professors received their education and began serving at the Academy, all of whom more or less made valuable contributions to our theological and church-historical literature. If we take into account that, along with material poverty, the then leaders of our highest theological science also had to experience obvious neglect on the part of the highest administration, as can be seen even from the above review of the academy by such a person as A. N. Muravyov, then the concentration of gifted individuals in the academy can serve as clear evidence of the internal energy of the spiritual environment, which could produce such selfless figures. Having delved into the life of the academy, Palmer found that its inhabitants were far from being such narrow-minded savages as A. N. Muravyov portrayed them. The students turned out to be very serious young people who not only did not shy away from the Anglican theologian, but, on the contrary, asked him with great interest about the state of the Anglican Church and bombarded him with all kinds of questions. “What authority,” they asked him casually, “is given in England to the translation of the LXX, the Vulgate and the Hebrew text? Which translations are considered the best besides those mentioned? Which archbishop of London wrote a book refuting Christianity? Whose student was Strauss? In what books can one find the teachings of the Church of England? etc. Some of the students wrote essays about the Anglican Church, and they were interested to know what it is closer to - Lutheranism or Papism? According to their assumption, notes Palmer, it is closer to Lutheranism. In the students' term papers reviewed by Palmer, a mysteriously abstract element predominated, a visible echo of the mystical trend that had previously gripped Russian society 45 . Talking with Fr. Fortunatov about theological education in Russia and in general about the religious state of the Russian people, Palmer was surprised to hear from his interlocutor that true Orthodox views live only among the clergy, and the rest of educated society is infected with freethinkers (all freethinkers), and in particular the professors and students of the medical academy (the view of which was from Father Fortunatov’s apartment), and not only they, but also doctors in general are pessimi sunt in this regard. O. Fortunatov was so convinced, by the way, of the inevitability of unbelief and free-thinking for members of the medical profession that he never wanted to believe Palmer that in England these people were not at all free-thinking, and thought that throughout the whole earth they were like this, according to the word of the Holy Scripture: “Will the dead praise You, O Lord, and will doctors rise to confess You?” This view, for all its exclusivity and one-sidedness, is not without some validity and has hitherto found correspondence in reality. In the absence of a serious scientific and philosophical background among people of professional education, their general worldview easily goes out of whack at one contact with the dead tools of their craft; in this state, they easily move from the possibility, for example, of an anatomical analysis of a corpse to the possibility of the same analysis of the entire world, which seems to them to be a simple corpse, and not a living cosmos, as it is before the philosophical worldview. An English deacon in a high society circle. Church and religious life of the high society world. The vacillation of high society thought. Periodic hobbies and their reasons. Attitudes in the church. Various forms of religious hobbies. Seekers and seekers of religious adventures. Liberal evangelicalism. When observing Russian church-religious life and theological thought, Palmer did not limit himself to professional spheres, which naturally could only produce a more or less one-sided impression; he tried to penetrate into all spheres and layers of the Russian people in order to comprehensively study their church and religious worldview. By the way, he was especially lucky in that respect in the high society circle, where in a short time he acquired numerous acquaintances and connections. Our high society circle, despite the destruction of all class and caste boundaries, still remains a strictly closed world, which lives its own special traditions, its own special life and its own special worldview, which has nothing in common with the rest of the world. As a result of such isolation, his inner life is little known to society, and only thanks to high-society novelists is it introduced from time to time into the mainstream of ordinary social and literary life. As for the religious state of this environment, one might say that nothing is known about it, and so far there has not even been an attempt to study it more or less thoroughly. Our clergy is too “vulgar” to be accepted in this environment, and all its relations with it are limited to the formal administration of the necessary requirements. Therefore, there are the most unclear and contradictory ideas about the church-religious state of the high society world, which converge only on the recognition of the dominance of emptiness in the church-religious life of this environment. But such a view would not be entirely fair. In our high-society world, the active work of the religious and theological mind is constantly going on, as can be judged even by those religious hobbies that periodically declare themselves in it. Emptiness is unable to react; If our high society world is capable of being carried away by various religious movements, then this is a sure sign that a religious instinct is alive in it, which is abused by various visiting abbots, hypocritical lords and foolish Pashkovites. This is also evidenced by the sensitivity and interest with which our high society world treats various religious and theological innovations. Palmer presents many examples of this in his book. He had to conduct lengthy theological conversations with various people from the high society circle, and the views of some of his interlocutors and interlocutors can serve as typical examples of high society theology. As an Englishman, Palmer was very interested in determining the attitude of our high society or aristocratic circle towards the church. In England, as we know, the state church is primarily the church of the aristocracy, which shines with refined preaching, luxurious furnishings and the highest prices for seats, excluding any possibility of access to them for the common poor people. The highest aristocracy there serves as the main support of the church, and the clergy is placed so highly in social and material terms that it comes into close contact with the aristocracy, and in its highest degrees directly leaves it. If on the one hand this is good, since it indicates the highest social significance and influence of the church, then on the other hand this is also the source of the main weakness of the Anglican Church. Relying on the aristocracy and trying to constantly stay at the appropriate height of social position, it lost the popular basis, the people recoiled from it and fell into sectarianism. Palmer was fully aware of this weak side of his church and therefore notes with particular interest the advantage of our church that it is precisely a people's church, to the altar of which the last poor man has free access. But this last advantage, in turn, receives its full meaning when it does not go to extremes and when, in the name of the people, as a mass, its upper class, as the main bearer of the people's mind and spirit, is not supplanted. It was from this aspect that Palmer was interested in determining the attitude of our aristocracy to our people's church. It should be noted that Palmer had to make his observations at the most unfavorable time. In the mental life of the then educated Russian society, two stormy currents of completely opposite directions had just passed through. This is, on the one hand, the strong influence of Romanism, the seeds of which were spread by the Jesuits with a bold and skillful hand until their complete expulsion from Russia in 1820, and on the other hand, a passion for mysticism, strengthened under the influence of the Anglo-Continental Bible Society. Both currents passed exclusively through the mental life of our highest educated society, but they left the strongest mark on themselves. The weakest individuals, and, moreover, by their mental makeup, standing, so to speak, already outside the church fence, were captured by these currents and carried away by them partly to the foot of the Roman papal throne, and partly into the abyss of mystical unprincipledness. But for the development of our society, the traces left by these trends on the mass of that educated high-society society that remained within the church fence were of much greater importance. They so strongly influenced the entire religious worldview of this society that they determined for a long time the characteristic direction of church-religious life and theological thought in this environment. The passion for Romanism gave a strong flavor of papism to the mental make-up of our educated society, and when this passion met with an equally strong stream of hostile mysticism, this clash of two opposing principles finally deprived the high-society mind of the necessary balance and, as a result, that vacillation of theological thought was established, which characterizes the religious-mental life of our high-society circle in Palmer’s notes. The Anglican theologian was immediately struck by such instability in the religious worldview of our high-society circle, and when conveying his theological conversations with various representatives of this circle, he constantly notes this feature, which at first seemed mysterious to him, especially since he saw in this same environment undoubted signs of sound churchism. In all the houses where he visited, he was received with the greatest hospitality and constantly entered into religious conversations with him with undoubtedly lively interest, especially the ladies, who even asked him to come to them in clerical attire and bombarded him with questions about various features of Anglican church life, about priests and bishops, about whether in England there is a custom of asking for their blessing and in what form it is given, etc. On some occasions he met with deep attachment to the forms of church and religious life of the Orthodox Church. Princess Potemkina reproached the British for the fact that “their bishops live like secular people and have neither the spiritual character that distinguishes our bishops, nor the respect that is associated with the latter” 46. Another lady made an energetic attack on Palmer and, with all the zeal of a strict follower of her church, denied any possibility of carrying out the scheme propagated by Palmer for the union of churches 47 . The third touched the Anglican theologian with the simplicity of her religious faith when, in his presence, she blessed her nephew, who was going to his night's rest, with the cross of the father. But with all the visible features of religiosity that characterize the internal and external life of our high society circle, Palmer could not escape the alienation from the church, which appeared along with religious signs. He began to look for the reasons for it and partly found an explanation in the mouths of representatives of this very circle. On the day of Michael the Archangel, November 8, Palmer dined with Princess Sophia Golitsyna. As usual, a religious conversation began, and the princess began to complain that we have very few cases of such a religious conversation with spiritual shepherds, from which religious advice or edification could be extracted, since the clergy is never part of their society. “There is no doubt,” she continued, “our custom of going to confession is very good; but this is only once a year, and in long intervals we are entirely left to ourselves. Church services are extremely tiring, and we understand only a little about them, especially Vespers and Matins, and almost no one from the upper classes goes to Matins. It is very long and you have to stand the whole time. The liturgy is clearer to us, and we can follow it better.” “But if you buy church books and use them to follow the service, it will become more understandable,” Palmer noted. – No, it’s impossible to stand in church with a book in your hands! This would be disrespect for the shrine. “What I mean is somewhat different,” Palmer replied. “I mean, read liturgical books like this for a quarter of an hour or so every day at home, and then church services will soon become clearer to you.” “Some of our older people do this, and that is why, perhaps, they endure all the services that do not seem tiresome to them,” answered the princess and, as if feeling the destruction of her previous argument, she tried to find an excuse for her attitude towards the church in the fact that our clergy had not yet completely abandoned their bad habit of drinking 49 . Palmer constantly encountered such and similar conversations in the hospitable homes of his high society friends. While dining with the Potemkins on the first day of the Nativity Fast, where, according to Orthodox custom, a fast table was offered, Palmer inquired to know how strictly church decrees regarding fasting were observed in the upper classes. From the Lenten table of his hosts, he wanted to make a favorable generalization regarding the entire high society circle in general, but he had to be disappointed when he was told that “the upper classes have now become so Protestantized that fasts are observed by only a very few, at least in St. Petersburg, where up to seventy thousand Germans live. Some, perhaps many, observe fasting only during the first and last weeks of Lent.” But how generally unpopular fasts were among the upper classes, Palmer could see from the fact that with the onset of one or another fast, the “zhurfixes” established by the Potemkins quickly became empty, since, according to their custom, their dinners at that time were usually fast 50 . During the same Lenten dinner, the Anglican theologian heard a lot of various, not entirely favorable, reviews about our church and religious order. “Church services,” they complained to him, “are too long, suitable only for monasteries, from where they were borrowed, and as a result are accompanied by great disorder and disrespect. This is because, on the one hand, the vast mass of the common people look upon any reduction with superstitious fear, so that it would be dangerous on the part of the authorities to make any changes, and on the other hand, it would often be physically impossible for the priest and the people living in the world to carry them out or to be present at them, if they were carried out properly in their entirety. Moreover, the educated and secular classes of the urban population, constantly increasing in number, are as repulsed by the duration of church services as the merchants and peasants like this very duration. The consequence of this was that in the churches a system of reading the prescribed kathismas, hours and most of the canons was established, according to which all this is carried out with extreme speed. Everyone complains about such disrespect, they are ashamed of it, at times even decisions were made to correct this shortcoming, but all in vain. Despite the fact that now everything possible is done to shorten the service - singing occurs quickly, the required repetitions are not done, singing is often replaced by reading - with all this, priests, readers and singers, when performing divine services in churches attended by the upper classes, have to make various omissions at their own discretion in order to adapt the church service to the endurance of their flock or their own physical strength. All this comes out with particular force during the season of Lent, which many people find burdensome. Others, however, know how to find a kind of consolation in him, as Prince Potemkin expressed it. “During Lent,” he said, “we lose a lot of weight, but both spirit and body rejoice in anticipation of Easter” 51 . Along with this dissatisfaction with established church-religious forms, Palmer at the same time saw the complete loosening of church-religious principles in high society society. The reason for this was partly in upbringing, and mainly in those trends that swept through the religious and mental life of this environment in alternating whirlwinds. Prince Meshchersky, who was previously the chief prosecutor of St. Synod, told him that the Russians, until recently, were very bad members of the church, since they usually received their education in the hands of foreign Protestant teachers and governesses. Even he himself, until the age of thirty, was a freethinker, and in this direction he was brought up by his Protestant teacher. Since the clergy is not part of high society, young people, in his opinion, usually acquire such religious concepts as are currently in circulation in secular, fashionable society, and these concepts are either Protestant or Catholic 52. It is clear what practical results could be accompanied by such a religious education, and Palmer talks about several individuals from whom such an upbringing turned into some kind of seekers and seekers of religious adventures, changing their religious beliefs at the moment of their mood. This, for example, is Princess Potemkina. Even in childhood, when she was a girl, she fell under the prevailing fashionable craze of Romanism, which was diligently spread by the Jesuit fathers. The sons of Loyola surrounded the high-society young lady with all sorts of concerns of their fatherly care, constantly instilling in her the idea that the Catholic Church is the only path to salvation and to resist the desire to belong to it, if it appeared to her, would mean committing a mortal sin against the Holy Spirit. It is clear that honey-drenched speeches are oo. The Jesuits turned the head of the young princess, she had a passionate desire to become a Catholic, and such a desire worried her for some time. Hesitating between this desire and instinctive fear for her Orthodox faith, she turned for advice to some of the Orthodox clergy, but they rather increased than decreased her religious melancholy when, as the main arguments, they presented her with the sorrow or displeasure of her parents and acquaintances, the indecency of leaving her own faith, etc. Jesuitical influence was actually ready to triumph over the princess when by chance she met a preacher Methodism, which turned it completely in the opposite direction. Having heard from the Russian princess the sorrowful story of her religious torments and doubts, the Methodist exclaimed with heartfelt pathos - “quel manque de foi” (oh, what lack of faith!) and began to explain to her in detail the catechism of his “spiritual” faith, the doctrine of the natural state of the soul, of justification by grace free for all, of the need for living communion with the Savior, of confidence in the unity of the soul with Him, and so on. similar provisions of methodism. All this, according to Princess Potemkina, was then new to her and illuminated her like a ray of light. This new revelation filled her with joy, and in this state she remained for about four years while living in Paris, so that the Methodists around her said that she had finally found Christ or realized that she had received salvation. No matter how strong the passion for Methodism was, it could not take possession of the princess forever. Little by little she became bored with the vague and sentimental soteriology of the Methodists, and the princess moved on to reading more sensible works of English theological literature. This literature opened her eyes to the glaring shortcomings of itinerant Methodism and directed her mind to healthy religious food, which consisted in the works of the ancient fathers, which she began to study to the great benefit of her mind and heart, and, in the end, again reconciled with her church, from which the whirlwinds of various hobbies had torn her away 53. Religious hobbies at that time were a kind of epidemic, and in conversations with his high-society friends, Palmer kept hearing about the victims of these hobbies. And what kind of whirlwinds did not capture the lost sheep of the high society flock! While dining with a Russian prince, a colonel of the imperial guard, Palmer heard a sad story from him. When the prince, according to Orthodox custom, was preparing to confess and receive communion during Holy Week, he suddenly received from his family, who were living abroad at that time near Geneva, a letter in which his eldest daughter, on behalf of her mother and two younger sisters, wrote to her dear dad that they had all left the superstition of the Russian church and had converted to the fold of the Anglican Church 54 . The poor prince was especially depressed not by the fact that they “left the superstition of the Russian church,” but by the fact that they turned to the wrong place. “In Rome,” he said, “it’s a different matter: there is pomp and splendor, learning and jealousy, and if I had received such a letter from Rome, I would not have taken it so much to heart. But their conversion to Protestantism saddened me extremely.” As for Roman Catholicism, it generally enjoyed the favor of the prince, who, according to his statement, was himself ready to recognize the pope, if only it could be proven that the apostle. Peter had ever been to Rome and if the government, for example, had agreed to unite with the Roman Catholic Church, then the prince “would have been the first person” among those who would have recognized the primacy of the pope 55. In Princess Dolgorukaya, Palmer found his special religious passion. She loved to go to the Moravian Brethren church and thought that this did not in the least contradict her Orthodox faith. When Palmer disagreed with her in this regard and said that such liberalism was incompatible with true Christian love, the princess energetically defended the correctness of her convictions. “On the contrary,” she said, “it is precisely the way in which Catholics carry out their principles that restores and irritates me against them, and I am ready to go to pray in the churches of Lutherans and Calvinists rather than with them. And besides, there is nothing dangerous for me here, because when I am there, I don’t even feel like I was in church at all.” “Your example, however,” Palmer noted, “may also captivate others, to whom it could cause serious harm. The exceptional zeal and love of the papists convinces and attracts them to what they proclaim to be the one true church, while your boundless tolerance (latitudinarian tolerance) will never help to save anyone from the fire.” At this time, Prince Dolgoruky entered and, joining the interlocutors, referred to the Bible as proof that all those true Christians who confess Jesus Christ and obey their conscience. But this principle seemed too broad even to the princess, and she noticed that the prince was going too far 56. In the Ryumin family, the Anglican theologian was surprised to encounter a new and unique hobby. According to his religious beliefs, revealed in a religious conversation, Ryumin reminded Palmer of the teachings of the Quakers and, as it later turned out, was a zealous spreader of Quakerism. Palmer found from him whole piles of Quaker brochures and tracts, which he distributed everywhere among the English. This fact could not help but strike the Anglican theologian, and he remarked to the Russian Quaker: “you have become infected with dangerous ideas” 57 . Palmer had the longest theological conversation in Moscow with Princess Meshcherskaya. She turned out to be very well read in theological literature and, in turn, went through the usual school of hobbies. Her upbringing coincided with the era of French freethinking and religious skepticism that dominated us at the end of the last century, but she was cured of this illness by Dr. Pinkerton, a famous agent of the Anglo-Continental Bible Society in Russia. He reawakened in her the religious instinct lulled by her French upbringing and developed a taste for theological literature, of course of the type of which this society served as the representative and disseminator. Princess Meshcherskaya was strongly influenced by the ideas of this society, which immediately caught the eye of Palmer, who cites in his notes a long conversation he had with her with the purpose of “illustrating that type of liberal evangelicalism, traces of which he had already noted more than once in his memories of conversations with Russians, especially with religious and educated ladies” 58 . The conversation, first of all, touched on the issue of the church, and Princess Meshcherskaya told the Anglican theologian: “I believe in an internal or essential church that agrees with the Bible, and as for individual external churches, not one of them is perfect. Even in the time of the apostles, there were already divisions and very different spiritual states in different churches.” “But the church was once united in visible and external communication for 1200 years, and can again become so,” Palmer noted, hinting at the possibility of church unity in the idea of ​​catholicity. - This is just a pleasant dream. In reality this is a completely impossible thing. The division at first arose from the moral depravity and evil lusts of Christians. Over time, little by little, even the conviction was formed that division and remaining in it is almost a necessity of the organic structure of society. The initial division continued and increased. No, this will not end until the coming of Christ, when, having barely found faith on earth, He will have to again rebuild the internal and heavenly economy. Take the Roman Catholic community: it has its faults; as far as she has essential faith, she is very good; but to the extent that people have given it and distorted it, it is very bad. You have your own Anglican Church; You have made mistakes in many ways, but you have what you need - what do you need more? The Russian Church, the Greek Church - was changed and distorted less than the Papal Church, only, it seems to me, because the circumstances were different and its prelates were not tempted, like the Roman ones, by wealth and dominion. And yet it also has its drawbacks. People introduced their own additions and inventions into it. So, there is veneration of saints in it. Such “liberal evangelicalism” of the Russian princess confused the Anglican theologian, and he was forced to use his stock of theological argumentation to prove to the princess the naturalness and correctness of the doctrine of the veneration of saints, of course limiting it in accordance with his own point of view, and noticed that the language she used was completely Protestant and unworthy of the language of the Orthodox Russian. The princess's general remark that none of the existing churches is perfect and has its shortcomings found complete agreement in Palmer, who confirmed it with his Oxford ideas, but this gave the princess, in turn, a reason to note the inconsistency of Palmer himself. “If you agree with me,” she said, “that every church has its shortcomings and things that need to be changed, then why do you mean to leave one church in order to change it to another? After all, this would mean exchanging some shortcomings for others. The true, essential faith of the Bible is the same in everyone.” – I do not wish to leave the English church to accept the Russian one, but to unite them. We should by no means abandon our own church simply because it has faults, as long as we believe that it forms part of the true church, and no one can do this without sin. But what do you mean by “separate churches” and by “the faith of the Bible, which is the same in them all”? We believe that there is only one church, and it is both visible and invisible. – Where is it, and what church exactly? - asked the princess. – Ask in any country, and they will show it to you everywhere, even sectarians. The Roman Church is in Rome, the English Church in England, the Russian Church in Russia. If anywhere the claim to the title of the church seems doubtful, then one can turn to the epithets of the true church, which are: Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic and the like, and from them one can determine what is the ancient primitive church in a particular country. Again, historically we can trace the unity of the entire church over a period of 1100 or 1200 years, and, despite external disagreements and divisions between them, we still see traces of the three apostolic communities, which before this division were united, and which, in essence, if the disagreement is only superficial, remain in the unity of truth to this day. But if you include in your concept of the visible church all those sects who have restored the Bible against the church, or rather their supposed right to judge and teach against the duty and right of the church to teach and judge, and their private understanding of St. The Scriptures have contrasted it with the apostolic and catholic interpretation - then every true Englishman will have to disagree with you. “I don’t understand anything like that,” said the princess. – The Bible says nothing about the right of disobedience or about human churches. The formation and government of the church, the Bible says, is to be accomplished through apostolic mission and authority. Of course, the church has the right to teach, but on the other hand, please tell me what you mean when you talk about the faith and teaching of those parts of it that you recognize as apostolic. What is the faith and doctrine in which these parts agree? – It would take a lot of time to list all the points of agreement. They all agree among themselves in all the members of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Symbol and, in general, agree so much in the doctrine of the church and the sacraments that they are on guard against the heresies of Protestantism. In addition, they all agree that all Christians must be baptized and observe the four things stated at the end of the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles (constant continuance in the teaching of the apostles, in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayer - II, 42). – Yes, all this is in the Bible; I completely agree with you. If this is your church and faith, then in some way I am a member of it,” agreed the Russian princess. In order to introduce the princess to the ideas of the Oxford society, Palmer gave her a publication of this society called “Simple Speeches” to read. At the next meeting, the princess told Palmer that she read these “speeches” with great pleasure. “I’m thinking of translating some of them into Russian and publishing them,” she said. “I recently translated and published Baxter’s work, “The Rest of the Saints.” - Palmer was surprised and asked: “Do the censors really let such books through?” – They make some changes at their own discretion, but these changes are usually insignificant and have no significance. “But still, it seems that it should not be easy to make a book written on the basis of a false doctrine suitable for use by an Orthodox Christian,” Palmer noted with slight sarcasm. – As for me, I see no difference between the theology of “simple speech” and the books of the English dissenters. I read the edifying books of writers of both these classes in the same way, and I do not see the difference, because I do not look for it. “Nevertheless,” replied Palmer, “it is easy to see that you read chiefly sectarian writers, and your ideas and language are strongly colored by their peculiar and, as we think, extremely erroneous opinions.” Regarding Princess Meshcherskaya's report on the activities of the Bible Society in Russia, Palmer notes that the Russians apparently had no idea what a subtle poison was hidden and contained in every particle of enlightened zeal or zeal for enlightenment, which distinguished this society, and how it made itself felt in the opinions expressed by his high-society interlocutor. “Madame Meshcherskaya,” he says, “was a victim, as I should call her, of one of two religious movements against the Orthodox Church, which were produced or supported by two antagonistic societies and the traces of which were visible on the previous pages, namely the Jesuit society and the Biblical society. Each of them had temporary success, but finally, first one, and then the other, were forcibly expelled from the country, as soon as the government and hierarchy saw that both of them, with their various aspects, counteracted the church traditions and popular concepts of Russia” 59 . The influence of the Bible Society, which caused extreme vacillation in theological thought among high society, was so strong that some members of the highest church administration were not free from it. So Mr. Skripitsin, who held one of the highest posts in the synodal administration, told Palmer: “Our church, like ourselves, has one good side: its tolerance. We are not like Rome, which anathematizes all others. We have our own rituals, but we can be at peace with others, because in being everything is one. We all worship the same Christ, and everything else is a matter of comparative indifference” 60. This view seemed extremely erroneous to Palmer, and to this liberal “evangelicalism” of the synodal official, the Anglican theologian replied: “I cannot admit two or more faiths, as you apparently admit, but I think that either we are of the same faith, or one of us is a heretic. There is only one faith, one church, one baptism...” With such a loosening of theological thought among high society, Palmer, of course, found it difficult to establish the correct point of view on his scheme for the catholic unity of churches. When he started talking about it, he encountered either extreme confessionalism, which threatened with the horrors of popular uprisings and bloodshed from the implementation of this scheme, or extreme indifferentism, which attached so little importance to confessional forms of church life that Palmer had to introduce his interlocutors within the limits of reasonable orthodoxy, or, finally, such liberal evangelicalism, which in principle contradicted the idea of the Oxford movement and thus shattered all hope of establishing a lasting church unity created on the strict principles of catholicity. It is clear that in this environment Palmer could not achieve a more or less correct and serious assessment of his scheme. To do this, he had to turn to one of the strict exponents of Orthodox theological thought, and he turned to Philaret of Moscow. Theological conversation between Palmer and Philaret of Moscow. – Question about the Anglican liturgy. – Basics of communication. – Essential dogmas and theological opinions. – Formal definition of the Church from the point of view of the Oxford Doctrine. – Philaret's opinion about members of the Anglican faith and his formal response to Palmer. - Answer of St. Synod. – The failure of the Anglican theologian’s scheme. – His final conclusions about theological thought in Russia. In conversations with various representatives of the Russian Church, Palmer more than once heard references to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow as the highest theological authority to whom he had to turn for the final decision of his case. Philaret’s theological glory at that time was already at a high level. In the field of theological thought he occupied the most prominent position. His catechism, in its accuracy and clarity of formulation of Orthodox teaching, became a symbolic book of the Russian Church, and in its strength of originality and flexibility of language, it became a classic work of Russian literature. Everyone looked at him as a brilliant representative of Russian theological thought, and indeed, he was a great theological mind, which, with the ease of brilliant contemplation, penetrated into the essence of the most difficult church-theological problems and gave answers to them, striking both with the clarity and breadth of vision, and especially with the accuracy and consistency of the Orthodox Russian point of view. His numerous writings, letters, resolutions, which are still continuously reproduced in our spiritual journals, contain inexhaustible material for characterizing this colossal mind, which in every word gave a program and in every position opened up a boundless horizon for the development of theological thought. Distinguished by its amazing comprehensiveness, Philaret’s theological mind not only embraced all aspects of internal church life, but also went far beyond its limits: with remarkable vigilance he followed the movement of thought and life of the entire Christian world, quickly guessed its inner meaning, gave it a true interpretation and indicated the relationship that it had to the Orthodox Church. As a result, he did not lose sight of the movements that began in the West in favor of rapprochement with the Orthodox East. But as a profound theologian, who understood better than others in what deep layers of church-historical and cultural life lie the causes and roots of the division of the Christian world, he was more cautious than anyone else about the movement in the direction of unity, and when with his penetrating gaze he saw that the movement did not have sufficient internal intensity to lead to any positive results, then with one direct word he revealed its inconsistency and revealed the theological immaturity of those who worked with zeal worthy of a better cause in order to support a fictitious movement. The Anglican theologian was not unaware of these peculiarities of the mind of Philaret of Moscow, and therefore, one must assume, he saw this wise hierarch before him, not without embarrassment, when he was introduced to him by Count Protasov. A rather lengthy theological conversation took place between them, recorded by Palmer. The conversation was conducted in Latin. Filaret began the conversation and precisely from the point that provided more material for positive theological conclusions and less scope for fruitless verbal debates - with the question of liturgy. This question, then as now, is the most vital question of the Church of England. The liturgy represents the actual testimony of church doctrine; it most clearly and fully reflects the inner meaning of the religious system. This is demonstrated with striking clarity by the fate of the liturgy of the Church of England. Borrowed from the Roman Church, the Anglican liturgy has undergone a gradual process of modification since the Reformation; with the penetration of Protestant principles into the Anglican Church, it became more and more Protestantized and finally reached its present form, which represents some pitiful fragments of the ancient liturgy, devoid of the vital nerve of liturgical worship. This state of the liturgy in the Church of England is at present a matter of grave concern to all thoughtful theologians of the church, and there is a strong movement in the American Episcopal Church towards the restoration of the ancient form of the liturgy, a movement led by the famous Bishop Young of Florida, who recently published in the organ of the Episcopal Church (The American Church Review) a number of articles on the question of the restoration of the ancient form and inner meaning in the Anglican liturgy 61 . What Anglican theological thought has only now come to realize, Metropolitan Philaret was already aware fifty years ago, and in his conversation with Palmer, first of all, he drew attention to this side of the matter. “I am very glad to see you,” he said to Palmer, “and to hear that your church sympathizes with unity and reveres antiquity,” and then, to test this position, he turned to the question of the Anglican liturgy and its relation to the liturgies of the Orthodox Church. “Our liturgies,” he said, “are the most ancient; The Latin Church changed its liturgy for the worse in many points, omitting, for example, the invocation of St. Spirit; We in the East firmly adhere to the apostolic tradition and the example of our Lord - both in relation to the quality of bread (ἄρτος, and not ἄζυμος), and the unity of bread.” Palmer replied that in this they agree with the East, to which the Metropolitan again expressed his pleasure: “I am glad to hear that you now honor antiquity,” he said 62. This remark touched upon the most painful side of Anglicanism, which powerlessly struggles between Platonic love for the ancient church tradition and the actual trampling of it, as the Anglicans themselves admit. Lord Clanrickard, who was at that time the English envoy to the Russian court in St. Petersburg, told his Russian friends about the Church of England: “If you read the books of many of our first-class theologians, you will think that there is no or little difference between our church and yours. It's the same if you look at our liturgical books. But if you were in England and entered our churches, you would not find anything like this. You cannot even imagine to what extent they are naked and devoid of splendor, and how lifeless and colorless the services and rituals are. All this has been brought to such an extent that they have become worthy of contempt in our eyes” 63. In defense of his church, Palmer hastened to answer: “Our church,” he said, “has always preferred to follow antiquity, and, together with its XXXIX members of the faith, made in 1571 a rule binding on all its clergy - ut ne quid unquam pro concione doceant, quod a populo religiose teneri et credi velint etc., to preach nothing concerning the faith except what is contained in Holy Scripture and what the ecumenical fathers and ancient bishops collected from it.” “This rule is very good,” said both the Metropolitan and the Chief Prosecutor in one voice, and, encouraged by this, Palmer noticed that in two of the three liturgies used by the Anglicans, some amendments were made in the spirit of antiquity, the offering of gifts and the invocation of the Holy Spirit after the utterance of the words of Christ were restored. When asked about the origin of the Anglican liturgies, Palmer replied that they were mostly borrowed from the Roman Church, especially since the time of Norman and Anglo-Saxon rule; but before this, and precisely until the end of the 6th century, the British churches had their own liturgies, just as the French and Spanish churches had their own liturgies and churches. The history of the Anglican liturgy has given rise to comparisons between it in different periods of its existence, and at the same time the fact has become clear that at present it has omitted essential parts that were part of it in the past, for example. prayers for the dead. This fact could serve as an eloquent indicator of the modification of the very nature of the doctrine of the Church of England, and from it it could be concluded that at present the Church of England does not recognize prayers for the dead. Palmer responded to this that although these prayers are omitted from the liturgy, they are not rejected or condemned, and in exceptional cases they are included in the liturgy, and this issue was even the subject of a legal decision. The reason why these prayers, formerly included in the missal, were subsequently omitted, according to Palmer, was that in the popular mind they were associated with the doctrine of purgatory, which led to so many abuses in church life. “The political freedom that you enjoy in England,” said both Russian interlocutors of the Anglican theologian, “apparently is not very favorable to church humility and discipline.” “No,” Palmer answered passionately, “this is diabolical freedom, and all political indignation comes from the root of religious indignation. He who rebelled against his God will not hesitate to rebel against his sovereign” 64. To quickly get to the main question, Count Protasov asked Palmer to outline the grounds on which he sought admission to communion with the Orthodox Church, and he said: “In the Creed we confess that the Church is one, and we believe in the unity of the Church.” This formula expressed the essence of the Oxford doctrine, but it was so general that it did not give a real idea of ​​​​the matter, “and the Metropolitan remarked that the Church should be united, but in reality it is not,” and when Palmer said that the existing division was wicked and deplorable, the Metropolitan agreed with him, adding that “unity, no doubt, is highly desirable.” Palmer began to further clarify his views on the communion of churches, and said: “Our church has never excommunicated the Greek churches, nor the Latin churches of the continent; We excommunicate only those Latins who are in England and Ireland, Greece and Russia, we excommunicate as schismatics.” This view seemed not clear enough to Filaret, and he said that he could not understand it. “The Latins,” he objected, “wherever they are, are one and the same with the Latins of the continent. If it is possible to have communication with them outside the borders of your country, then they should be in unity with you in their homeland. If you excommunicate them at home, then they must be excommunicated everywhere.” This objection is completely correct from the Orthodox point of view, but it did not take into account the essence of the Oxford doctrine, from the point of view of which Palmer conducted his negotiations for the unity of the churches, and therefore he continued: “Yes, if they were heretics; but we excommunicate them at home not as heretics, but as schismatics. A layman with us can hold all the errors of papism as theological opinions, no matter how condemned they are by our church, and he will not be excommunicated for this, unless by external action he reveals a rebellion against church authority.” This remark led to a serious question about the freedom that the Church can allow its members within the limits of its jurisdiction, and here there was a difference in views between Russian and Anglican theologians. The first noted that such freedom, which Palmer pointed out, cannot be allowed in the Church, since communication requires the strictest unity of faith; but the Anglican theologian continued to develop his thought in this direction. “In essence, such freedom may take place, but in reality there can hardly be such a case, since the one who would adhere to all Roman errors would, of course, adhere to the doctrine of the need for communication with Rome. There is no doubt that, as your Eminence says, the strictest unity of faith is required for communion, but then the question arises as to what, in essence, faith is, and our Church makes a great distinction between that faith, which everyone must maintain completely and steadily, and secondary theological opinions, which constitute neither essential dogmas if they are true, nor heresies if they are false. We think there are foundations in doctrine and faith." The Metropolitan stood his ground and said that the Church should be completely united in faith, but Palmer continued: “Rightly or wrongly, our Church makes such a distinction. We have never accused the Papists of formal heresy. Beyond the bounds of necessary faith, we must therefore pay attention not so much to the identity of opinion as to the legitimacy of the local altar or pulpit, to discern in every part of the world the true church and to promote its unity" 65 . The issue raised was so serious that it could hardly be finally resolved in one verbal conversation. Filaret, who stood firmly on the basis of strict orthodoxy, naturally denied the distinction allowed by Palmer between essential dogmas and secondary opinions, since such a distinction did not correspond to the organic integrity of Orthodoxy, where everything is in such a close connection with each other that a violation at one point leads to confusion in the entire church body; and, moreover, such a distinction can introduce arbitrariness into church teaching and raises the question of who is given the right to determine what is essential in church teaching and what is unimportant. Nevertheless, such a distinction cannot be completely denied. “No church has ever denied such a distinction, and cannot do without it,” as Palmer said, who illustrated this position with church-historical examples. To deny it would mean to deny all freedom in the sphere of the church-religious worldview, which would be contrary to one of the essential principles of Orthodoxy, according to which, with the constant firmness of the fundamental dogmas established by the voice of the universal Church, wide freedom of private opinions is allowed as a necessary condition for the progressive development of the church-religious worldview. As a result, Philaret could not but agree with the position of the Anglican theologian, he allowed the possibility of distinguishing between essential dogmas and secondary theological opinions, although he conditioned this agreement with the remark that among the latter some are of such importance in the system of dogmatics, so closely connected with the essential dogmas and practically so inseparable from them, that to tolerate them in a private member of the church would be incompatible with the unity of communion or faith. “So you are a universalist,” Count Protasov turned to Palmer, “you admit both Latin and Greek saints together.” “Of course, I admit it,” he replied, and the Metropolitan noted that the Florentine Cathedral was ready to do the same 66. All of Palmer’s thoughts noted above have an organic connection with the general concept of the Church that was developed by the Oxford school. Particular features of this concept appear in every word and position of the Anglican theologian, but for a complete and clear understanding of the essence of the Oxford doctrine regarding the idea of ​​the Church, an accurate formal definition of the Church was still lacking. As a result, the Chief Prosecutor asked Palmer to state to the Metropolitan his own definition of the visible Church, and he did this as follows: “The one visible Catholic Church on earth, the true continuation and representative of the Church founded in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, is at the present time, due to differences regarding minor matters, divided into three local parts, all agreeing in the essence of the faith, namely the Orthodox Eastern Church and the Western, the latter being further divided into the continental and British. In their relative areas each has original and legal jurisdiction. If, due to actual disagreements between them, any bishop of one of them tries to draw Christians away from the other two in order to organize from them special parishes of his own religion, thus making points of difference points of essential faith, then we say that these new parishes are schismatic.” – So you admit that the Eastern, Latin and British churches are one? – Filaret noted. “Yes,” answered Palmer, “each in its original area, not otherwise.” – I don’t understand this. How many of you hold this theory? – asked the Metropolitan, interested in the original view of the Church. “Eminent Metropolitan,” answered Palmer, “this is not a theory, but that definition of the visible Church, which takes place in the prayers and formal acts of our church and has for itself the general testimony of our theologians. “All this is material for some future council, but it cannot be discussed with individuals,” said Philaret, and then continued: “your language is quite suitable for the fourth century, but it is inappropriate in the current state of the world.” Of course, the desire for unity of communication is very good and commendable; it is to be hoped that these feelings will become common and then, in due course, the necessary measures can be taken by the authorities on both sides. In the present state of things we cannot deal with individuals. Now, in any case, there is a division 67. This verdict was quite decisive for the practical application of the Anglican theologian’s scheme. She, obviously, did not fit the strictly Orthodox point of view of Philaret, but he, in any case, became interested in the question itself and wished to become more familiar with the symbolic book of Anglicanism, the famous XXXIX members of the faith. Palmer offered these terms to him to read along with his introduction to them. At the next meeting, the Eminence Metropolitan told him: “I read your introduction, and I think that it is much more Orthodox and much more consistent with the teaching and spirit of the Eastern Church than the very members about whom it treats. They contain many erroneous provisions that cannot be tolerated in our country.” Palmer himself was well aware of this and in his introduction tried, as far as possible, to smooth out these roughnesses of the symbolic book of his church. But the fact remained a fact. His introduction was his personal work, and the members were an ecclesiastical document. Responding to the last remark of the Eminence Philaret, he, nevertheless, tried to establish a more favorable point of view towards the members of his church than what was determined by their direct internal content. “Our church,” he said, “certainly assumed that its members would be accepted and interpreted in the catholic and orthodox sense, since the same synod that accepted them and made them obligatory for the clergy also established the following rule: preachers should carefully try to never preach in speeches anything subject to the religious belief of the people, except what is in accordance with the Holy Scriptures of the old and new testaments, and that the ecumenical fathers and ancient bishops collected from it. The Anglican theologian’s answer sounded in the tone of a desire to justify the symbolic book of his church at all costs, but Filaret was adamant. “All I can say to this,” he said, “is that this rule of your church is much better than its members of faith, and it should be printed with them. Unity, of course,” he added, “is very desirable, but given the difficulties that lie on the way to it, it is extremely difficult to achieve it.” 68 Some time later, Palmer received from the Most Reverend Philaret, through A.N. Muravyov, a written answer, which is conveyed in the notes of the Anglican theologian only in a brief extract. This answer stated that he who would receive communion from the diocesan bishop must submit absolutely and without limitation to the teaching, discipline and ritual of the Orthodox Church, but that to allow unity or reunion with any concession or condition, no matter how small, is above the authority of the diocesan bishop and can only be allowed by the synod 69. This final verdict pronounced by the Eminence Philaret over Palmer’s scheme is absolutely correct. As a diocesan bishop, the Moscow Metropolitan officially could only make such a review. Palmer, as a private individual and a private member of the Church of England, in his eyes could not be considered an authorized representative of his church, in his voice he could not see the voice of his church, and therefore, in essence, could not enter into serious consideration with him of the question of establishing communion between churches, since this question was subject to discussion by legally and openly appointed bodies, equipped with certain powers on behalf of the church. As a private individual, Palmer could be admitted to communion with the Orthodox Church only on the general basis of accepting people of other faiths, that is, under the condition of absolute renunciation of the errors of Anglicanism and the same acceptance of the truths and forms of Orthodoxy. The correctness of such a sentence was also evidenced by the formal response of St. Synod, to which Palmer also applied for admission into communion with the Orthodox Church, although at the same time, in order to give more weight to his case, he presented a letter from a Scottish bishop. The Holy Synod responded to his petition that “as the British Church did not express its intention by any conciliar act to restore the communion lost with our church, through the rejection of all opinions contrary to our doctrine, and as the letter of one bishop and the petition of one deacon, representing only private opinions, are not subject to synodal consideration, the Synod cannot admit Palmer to the communion of the Orthodox Church except in the manner established for accession Gentiles" 70. In the answer of St. The Synod consisted not only of a negative decision in the case of Palmer as a private individual, but also a formal denial on his part of the truth of the Oxford doctrine. The essence of this doctrine was the theory according to which a single Catholic Church existed in three branches, represented by the Orthodox, Latin and Anglican churches. Each of them in its integrity is equally holy, catholic and apostolic church. Although they are separated from each other spatially and hierarchically, there is a continuous spiritual, organic connection between them, and if this connection was not expressed in actual facts, it was only due to a historically formed misunderstanding. Palmer personally wanted to clear up this misunderstanding. He came to Russia with the goal of proving in fact that, being a member of the Anglican Church in spatial and hierarchical terms, he is at the same time spiritually a member of the Eastern Church, and therefore he is as Orthodox as all members of the Orthodox Church. His conviction in the truth of his doctrine extended to the point that he did not even imagine the possibility of doubt or denial of it, and therefore he was naively amazed when the first Russian Orthodox priest, to whom he turned with a request to receive him into the communion of the sacraments as an Orthodox, first demanded of him a renunciation of the errors of Anglicanism. All further reality at every step let him know that the Oxford doctrine did not flow from the universal consciousness of the Church, but is a simple local teaching that appeared as a result of the special historically formed conditions of life of the Anglican Church, and therefore is a teaching completely alien to the spirit of the Orthodox Church, which stands firmly on ancient universal principles and does not want to sacrifice them in favor of any artificially created or local and private theories. Summarizing the results of his observations of church-religious life and theological thought in Russia, Palmer, in his letter to the President of the Magdalenian College, Dr. Root, wrote that in Russia they know almost nothing about the Anglican Church and usually put it on a level with ordinary Protestant communities. The Russian clergy, in his opinion, adheres so tightly to their integral church-religious worldview that they do not or do not want to make a distinction between the essence of faith and secondary objects, as well as between what is essentially necessary and what is necessary only out of obedience to church authority, local or universal. It does not have sufficient clarity in the definition of the visible church, but is either liberal to the point of vagueness or, on the contrary, narrow to the point of exclusivity, so that, when individual members from heterodox communities enter, they are required to anathematize equally, as soul-destroying heresies, the errors of papists, Lutherans and Calvinists. Russian theological thought, in his opinion, has not developed a clear distinction between the apostolic churches containing the essence of faith, such as the Roman and Anglican, and other purely heretical communities, such as, for example, the Nestorian; equally does not distinguish between the Orthodox Church, which exists on its own territory and has its legal jurisdiction there, from those churches that invade foreign territories, produce schisms and restore altar against altar. Finally, the Russian Orthodox Church, in his opinion, is extremely afraid to take such a step that could confuse the conscience of the Uniates, the Austrian Slavs of the Greek rite, the Russian underdeveloped peasant masses, schismatics or the Greeks of the Levant. And such a step, in her opinion, would be the admission of an Anglican to communion in the sacraments without his renunciation of the errors of Anglicanism 71 . All the factual material on the basis of which Palmer makes such a generalization regarding the ecclesiastical religious worldview of the Russian Orthodox Church is outlined in previous articles with such completeness that there is no particular need to subject these conclusions to any criticism. Let us only note that Russian theological thought, indeed, as Palmer says, has not yet developed a sufficiently clear definition of the visible church, so clear and distinct that it would immediately establish both the characteristics of the Orthodox Church and its relationship to all non-Orthodox churches. The absence of such a clear definition is a constant source of misunderstandings in its relations to heterodox churches and determines the instability of theological thought, according to which it leans either towards Romanism or towards Protestantism, as has been noted more than once in these articles. But, on the other hand, the idea of ​​the Orthodox Church in the internal consciousness of the church itself and its representatives lives in such historical certainty that it is absolutely sufficient to treat various conventional theories and schemes with critical rigor, as happened with the scheme of the Englishman Palmer. This theory is still held in the High Church Party of the Church of England both in England and America, and was recently developed by the famous American preacher Ewer in his famous sermons on the "Bankruptcy of Protestantism." See A. Lopukhin: “Religion in America,” p. 39, etc. Palmer, Notes of a visit to the Russian Church, Prefatory notice, p.V–VII. Palmer, Chapter I, pp. 1–3. Palmer, Chapter III, p. 13 – 14. Palmer, Chapter VIII, pp. 41 – 42. Palmer. Chapter X, pp. 51 – 52. See the publication of 1838 under the title “Royal and Patriarchal Charter on the Establishment of the Holy Synod Outlining the Orthodox Confession of the Eastern Catholic Church” St. Petersburg. 1839 Palmer, Chapter XXIII, p. 118. Palmer. Notes of a visit to the Russian Church, Chapt. XXV. What practical results this trend brought can be seen in part from the interesting article by I. N. Korsunsky about “The fate of the catechisms of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow.” (“Russian Bulletin”, 1883, January; a detailed review of it in “Strannik”, March, pp. 543 – 559). This principle serves as the motto of the famous Unionist English journal: The Foreign Church Chronicle and Review. Since Palmer often and insistently points out the difference between the Russian translation of the XVIII members of the Jerusalem Council from the Greek original, for clarity we consider it useful to present here in parallel three texts of this passage in the doctrine of the Eucharist in the “Exposition of the Orthodox Confession of the Eastern Catholic Church” - the Greek original, the Latin translation and the Russian translation: ^Ἕ τι μετὰ ? ί αν τοῦ ἅ ρτου χαὶ τὸῦ ὄινου, ἀλλ ᾽ αὐτ ὃ τὸ σῷμα χαὶ τύ αἴμα τοῦ χυρ ί ου ἐν τῷ τοῦ ἅ ρτου χαὶ τοῦ ο ἵ νου ε ἵ δει χαὶ τοπ ῳ Item facta panis et vinis consecration nec panis nec vini manere amplius substantiam credimus, sed ipsum corpus et sanguinem domini sub panis et vini specie et figura, id est, sub panis accidentibus.^ We also believe that after the consecration of bread and wine, what remains is not the bread and wine itself, but the very body and blood of the Lord, under the guise and image of bread and wine (See “Royal and Patriarchal. Charters, ed. 1838, p. 53).^ As can be seen from this comparison of texts (the original and Latin text are taken from Kimmel's edition of Monumenta fidei Ecclesiae Otienralis 1850, p. 458), the Russian Synodal translation omits the term substantiam and the entire final explanatory expression, where in the original and in the Latin translation there is another term, accidentibus, opposite to the first, conveyed by the corresponding Greek word. In the use of these terms, Palmer sees the influence of Roman Catholic doctrine, in which similar terminology exists. Π ᾶ σα ἡ Ἐχχλησ ί α Ἰ σραὴλ, they say for example. LXX interpreters, using this word in the sense of a national assembly. 1 Maccab IV, 59. Those pedagogical and charitable activities that in the West are in the hands of monastic orders are, in theory, right. The responsibility of the Church lies with society itself, which, through the organization of free "brotherhoods" and "unions", with greater energy, could rival the Roman Catholic orders. If this is not the case, then monasticism has nothing to do with it. Palmer, pp. 179, 249, 310, etc. Palmer, Chapter XLI, pp. 221 – 224. Palmer, pp. 217. Regarding this answer, Cardinal Newman makes the following footnote: “There is nothing unreasonable in this answer. Palmer asked the archimandrite to recognize the Church of England as a church and to pray for its purification and welfare. Here it was a matter of dogmatic fact.” Palmer, Chapt. XL, pp. 216 – 218. Palmer, Chapt. XLII, p. 225. Palmer, Chapt. XLVI, p. 242. Palmer, Chapt. XEII, pp. 303 – 305. Palmer, ch. XLIV, pp. 233 – 236. Palmer, pp. 261, 262, 284, 285. According to Palmer - into Calvinism or Methodism. Palmer, b. 498. Palmer’s conversations with Princess Meshcherskaya, summarized below, occupy three chapters: CXVI, CXVII and CXVIII. Palmer, ch. CXIX, p. 515, 516. These articles have now appeared in a separate publication under the title: Papers on liturgical Enrichment, by the right Reverend I. F. Joung, bishop of Florida, New-Fork, 1883, and are of such deep liturgical interest that it would not be superfluous to acquaint the Russian public with them in more detail. Bishop Jung is known as one of the most active members of the Greek-Russian Committee for Relations with the Orthodox East. He traveled a lot in the east, was in Russia and is one of the few experts in America on the history and life of the Orthodox Church. Palmer, Chapter LXXIV, p. 349. Palmer, Chapter XCII, p. 414. See this answer in the archive of the office of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod No. 337. An excerpt from it in the article “Christ. Readings” for 1866, part II, p. 99. Palmer is completely silent about him in his book.