The life and theology of St. Demetrius of Rostov

St. Dimitri, Metropolitan of Rostov, was glorified by decree of the Holy Synod of April 15, 1757. The previous canonization took place in 1665 - the glorification of Arseny, Archbishop. Tverskoy. Subsequently, in 1798, St. Petersburg was canonized. Theodosius of Totemsky. Over a period of 133 years, only one saint was glorified - St. Dimitry Rostovsky! 1 The numbers speak for themselves. Even the most unfavorable situation for the development of church life, associated with the closure of many monasteries and the confiscation of church estates (for this reason, the school of St. Demetrius in Rostov was closed) could not prevent the glorification of one of the most revered Russian saints 2. We are not talking about the fact that during this period there was a practice of decanonization of saints... 3 Prot. Alexander Derzhavin, the author of a monumental work that took several decades to complete, “Cheti-Minea St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov, as a church-historical and literary monument" - wrote: "To weave even a small branch into the wreath of Glory with which St. Demetrius is crowned, to add new features to his attractive, familiar image from childhood - these are the inner impulses that guided me during my work" 4 . 2009 marks three hundred years since the repose of St. Demetrius of Rostov, and let this disk that you hold in front of you serve as this small branch, God-loving reader. To the best of our ability, we tried to put together pre-revolutionary publications dedicated to the blessed memory of St. Demetrius, including several modern studies among them. St. Demetrius immortalized his name by compiling the corpus of “Lives of the Saints,” the creation of which lasted more than twenty years (1684 – 1705) and required, truly, titanic efforts: both physical and spiritual. But it’s not just about the Lives. His works, salted by the grace of the Holy Spirit, were the favorite spiritual reading of the Russian people until the middle of the 19th century. It is noteworthy that the Rostov Saint enjoyed deep respect among the most diverse strata of Russian society. As Rev. noted. Alexander Gorsky, “the glory of the godly life of St. Demetrius and the dignity of his spiritual creations sometimes led to books being issued under his name in order to give them greater significance. In the memorial book of Peter the Great, it was written in his own hand: to write a book about bigots and express the beatitudes (meekness to David, etc.), which is not what they think, and add it to the breviaries, and in the preface to reveal it as the businessman of Rostovsky and his comrades” 5 . And this despite the fact that St. Demetrius in some of his sermons unambiguously denounced Peter’s vices! 6 This order was carried out by the archbishop. Feofan Prokopovich 7. It is interesting that none of the works of St. Demetrius has not come down to us in as many copies as the Cell Chronicler - and yet this work, written at the very end of the saint’s life, was not intended for publication 8 . According to I.A. Shlyapkin, the Chronicler's lists were in all collections, and their total number had to be counted in the hundreds 9 . It seems that such nationwide love is connected, first of all, with the very personality of St. Demetrius. A brilliant preacher and hagiologist, church historian and playwright, thoughtful educator and fighter against schism, wise church hierarch and caring shepherd, simply a Saint - he attracted and continues to attract the attention of both his contemporaries and subsequent generations of believers. The numerous selection of publications dedicated to his memory and various aspects of his activities, presented on the disc, speaks for itself. In this short introductory article, for the most part, we will not go into detail about the many different circumstances of the life of St. Demetrius, especially since this has already been done in the previous remarkable works of Archpriest. Alexander Gorsky 10, priest. M. Popova, bishop Vissarion (Nechaev), prot. Feodor Titov, in an extensive and factually rich, although somewhat secular, study by I.A. Shlyapkina; prot. Alexandra Derzhavina and others. However, it is impossible to completely avoid the biography of the Saint - life is always connected with theology, and theology with life. Nevertheless, I would like to pay more attention to the theology of St. Demetrius, and the most controversial topics in modern theology. It seems that everyone will be interested to know how the Rostov Saint himself looked at these questions. Finally, it is impossible to ignore the main brainchild of St. Demetrius, which brought him all-Russian fame - Cheti-Minea. We especially note two special studies devoted to the topics covered: the work of Metropolitan. Macarius (Bulgakov) “Our Holy Father Demetrius of Rostov, the Saint and Wonderworker, dogmatic teaching selected from his writings” 11 and a study by Archpriest. Alexandra Derzhavin “Cheti-Minea of ​​St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov, as a church-historical and literary monument" 12. Saint Demetrius, named Daniel in baptism, was born in the town of Makarov, which is forty versts 13 from Kyiv, in December 1651. His parents - an ordinary Cossack of the Makarov hundred of the Kyiv regiment Savva Grigorievich Tuptalo, who later rose to the rank of centurion, and his wife Maria Mikhailovna - were deeply pious people. Their deep religiosity is evidenced by the fact that all their children chose the monastic path: the daughters Pamphilia, Fevronia and Paraskeva were successively abbess at the St. Nicholas Jordan Monastery, where Savva Grigorievich built a special chapel at his own expense in the name of the Great Martyr. Demetrius of Thessalonica 14; and the son wrote the noble surname of Savich in golden letters into the pages of the history of the Russian Church. Touching memories of St. Demetrius about the death of his mother: “On the very heel of the saving Passion, my mother reposed at the ninth hour of the day, exactly at the hour when our Savior, who suffered on the Cross for our salvation, betrayed His spirit to God the Father in His hand. She was more than seventy years old from her birth... may the Lord remember you in His kingdom of heaven! She died with good disposition, memory and speech. Oh, that the Lord may honor me with such a blessed death with her prayers! And truly, her death was Christian: for with all the Christian rites and with ordinary sacraments, she was fearless, shameless, and peaceful. May the Lord also grant me a good answer at His Last Judgment, as I have no doubt about God’s mercy and about her salvation, knowing her constant virtuous and pious life. And even then, for the goodness of her salvation, I have a sign that on the same days and the same hour when Christ the Lord opened paradise to the thief, during His free Passion, then He commanded her soul to be separated from her body” 15. In general, the theme of the Savior’s Suffering on the Cross, mentioned in the circumstances of the death of the mother, runs like a red thread throughout the theology of St. Demetrius 16. It is safe to say that this is the central theme of his theology. Many important events in his life took place on Friday: on this day he completed the Chetyi-Minea, on Friday he himself died, on Friday his relics were found. Every week, Saint Demetrius especially honored this day and carefully studied everything written about the Passion of the Lord. He kept a list of writers who left teachings on this topic 17. About the Passion he himself wrote “Kissing the wounds of the Lord every day” 18, “Reflections on the Passion of Christ” 19. Daniil received his primary education at home. Under the guidance of his father, who knew how to read and write, he learned to read, went through the Book of Hours, the Psalter, read the Bible and the Lives of the Saints. In 1662 he was sent to the Epiphany Brotherhood School in Kyiv itself. The famous preacher Ioannikiy Golyatovsky 20 was the rector and taught here. Daniel showed a special penchant for “poetry and ornateness.” The news has been preserved that Daniel shunned camaraderie and gravitated towards loneliness, indulging in reading the Holy Scriptures, the works of the Holy Fathers, and attending divine services. The times were turbulent: Kyiv passed from hand to hand more than once, either to the Russians or to the Poles. Most researchers 21 believe that Daniel’s studies ended in 1665: Vygovsky’s troops 22, during the capture of Kyiv, completely destroyed the Kiev-Brotherly Monastery with the school located in it. Prot. Alexander Gorsky also sees a providential moment in these sorrowful circumstances: “Through this, scholasticism, which dominated the Kyiv College, did not have time to exert a decisive influence on his writings, and his language, distinguished by purity and grace, could easily assimilate common shortcomings with others at school, where they spoke a strange mixture of Russian speech with Polish and Latin” 23. However, this opinion is controversial. The largest researcher of the life of St. Demetrius Archpriest Alexander Derzhavin directly recognizes it as erroneous: “Eingorn, a researcher of the history of southwestern Russia, claims that in 1665 there was no invasion of Kyiv by Hetman Doroshenko, and, therefore, the Collegium could not have been destroyed that year 24 . Referring then to the testimony of the Kyiv governor Sheremetev, who in May 1666 told clerk Evstafy Frolov that “in Kyiv a school was established before the arrival of him, the boyar and the governor, under the previous governors, and in that school the Kiev residents, people of all ranks, are now studying” 25, Eingorn believes that in 1665 and In 1666, studies at the Kyiv College did not stop, and, therefore, Daniil Savvich Tuptalo could complete his education there” 26. Prot. is also inclined to this opinion. F.I. Titov, pointing out that the works of St. Demetrius, not excluding the earliest writings, show him to be a completely scientifically educated person 27 . From the College, Daniel took away a good knowledge of rhetoric, Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek. At the age of eighteen, on July 9, 1668, Daniel took monastic vows in the Kirillov Monastery, located three miles from Kyiv, receiving the tonsure name Demetrius in honor of the Great Martyr. Demetrius of Thessalonica 28. The abbot of the monastery, Meletius (Dzik), performed tonsure. In the spring of 1669, monk Demetrius arrived from Kyiv to the foreign city of Kanev, and on the feast of the Annunciation he was ordained to the rank of hierodeacon by Metropolitan Joseph (Nelyubovich-Tukalsky). Hierodeacon Dimitri lived in the Cyril Monastery for quite a long time - about seven years. Here in 1671 he began to write his Diary 29 or notes in Polish. In 1675, Hierodeacon Demetrius was appointed as a preacher in Chernigov under the guardian of the Kyiv Metropolitan See, Archbishop Lazar (Baranovich). In the same year, at the hands of Archbishop Lazar, on the day of the Holy Spirit, he accepted the rank of hieromonk. Hieromonk Dimitry remained in Chernigov until July 31, 1677, being in the circle of such learned people as Ioannikiy Golyatovsky and Adam Zernikav 30. For two years he preached not only in Chernigov itself, but also in other churches of the diocese. Here he wrote his first work that has come down to us - “The Irrigated Fleece,” containing a description of miracles from the miraculous icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, located in the Chernigov Trinity-Ilyinsky Monastery. In 1677, Hieromonk Demetrius began traveling as a preacher. Novodvor, Vilna, Slutsk are his places of residence. In 1679 he returned to Chernigov, then arrived at the hetman's headquarters in Baturyn. In March 1681, Hieromonk Dimitry was elected and installed as abbot of the Maksakovsky Transfiguration Monastery; a year later he was elected abbot of Krupitsky in the name of St. Nicholas Monastery in Baturin. On October 26, 1683, Abbot Demetrius left the management of the monastery and, at the invitation of Varlaam (Yasinsky), who was elected archimandrite of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra at the end of the same year, moved to Kyiv. On April 23, 1684, he settled in the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery and became a fraternal preacher. Here, within the walls of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, a new stage in the life of the future saint begins. On May 6, 1684, he begins work on compiling the book “Lives of the Saints.” Let us note that the idea of ​​creating such a work was not new, and Abbot Demetrius did not begin to work from scratch 31 . In Great Russia there were the Great Chetya-Minea of ​​Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow. However, as a collector, Metropolitan Macarius did not take the trouble to process materials, he only collected different lists of lives, selected the best from them and sometimes corrected the syllable, translating foreign (Bulgarian, Serbian) words into understandable Russian speech. The composition of its Chetiy-Minea amazes with its complexity and heterogeneity: prologues, celebrations, lives, works of saints, patericon, acts, travel records. It was a complete encyclopedia of the spiritual education of that time 32. The Little Russian Church did not have such wealth. After Batu's invasion, Lithuanian and Polish devastation, many precious spiritual books were lost, and, along with them, the lives of saints. It was necessary to use Roman martyrologies and legends in Polish and Latin, which did not always agree with the spirit of Orthodoxy 33 . Priest M. Popov writes: “Realizing the inconvenience and danger of such a deficiency, Metropolitan Peter Mohyla of Kiev began the task of compiling the lives of saints in the Orthodox spirit. For this purpose, handwritten lives of the saints by Symeon Metaphrastus were already sent to them from Athos to Kyiv in order to compile translations from Greek. But the whole undertaking ceased after his death. Chernigov Bishop Lazar (Baranovich) made an unsuccessful attempt in this regard... Pechersk Archimandrite Innokenty (Gisel) continued the work of Metropolitan Peter Mogila, because the Chetya-Minea became necessary in all monasteries for statutory reading, and during the struggle against the union, reading in Orthodox monasteries similar hagiographic books as Uniate ones was not very convenient. For this purpose, they asked the Moscow Metropolitan [correctly the Patriarch - Priest. A.P.] Joachim to send the Great Makaryevsky Chetya-Menaia. The sent copy of them, however, turned out to be written not in a statutory letter, but in cursive, very difficult to read 34 . The books were sent back to Moscow without being used for Little Russian needs and purposes” 35. Archimandrite of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Varlaam (Yasinsky), later Metropolitan of Kiev, also realized the need for such an undertaking, but he did not dare to take on the labor of implementing this thought, but was looking for a person more capable of this work and less busy. The choice fell on Abbot Demetrius, already known for his learning and zeal for soul-saving works, and was approved by the unanimous consent of all the fathers and brethren of the Lavra. As Rev. notes. A. Gorsky, “the humble abbot of Baturinsky, not without reason, frightened by the severity of the task entrusted to him, rejected it from himself, but then, placing all his hope in God’s help, fearing the sin of disobedience, and himself realizing the needs of the Church, he submitted to the urgent demand of the Archimandrite and the brethren, and, a few weeks after moving to the Lavra, precisely in June 1684, he began writing Lives of the Saints" 36. The work ahead was immense. Chetyi-Minea St. Demetrius is the largest non-liturgical publication in terms of volume in early printed Slavic books. The collection of lives was published in four volumes, each of which contains material relating to three months: September - November (K., 1689. Vol. 1), December - February (K., 1695. Vol. 2), March - May (K., 1700. Vol. 3), June - August (K., 1705. Vol. 4). In addition to the lives and other major articles of the Chetyi-Minea of ​​St. Demetrius contain “memories” (in the terminology of Archpriest A. Derzhavin, “months of words”), that is, short, often in one phrase, notes about persons and events that are not the subject of larger articles. Usually “memories” are placed at the end of the day and printed in petit. The main text of the four volumes contains 765 articles, not counting “memories”, incl. 91 Russian and Slavic articles. The vast majority of articles are hagiographies. In addition to the lives of the Chetya-Minea, they also contain 22 Words for major holidays (6 Words belong to St. John Chrysostom, one each to St. Basil the Great and St. John of Damascus). Two articles (both in the 3rd book) are devoted to calendar issues 37. The writing of the lives of Abbot Demetrius fascinated him so much that, working at night, he sometimes went to bed without undressing, only an hour before Matins, which he attended very regularly. At this time, events took place in his life that testify, on the one hand, to the writer’s undoubted closeness to the spiritual world, and, on the other, to God’s clear patronage of the work he had begun. The Saint himself testifies: “On Monday, August tenth, 1685, I heard the good news for Matins, but due to my usual laziness, having woken up, I did not make it to the beginning, but slept even before the reading of the Psalter. At this time I saw the following vision: it seemed as if I had been entrusted to look into a certain cave in which the holy relics rested. While examining the coffins of the saints with a candle, I saw St. supposedly resting there. Great Martyr Barbara. Having approached her coffin, I saw her lying sideways, and her coffin showed some rottenness. Wanting to cleanse it, he took her relics out of the shrine and placed it in another place. Having cleansed the reliquary, he proceeded to her relics, and took them with his hands to put them into the reliquary, but suddenly he saw Saint Barbara alive. Who tells me to her: “Holy Virgin Varvaro, my benefactress! “Pray to God for my sins,” the saint answered, as if having some doubt: “I don’t know,” she said, “whether I beg, for you pray in the Roman way.” Sometimes there are opinions that this vision exposes some of the dogmatic errors of St. Demetrius, allegedly borrowed from the Latins. But the saint himself explains these words with his characteristic humility: “I think that this was told to me because I am very lazy in prayer, and in this case I was like the Romans, who have a very short prayer book, since I have a short and rare prayer.” It is noteworthy that St. Demetrius died while praying, kneeling. Ep. Vissarion (Nechaev) writes: “Such was the death of St. Demetrius! Prayer delighted him during his life, prayer accompanied him to death” 38. “Having heard these words from the saint,” continues St. Dimitri,” I began to grieve, and Akiba began to despair. But the saint, after a little time, looked at me with a cheerful and smiling face, and said: “Don’t be afraid,” and uttered some other comforting words, which I don’t even remember. Then, putting it in the shrine, he kissed her hands and feet; the body seemed to be alive and very white, but the cancer was poor and dilapidated. Regretting that I dared to touch the holy relics with unclean and foul hands and lips, and that I did not see a good reliquary, I thought about how to decorate this coffin, and began to look for a new and richest reliquary into which to place the holy relics: but at that very moment I woke up. Regretting my awakening, my heart felt some joy” 39. The Holy Great Martyr Barbara was the heavenly patroness of St. Demetrius, and he was in awe of her memory. With his intense requests, St. Demetrius received permission from Hetman Samoilovich to transfer part of the relics of the Great Martyr Varvara to his Baturinsky Monastery, and with a solemn move he transferred them on January 15, 1691, Tuesday. In memory of this transference, he established in his monastery every Tuesday to sing a prayer service to the Great Martyr. Another dream, even more significant, happened three or four months after the first and was related to the scientific studies of St. Dimitri. “In 1685,” he writes, “on the Fast of Philippi, having ended one night with a letter the suffering of the holy martyr Orestes, whose memory is honored on November 10, an hour or less before matins, he lay down to rest without undressing, and in a sleepy vision he saw the holy martyr Orestes, with a cheerful face speaking to me with these words: I have endured more torment for Christ than you wrote. He opened his breasts to me, and showed me a great wound in his left side, going through his insides, saying: this has been pierced by iron. Then he opened his right arm up to the elbow, showing the wound right opposite the elbow, and said: this has been cut for me; – and the cut veins were visible. Also, opening his left hand, in the same place, he pointed out the same wound, saying: I too have been cut. Then, bending down, he opened his leg and showed a wound on the bend of his knee, and also opened the other leg up to the knee, showed the same wound in the same place, and said: and this was cut for me with a scythe. And standing straight, looking me in the face, he said: Do you see? I suffered more for Christ than you wrote. I dared to say nothing against this, I remained silent and thought to myself: who is this Orestes, isn’t he one of the five 40? To this thought of mine the holy martyr answered: I am not the same Orestes, like those of the fifth, but the one whose life you wrote today. I also saw another important person standing behind him, and it also seemed to me that there was a certain martyr to be, but he said nothing. At that very time, the good news given for Matins woke me up, and I regretted that this very pleasant vision would soon end” 41 . Note that the visions of St. Demetrius of the saints were not ordinary dreams, but were, indeed, communication with the world of the celestials. This is how St. himself understood them. Demetrius confirmed his stories about them with a priestly oath. The value of the work of St. Demetrius is that he not only collected many sources telling about the lives of the saints, but processed them, selected the pure wheat of Church Tradition for his Cheti-Menaia. Being a saint himself and having a heightened spiritual intuition, he composed an exposition of the lives of the saints with a feeling of deep reverence and edification, capturing in immutability and amazing simplicity the miracles of the saints, without which the lives turn into just a biography. It is not for nothing that it is his “Lives”, and not the “Lives” of the archbishop. Philaret (Gumilevsky), deprived of this mystical element, were so loved by the Russian people. To demonstrate how carefully one must treat this patristic work, sometimes restraining one’s critical fervour, we will cite the statement of a remarkable Russian pre-revolutionary patrolologist, Archimandrite. Porfiry (Popov) – a man of sincere faith, who lived a short (1825–1864) but eventful life, and left behind research on the lives of many great saints; studies written in a scientific style, but not poisoned by the spirit of pseudoscientific skepticism. Archim. Porfiry made a proposal to the Society of Lovers of Spiritual Enlightenment to publish the lives of saints in chronological order. He wrote: “With the publication of such lives, one can undoubtedly hope for a greater dissemination of church historical information. Imagine how brightly the Apostolic Age will be illuminated, for example, when the missionary journeys of St. The Apostles, and, if possible, legends will be collected about the persons mentioned in the Gospel, for example, the Magi, Lazarus, Cornelius and Longinus the centurions, the Savior’s relatives in the flesh, Mary Magdalene, the Samaritan and many other Apostolic co-workers. This will not be a story based on meager Protestant writings, alien to all church traditions." 42. The scientist seemed to be looking at our century. "When publishing the lives of the Saints in chronological order,” continues Archimandrite Porfiry, “the Society 43, of course, will need to undertake a critical study of the reliability of certain biographies of the Holy Men that have come down to us. Nowadays one can often hear ridicule of the Cheti-Mineas as a collection of fables and fairy tales. Critical work will show the groundlessness of many such accusations” 44. But also to such “big” people as Archimandrite. Porfiry, sometimes it’s common to make mistakes. The scientist notes: “It goes without saying that the publishers will not be afraid, where it may be necessary, for example, in the case of obvious anachronisms, to indicate the dubiousness of the legend: what, for example, is the story of the prayer of St. Nicholas in the Church of the Resurrection on Golgotha, while the church had not yet been built under Diocletian, during whose reign the Saint traveled to Jerusalem.” 45 Thus, Archimandrite Porfiry expresses the thought of a mistake in the life of one of the most revered saints in Rus' - St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. But was there a mistake itself? This is how the December Chetya-Minea tells about the journey of St. Nicholas to Palestine: “The saint of God, Saint Nicholas... reached the holy city of Jerusalem, ascending to Golgotha, where Christ God brought salvation to the human race on the Cross, His most pure hands stretched out, there about how warm outpourings of prayer from a heart burning with love, sending thanksgiving to our Savior; everyday life and all holy places are contentedly doing worship; and when at night you wanted to go into the holy church to pray, the closed church doors themselves opened, giving unrestricted entry to the one to whom the gates of heaven had already been opened” 46 . This moment in the life of St. Nicholas is explained in the note of the reworking of the Lives, made under the direction of V.O. Klyuchevsky 47: “It was a small church on Mount Zion, the only one at that time in the entire city of Jerusalem, inhabited by pagans and bearing the name Aelia Capitolina. This church, according to legend, was built in the house where the Lord Jesus Christ established the Sacrament of Communion, and where later the descent of the Holy Spirit took place on the Apostles” 48. We see how the spiritual intuition of the saint turned out to be more accurate than the logical, at first glance, but incorrect remark of the scientist. It should be noted that the apologetic task of confirming the authenticity of the “Lives of the Saints” by St. Demetrius of Rostov was performed already in the days of the life of Archimandrite. Porfiria (Popova). Comparison of biographies compiled by St. Demetrius, with their original sources, was carried out by Archpriest. Alexander Gorsky with his assistants. This section occupies a considerable part of his work 49 . It is enough to familiarize yourself with these studies of the great scientist for all doubts about the authenticity of the lives of the saints compiled by St. to melt away. Dimitri. Nowadays, this work was done on an incomparably larger scale by Rev. Alexander Derzhavin 50. Referring for detailed consideration to the work of Fr. A. Gorsky, we will only list what the work of St. actually consisted of. Dimitri. The general construction of biographies required, firstly, the arrangement of events in a certain order, and, secondly, compliance with the thoroughness of the descriptions. In particular, bringing into one whole the various materials of St. Demetrius, depending on the need: 1) supplemented what was missing in one source from another; 2) shortened the original text; 3) changed the form of the original: a funeral or laudatory word into a simple historical story; 4) cited extraneous evidence without change to supplement or confirm the narrative; 5) only pointed to consonant evidence about the subject of the narrative of other historians, without extracting them. Prot. A. Gorsky notes: “There is also a critical side to the Chetyih Menaia, which shows that St. Demetrius cared about satisfying the requirements of historical truth. Criticisms of St. Demetrius is usually added to the end of biographies in the form of notes. Most of these comments consist in distinguishing one Saint from another of the same name (for example, the Great Martyr Theodore Stratelates from the Great Martyr Theodore Tyrone 51, two different prophets of Micah), sometimes in the destruction of the apparent difference... Sometimes St. Demetrius reveals doubts about the supposed difference between the two persons (Apostle Bartholomew - Nathanael) ... The subject of St.'s critical comments. Demetrius also serves to resolve any misunderstandings that the reading of any narrative may lead the reader to... Not always St. Demetrius, in his critical remarks, allows himself to pronounce decisive judgment. Sometimes he is limited only to the collection of various opinions and testimonies (testimonies about the miracle during the erection of the Holy Cross - September 14; various testimonies about the years of the life of St. Theotokos in the story of Her Assumption)" 52. It is necessary to note the presence in the “Book of Lives” of such a fundamentally new element as elements of a scientific reference apparatus (given by petit, partly in marginalia 53): references to sources, indication of similar plots in the lives and miracles of various saints (for example, Martyr George and St. Nicholas), historical information that sometimes turns into Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius in the 3rd volume) into small studies. The critical method was used by St. Demetrius and in his other works. Thus, when compiling the Chronicle, he was not satisfied with the domestic chronology, pointing out that it did not agree with either the civil or the biblical one: “It is the Russian chronographs that do not agree with the Bible. As for the temptation of schismatics, I wanted to show that ours have an incorrect calendar (based on chronographs), which they still don’t want to see and admit. I remember [the saint addresses Met. Stefan Yavorsky - priest. A.P.] once in the village of Preobrazhenskoe Talitsky 54 argued with your Eminence about years, claiming that the Holy Fathers ordained it this way (to count as it was calculated according to chronographs). If the Fathers are holy, then why do they disagree with the Bibles? Why do Greek chronographers (George Kedrin, Dorotheus of Monemvasia) who believe 5506 years BC do not agree with the opinion of ours, who count 5500 years, and another church writer (Nicephorus Xanthopoulus) believes the Nativity of Christ in 5505? Should we remain silent about such disagreements, and not expose what is false, but be lenient with human stubbornness?” 55 In his Chronicler St. Demetrius published a special study “On the discordant number of years, news” 56, and in order not to enter into new disputes about chronology, he decided not to attribute the described event or deed to any year, but only to the century. Finally, concluding the topic of compiling the Chetiy-Menai, it is impossible to ignore the inaccuracy that was made during the publication of the first book of the Chetiy-Menai. This question is rooted in the relationship between the Little Russian clergy and the highest ecclesiastical authority of the Russian Church in the person of Patriarch Joachim. Ep. Vissarion (Nechaev) wrote: “For the Little Russian Church, the period of its separate existence was ending. Merging with the Great Russian Church, it accepted a new fence for its Orthodoxy and a stricter order of government; at the same time, she conveyed the beginnings of spiritual learning that arose from the special needs of that region” 57. In Moscow, doubts arose about the Orthodoxy of the Little Russian clergy. The reason for this was the dispute that opened in 1687 between the Greek teachers brothers Sophronius and Ioannikiy Likhud and Sylvester Medvedev about how bread and wine are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist 58 . Medvedev, contrary to the ancient teachings of the Orthodox Church, defended the idea of ​​consecrating the Eucharist with the words of the Savior alone, without invoking the Holy Spirit. He tried to support this idea, borrowed from Latin theologians, with the evidence of various books published in the 17th century by Kyiv scientists, and especially with the work of the deceased abbot of the Kiev Mikhailovsky Monastery Theodosius Sofonovich, “A Report on the Holy Church and the Service.” Sylvester was a student of Simeon of Polotsk, whose mentor was the archbishop. Lazar Baranovich (let us remember that Archbishop Lazar ordained St. Dimirius as a hieromonk). To the greater embarrassment of the Patriarch of Moscow, around that time a very unfavorable review was received from the Patriarch of Jerusalem Dosifei about Little Russian scientists from the monasticism and white clergy. Patriarch Joachim sent to Metropolitan. Gideon (Chetvertinsky) and Archbishop. Lazar (Baranovich) a request about their attitude to the Ferraro-Florence Council 59. The main purpose of the request was to find out the position of the Little Russian clergy on the time of the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts 60. The protracted correspondence could hardly reassure Patriarch Joachim, because... archbishop Lazar (Baranovich) in one of his answers directly answered: “Having learned and taught, to believe without doubt and by confession, like the words of Christ the Lord... there is transubstantiation; This is not from any new cuttings of corrupted Latin books, but from various Greek teachers who observed the dogmas, acquired the teachings and believed them” 61. What position did St. take on this issue? Dimitri? The question is not easy. Unambiguous handwritten evidence of that time by St. Demetrius is not found on this issue, but indirectly one can think that at that time he shared the position of the Little Russian clergy. Hegumen Dimitri, who was visiting the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra at that time and acting as secretary, wrote on behalf of Archimandrite. Varlaam (Yasinsky) in a letter to Hetman Mazepa: “We confess as we learned from our fathers” 62. The saint's later works give a contradictory answer. Shlyapkin notes: “In his own Notata per Alphabetum (synod. bib. No. 187 l. 21) we find extracts from the words of Chrysostom, the book “Peace with God,” “a book printed in Moscow in 1649” and others that speak in favor of the Latin opinion. In his 1704 collection “Uncorrected Things of Difference” we find a treatise “On the Sacredness of the Most Pure Mysteries,” which presents a series of extracts on transubstantiation in the spirit of the Latin party from Sts. John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, John of Damascus, Gregory Dvoeslov, Justin, Cyprian, Moscow Catechism, Cyril of Jerusalem and Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Eusebius of Samosata, Proclus of Constantinople, Ignatius, etc.” 63. We see the same opinion in the “Mirror of the Orthodox Confession” 64. However, in Questions and Answers on Faith there are 65 St. Demetrius expresses a Greek opinion: “Question: What is the form of the sacrament of the Eucharist? Answer: Words spoken to God the Father: and make this bread the honorable Body of Thy Christ, and in the cups the honorable Blood of Thy Christ; and then the essence of bread and wine is transformed into the essence of the Body and Blood of Christ our God, through the action of the Holy Spirit and the prayer of the Priest” 66 . I.A. Shlyapkin notes: “At the beginning of August 1705, Dimitri compiled for himself a varied collection of all kinds of articles that interested him. There is also a chronicler here about the freedom of the Holy Church, and about transubstantiation, and many others. etc... From here it is clear that the saint was interested at this time... in the old question of transubstantiation" 67 . Let us turn to the presentation of this issue in the symbolic book of the Russian Orthodox Church - the Long Christian Catechism: “Question. What is the most important action in this part of the Liturgy? Answer. Pronouncing the words that Jesus Christ said at the establishment of the Sacrament: take, eat: this is my Body, drink all of you from it, for this is My Blood, the New Testament (Matthew 26, 26. 27-28); and then the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of the Gifts, that is, the brought bread and wine. Question. Why is this important? Answer. Because with this very action, bread and wine are changed, or transubstantiated, into the true Body of Christ and the true Blood of Christ” 68. It is not difficult to notice that the utterance of the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit are considered as a single action by which the Gifts are sanctified. Therefore, it is wrong to look at the words of Christ only as a historical memory of the event of the Last Supper. It must be said that the incorrect opinion about the time of the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts was quite widespread in Little Russia; it is found even in the Trebnik of such a great fighter for Orthodoxy as St. Peter (Tomb). Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) notes in this regard: “These opinions existed in the Little Russian Church even before Mogila, they were even expressed in print, and it was not Mogila who borrowed them from the Latins” 69. Priest M. Popov writes: “In Moscow there was a conviction that only weed-sowers Uniates and Jesuits lived abroad, while Dimitri there saw tireless fighters against the union and defenders of the Orthodox people living among the Uniates” 70. A harsh reprisal against the Latinizing party, which was witnessed by St. Dmitry, upon his arrival in Moscow, which ended with the execution of Sylvester Medvedev (although he suffered more, perhaps, for political reasons) only added fuel to the fire 71 . Even more ambiguous in the theology of St. Demetrius turned to the question of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy. Mother of God. It was this opinion, included in the first book of the Chetiy-Minea, that Patriarch Joachim presented to the Lavra publishers as unorthodox. In the “Word for the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos” it was said about Her: “Excommunicated from the earthly, from the sinner, for she was not involved in original sin... Crowned with honor, as without original sin she was conceived and born.” Patriarch Joachim wrote: “You printed in your book that the Most Holy Theotokos was conceived and born without original sin, which came from Adam, and you print such a word in our books, copied from them, [we are talking about the Four Menaions of Metropolitan Macarius - Priest. A.P.] is not found; We only see such wisdom in the books of the Latin scholars, but even about this there is great discord among themselves” 72 . This was followed by evidence of the opposite thought from St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Athanasius the Great and St. John of Damascus. The Patriarch ordered that the sheets with the erroneous opinion be replaced, and the distribution of unsold copies be suspended until a new consideration of this book. This accusation greatly struck Dimitri, and, as Prof. noted. I.A. Shlyapkin 73, he even intended to answer it and collected materials to support the expressed opinion 74. In his “notes on the alphabet” he made extracts from Baronius’ books about the Most Holy One. Virgin Mary, St. John of Damascus about Her birth, John of Cartagena in defense of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception 75. I.A. Shlyapkin also testifies that in the surviving draft manuscript of the December Menaion (a manuscript from S.T. Bolshakov, received by the Imperial Public Library in 1888) on page 98 in “The Homily on the Conception of St. Anna, when the Most Pure Virgin Mary was conceived,” the doctrine of immaculata conceptio is confirmed by a reference to the verses of Patriarch Sergius on Vespers of the Nativity of the Theotokos: “In the same way, the animate sky is pure and pure, apart from all filthiness” 76. However, Rev. Alexander Derzhavin does not share this “assumption of the venerable scientist”: “St. Demetrius was alien to any learned conceit; despite his great merits in the Russian Orthodox Church and spiritual literature, he retained amazing modesty until the end of his days... He never defended those opinions in which he himself was not entirely sure. In such cases, he usually spoke tentatively or directly left the question open. If in his draft notebooks there are extracts from various books - about the time of the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts, about the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, about Jerome and Augustine, then these extracts are not material for answering the enemy, not a means for struggle, but the work of an inquisitive mind that seeks the truth for itself and carefully studies everything that can give it " 77. Priest M. Popov notes: “Dimitri’s opinion about the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary is noticeable even later, for example, in his handwritten notes from 1708 and in the “Adoration of the Most Holy. Mother of God" 78, which says: We worship Your sinless conception and birth from St. parents, Joachim and Anna 79. A similar expression is repeated in his sermon on the day of the Dormition of the Most Holy. Mother of God" 80. The researcher also exposes the reason for this - this opinion was then only a private opinion, and did not yet constitute a religious dogmatic feature 81. Another reason can be put as the ardent love of St. Demetrius to the Mother of God. The final opinion of St. Demetrius on this issue will probably remain a secret. It is interesting to note that the Trinity Cathedral of the Spaso-Yakovlevsky Monastery, in which St. was buried at his own request. Demetrius, was built on the site of a late 14th century church in honor of the conception of rights. Anna the Most Holy Mother of God, and in 1754 was reconsecrated as Zachatievsky. After criticism from the patriarch, an amendment was made to the circulation of the first book of Chetiy-Minea. In the “Word for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary” the quoted reading was replaced by the text: “She is excommunicated from earthly sinners, for in her entire life she has known more than one sin... She is crowned with honor, as venerable by the angelic Annunciation and service.” One way or another, but by the Providence of God, the Orthodox opinion was included in the book so necessary for the Russian Church. Touching on this topic, let us also note the opposite opinion found in the reasoning of some modern theologians - about the manifestation of the personal sinfulness of the Mother of God. In affirming the personal sinlessness of the Mother of God, St. Demetrius is an exponent of Orthodox teaching. Thus, in the “Mirror of the Orthodox Confession” by St. Demetrius writes about immortal sin: “All those who are forgivable and countless, and from which not a single person can avoid, except Christ and the Mother of God.” 82. The doctrine of the personal sinlessness of the Mother of God is expressed by the overwhelming majority of Fathers and Teachers of the Church and church writers 83. Famous modern theologian, Archimandrite. Raphael (Karelin), notes: “The doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary does not increase, but rather diminishes Her glory. It is precisely the original sin that She inherited, which turned out to be present in Her, but not active, that makes the feat of the Virgin Mary the one and only, through which She rose above the Cherubim and Seraphim. This feat is greater than if She had been removed from the fate of the children of Adam, who inherited the sin of their forefather. In this case, the Virgin Mary would not need the Calvary Sacrifice, the Atonement and the Sacrament of Baptism 84; then Christ would not be Her Savior and Redeemer; then one could be saved without the Incarnation and Crucifixion of Christ. The love of the Mother of God for Her Son and God, which paralyzed original sin in Her soul, is a greater miracle and a greater feat than if She had not been involved in original sin” 85. The humble attitude of St. is very remarkable. Demetrius to his theological research. This applies to both the Lives and other works. Priest M. Popov writes: “Considering his work as an assignment from the entire Little Russian Church [we are talking about the “Lives” - Priest. A.P.] he treated him with attentive caution. Everything he wrote was given to many people, both secular and clergy, for reading, with a request to express their opinion about what was written” 86. The fault is not only St. Demetrius that the wrong opinion was included in the publication of the first book of Chetiy-Minea. This book, probably completed before 1688, was reviewed not only by Archimandrite Varlaam and the cathedral elders, but also by the Metropolitan of Kyiv and the Archbishop of Chernigov. This opinion was shared by many at the time. Everyone was aware of the importance of finishing the writing of the Lives. Even in the process of compiling the Lives, after clarifying the confusion in Moscow, St. Demetrius received the personal blessing of Patriarch Joachim to continue work on the Chetii-Minea. On October 3, 1690, Patriarch Adrian sent a letter of commendation to St. Demetrius, subsequently published in the second book of Chetiy-Minea. At the end of the work, the Moscow Academy honored the compiler with a conclusion. Novgorod Metropolitan Job wrote to St. Demetrius about his works, that “more expensive than gold and silver and precious margaritas is the soul-saving and life-giving Menaion, the honest and holy book of the Lives of the Saints” 87. Concluding the discussion on the compilation of the Chety-Minya of St. Demetrius of Rostov, we quote the words of Bishop. Vissarion (Nechaev): “The lives of the saints, which he set forth, made accessible to the entire Russian Church the treasure of spiritual life and experience, collected over the centuries” 88. Let us now consider how St. understood. Demetrius and other issues of Christian doctrine, in which, undoubtedly, he was the measure of Orthodoxy. First of all, we will rely on the above-mentioned remarkable research by Metropolitan. Macarius (Bulgakov) “Our Holy Father Demetrius of Rostov, the Saint and Wonderworker, dogmatic teaching selected from his writings” 89. Having done a tremendous amount of preparatory work, Metropolitan Macarius set out in a systematic order the Orthodox dogmas of the faith, scattered like pearls among the numerous works of St. Dimitri. It seems that this work served as a good preparation for the compilation of the best dogmatic work in the Russian Church, which, along with historical research, immortalized the name of the author - “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology” 90. Research by Met. Macarius about St. Demetrius, as a dogmatist, is valuable in that he gives us the testimony of the Holy Father, who lived during the period of the completed apostasy of Catholics and the spread of Protestantism. St. testifies with all certainty. Demetrius about the impossibility of salvation outside the saving fence of the Orthodox Church: “Even if outside the Orthodox Church, good deeds are done, even if they are very good, they are otherwise fruitless, not deserving of salvation for themselves, since outside the Church, whose head is Christ... Sitsa and a Christian person, even if he lived a virtuous life, when he is separated from the union of the Orthodox Church of Christ, not can receive salvation... No one can be saved by being outside the Orthodox Catholic Church; just as in the days of Noah no one was saved from the flood, even as he was found outside Noah’s ship; but it was only by this that he was saved, even though he entered the ship, but all those who did not enter perished: this is to be understood, and about the saints of the Church of Christ (of which Noah’s ship was not a prototype); for not one will receive salvation from those who are not found within it” 91. The saint notes: “Many virtuous people are found among the Hagarians, preserving the truth, showing mercy, not offending anyone, doing good deeds not only to their own people, but also to Christians, but their good deeds will not bring salvation to them, since the essence of Christ and Christ’s Churches are alien... We listen to fasting, and purity, even virginity, and preaching heretics, and their other exploits and labors, not only do not bring them salvation, but they also intercede for eternal torment” 92 . In matters of the creation of the world, St. Demetrius takes a strictly creationist position, equating the days of creation with the duration of an ordinary day: “When the Creator began to produce the first invisible and unadorned creation into perfection and adornment, he first commanded the light to shine out of darkness (2 Cor. 4). But the light that shone in the abyssal darkness, God divided the light from the darkness, and called the light day, and called the darkness night, and that became the first day, which we now call a week (i.e., Sunday), and the first month, which was then called March, and the first day of that month. After the first day, on the second day, which we now call Monday, with His omnipotent word He brought forth the heavens from the waters of the abyss, as it is said in the psalm: By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power (Psalm 32). On the third, called Tuesday from us, having gathered the waters into one union, he revealed dry land, which he called earth, and made seeds to vegetate, and all kinds of grass and trees to grow. On the fourth day, which we call Wednesday, create two great luminaries in the sky: the sun and the moon, and likewise the stars. On the fifth day, which is called Thursday from us, he created fish, and water creatures, and birds from water. In the sixth, like we have Heel, I created the beasts, livestock and creeping things of the earth, according to their kinds: and after all the creatures I created Adam and Eve, and I brought them into a magnificent paradise. And on the seventh day God rested from all his works, and that day was called the Sabbath, and it is rest, for the Creator rested and sanctified that day” 93 . The Saint’s reasoning about the image and likeness of God in man is interesting: “The image of God in man is expressed by the invisible, rational, living, immortal and autocratic soul, ruling over the whole earth, and three spiritual powers: mind, word and spirit... The image of God is received by the soul during its creation from God, but the likeness of God is accomplished in it in Baptism; image in the mind, likeness in the will; image in autocracy, likeness in virtues, as Christ says in the Gospel: be like your Father who is in heaven: be like meekness, kindness, gentleness, and so on... Yes, we know that the image of God is also in the soul of an unfaithful person, but the likeness is only in a virtuous Christian; and when a Christian sins mortally, then he is only deprived of the likeness of God, and not the image: and even if he is condemned to eternal torment, the image of God is the same in him forever, but the likeness can no longer exist” 94 . Blazh. Augustine said that the Fall and the Atonement are the two centers around which all Christian teaching revolves. A misunderstanding of these fundamental moments in human history will inevitably affect the rest of theology. As St. understood Demetrius original sin and redemption? Adam’s transgression of this commandment aroused the wrath of God, deprived him of grace, and introduced disorder into human nature itself: “When Adam was seduced, and angered the Creator by transgressing His commandment, and was deprived of His former grace: then, having known evil, he became extremely comfortable with it. And every sinful desire enters into human nature: pride, delicacy, rage, anger, envy, carnal lust” 95. This crime entailed God’s righteous punishment: “I cried out to God with my voice, and having presented it to my face, and having experienced sin, issued His righteous judgment on me: to be expelled from paradise by him, and to be fed from the labor of my hands and from the sweat of my brow; Eve gave birth to a child in illness, Adam cultivated the earth, thorns and thistles; both of them, after a long life of sowing misery, died, and turned into the earth in body, but with their souls went to the prisons of hell” 96. “What follows sin,” argues the Saint? – This will result in the wrath of God, deprivation of good things and execution. For the King of the earth, if any servant of that one is contrary to his commandments, then in annoyance he imputes it to himself and becomes angry, and deprives him of his former mercy and puts him to death; likewise, the heavenly King, God, is angry with man, whom He created... and blames his evil deeds for annoyance and dishonor, as if they are contrary to His Divine will. First of all, He deprives him of His former grace, and with His justice also arranges him (if he does not repent) for the death penalty that awaits sinners in hell” 97 . Original sin is transmitted with the conception of a person, a person is born with a dead soul: “Eve began to be the Mother of all living, in sickness to give birth to a child, to death rather than to the belly: before I was born, I was put to death, having brought with my sin the entire human race death, spiritual and physical. And those who are born do not first begin to live rather than to die, for in soul they were dead, but in their body they were flowing towards death, which comes from the womb into this life together with dead decay” 98. A person in such a state is receptive to sin: “To human nature, corrupted by ancestral sin and deprived of its first good, and creeping into evil, evil is most natural: in iniquities (speech) I was conceived, and in sins did my mother give birth to me (Psalm 50:7). And in what he is born, he desires it from childhood, and thinks about it, just as Scripture informs us with the verb: a man’s mind is set on evil from his youth (Gen. 2). For this reason, we are not comfortable with virtue, we are less obedient to good admonitions, but we are extremely quick to do evil.”99 For the Redemption of man, the Son of God is incarnate, and the Redemption itself is the satisfaction of divine justice: “There is only one sin of Adam, committed in paradise, so much weight, like the many tears of all the holy forefathers, the holy Prophet, the shed blood was not able to measure in advance: but you demanded that the Son of God Himself, descend from heaven, be incarnate and suffer, and with with His Blood for human sin he will repay the debt of God to justice." 100. "Because Adam and Eve cannot by themselves satisfy God for the sin brought upon the entire human race, for this reason they will not be brought into heaven, even the Deliverer of the human race, the Son of God, will come and satisfy God the Father with his free suffering for universal sin, and with the cross will open heaven" 101. It is this understanding of the Atonement that will be included in the Long Christian Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Church, compiled by St. Philaret of Moscow. Three theological commissions will approve this Catechism, and the church reception itself (this year marks 170 years since the adoption of the last edition - 1839) will put the final point in approving the formulation of this Orthodox dogma. Exactly the same definition of dogma will be included in “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology” by Met. Macarius (Bulgakov) - a textbook on dogmatics, recommended by the Holy Synod for theological schools. There is probably no other dogma that liberal theology does not attack with such open hostility. Errors also occurred among saints who were later glorified 102. Let the reader see that this understanding of atonement is an ancient patristic teaching, imprinted by St. Dimitri in his creations. (It was already mentioned above that St. Demetrius carefully revised all available patristic literature devoted to the issue of the Passion of Christ). It is noteworthy that the Chronicle is the last work of St. Demetrius, which, one might say, sums up his theology. Let us note that the concept of “satisfaction” introduced into the formulation of the dogma alarms many modern theologians who are trying to see in it echoes of Latin errors. But is this really so? This is how the famous and authoritative modern theologian, Archpriest, talks about this. Valentin Asmus: “One Russian author (Archimandrite Hilarion Troitsky, 1915), based on an interest that is not strictly dogmatic, but polemical (against “Latin and German slavery”), gave a sketch of soteriology built exclusively on the Incarnation, without attaching any soteriological significance to either the Cross or the Resurrection. For this author, the key words of Orthodox soteriology are “incarnation, re-creation, deification, incorruption and bliss.” This has nothing to do with the Latin-German teaching (which is also the teaching of Metropolitan Macarius Bulgakov), where we encounter “a completely different set of concepts: insult, retribution, curse, atonement, satisfaction and merit.” Scholasticism is greatly “overestimated” here: it really created a system on a well-known philosophical basis (not entirely new - remember the Aristotelianism of St. John of Damascus), it placed new emphasis in dogmatics, but it did not create a radically new dogmatics, it was faithful to the principle of Tradition and followed it to the best of its cultural and historical capabilities. These are our modernists, from the Slavophiles of the 19th century. to the zealots of the “war of liberation” in the field of theology of the early twentieth century. radically revised the theological heritage of past centuries, discarding not only scholasticism, but - in fact, of course - the Holy Fathers, while declaring complete loyalty to them. Indeed, we find the above series of concepts attributed to scholasticism in more or less complete form in the Holy Scriptures, in the Divine Service, and in the Holy Fathers. The priest begins the rites of the Liturgy with the words: “Thou hast redeemed us from the legal oath (Gal. 3:13)...”, and at the supreme moment of the Liturgy he proclaims the Body, broken for us, and the Blood, shed for us and for many. The concept of insult is expressed in various ways, most notably by the Greek word enybrizein (Heb. 10:29). Insult causes the wrath of God, which the Holy Scripture speaks about all the time (Matt. 3:7; Luke 3:7; John 3:36; Rom. 1:18; 2:5; 2:8; 3:5; 4:15; 5:9; 9:22; 12:19; Eph. 2:3; 5:6); 1 Thess. 1, 16; Heb. 3, 16; Retribution, retribution with one of its two aspects - reward - correlates with the concepts of satisfaction and merit, and is expressed in many words (misthos, misthapodosia, antapodoma, antapodosis, antimisthia, opsōnion, etc.) and is used many dozens of times in the New Testament. Archimandrite Hilarion understands that it is not so easy to destroy the concepts of “Latin-German” soteriology he listed. Saying that “first of all, two forts, two concepts must be demolished to the ground: satisfaction and merit. These two concepts must be thrown out of theology without a trace, forever and completely!” - he thereby admits that it will not be possible to “tear down to the ground” the remaining concepts of insult, retribution, curse, atonement, due to their presence in Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. As for “forts that must be razed to the ground” - in the Bible we will not find words of satisfaction and merit 103. For a Protestant, this is already sufficient reason to “throw them out of theology.” But any learned Protestant knows that scholasticism did not invent these terms: they are present in Latin theology already at the time of its inception, in Tertulian and his follower, the Hieromartyr Cyprian of Carthage. Only superficial and dishonest polemics can reduce satisfaction to a concept from dueling everyday life. In the Latin of pagan times, the verb satisfacere (from which the noun satisfactio is derived), literally “to do enough,” had the meaning: to satisfy, content, pay, with various uses - 1. Regarding the payment of a debt; 2. Provide surety; 3. apologize, make excuses, ask for forgiveness; 4. To endure punishment; 5. Fulfill the duty. Although this word is not found in Scripture, a number of concepts in the Holy Books correspond to its meaning. The Lord's Prayer itself speaks of our debts (the Greek opheilēma is legally no less than the Latin debitum) to God and our neighbors. In Luke. 13, 2, 4 equate the concepts of sinner and debtor. The universal debt of human sin (“all have sinned” Rom. 3:23) is redeemed by the sacrifice on the Cross “who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). The substitutionary sacrifice of Christ is the basis of New Testament soteriology. “The Son of Man... came... to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). “(The Lord Jesus) was delivered up for our sins and rose again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). “Our Passover, Christ, was sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7). “Christ loved us and gave Himself for us as an offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2). “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness for the forgiveness of sins that were previously committed, during the forbearance of God, to demonstrate His righteousness at this time, that He might be just and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus” (Rom. 3, 23–26 ). “Christ, having once offered Himself as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time not for the cleansing of sin, but for those who wait for Him for salvation” (Heb. 9:28). “And he, having offered one sacrifice for sins... made perfect forever those who were sanctified” (Heb. 10, 12, 14). “He Himself bore our sins in His Body on the tree, so that we, having been delivered from sins, might live for righteousness: by His stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). See also 1 John. 4, 10; 1 Peter 3, 18, etc. As for the concept of merit, it expresses the fundamental dogmatic truths about the two wills and two energies in Christ and about the synergy of God and man in the cause of human salvation. The human feat of the God-man is His “merit.” And the Gospel undoubtedly testifies to the “merits” of people who perform their feat, looking at the Master of Labor, which tells us that everyone will receive according to the measure of their feat (parable of the talents, Matt. 25, 14 ff.), and that even in heaven “star differs from star in glory” (1°Cor. 15, 41)” 104. It is noteworthy that theologians who deny the necessity of Divine Justice often react quite sharply when the lack of justice, imaginary or real, manifests itself to them personally. Concluding our consideration of the topic of Atonement, we note that back in the mid-twentieth century, Archbishop. Seraphim (Sobolev) wrote that those who deny the legal view of the Atonement, revealed, as we saw above in the patristic works, are victims of the corrupting spirit of their time 105. Let us return, however, to the theology of St. Dimitri. The Lord in the Incarnation takes on human nature before the Fall, but takes upon Himself the blameless passions - the punishment for sin: “It is fitting for the devil to be overcome by those who were defeated by him. Man was quickly defeated by him, but man was not born according to the custom of nature, not from the mixture, I say, of man, but from the earth created, from the earth as such, as if a virgin were pure and uncorrupted: yet then he was not cursed by God: a man born of the breast and the breast was always defeated by the all-evil devil, as befits him, and he himself from such a person will be overcome: such is our Lord Jesus Christ, not born according to custom and the law of nature, but like Adam from the incorruptible earth, so He is from the womb of a pure virgin and holy 106 ... We take on the form of a slave, and our whole body is infirm, except sin” 107 . The Incarnation of the Son of God is the work of the entire Holy Trinity: “The Incarnation of God the Word was the favor of God the Father, the overshadowing and action of the Holy Spirit, and the Word Himself by the will” 108. The Son is incarnated so that the property of the Hypostasis is preserved: “For may He preserve the property of His hypostasis, that He should be a Son in heaven and a Son on earth” 109 . St. tells an interesting story. Demetrius about the First Gospel, revealing some details rarely found in patristic writing: “For the Lord spoke about the woman to the serpent, as if her seed would erase his head, proclaim to Adam and Eve that from their seed the Most Pure Virgin will be born, the bearer of their oaths, and from the Virgin will be born Christ, who with my blood will redeem me, and the whole human race from work He will deliver the enemy from hell and the bonds of hell, he will reward the packs of paradise and heavenly settlements, but he will trample the devil and erase the head of the devil at the end 110 ... After six hundred years from the creation of the world, when the forefather Adam pleased God with the most acute repentance, it was God's will for him (according to the testimony of George Kedrin 111), from the Archangel Uriel, who is the Prince and guardian of repentant people, and the intercessor for them to God, the most famous revelation about the incarnation of God from the Most Pure, husbandless, ever-virgin Virgin. And also about the incarnation: for the other mysteries of our salvation were revealed to him, and these are: about the free suffering and death of Christ, about the descent into hell and liberation from hell of the righteous, and about His three-day rise from the grave, and about some of God’s mysteries, and about many things that later came to be, like the corruption of the sons of God of Seth tribe, and about the flood, and about the future judgment, and about the general resurrection of all. And Adam was filled with the great prophetic gift, and the prophet of the future, leading sinners to repentance, and delighting the righteous with the hope of salvation” 112. A few words about the sacramentology of St. Dimitri. “Baptism is the washing away of original sin, and in age, voluntary sin 113. Confirmation is the mystery of the pouring out of the grace of the Holy Spirit on the newly baptized 114.” In the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the saint clearly testifies to the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts: “The essence of bread and wine is transformed into the essence of the Body and Blood of Christ our God, through the action of the Holy Spirit and the prayer of the priest. You need to keep this secret [sacrament – ​​sacred. A.P.] three things: 1) let the priest be properly ordained; 2) let there be an altar, that is, a throne consecrated by the Bishop, or an antimension; 3) let the priest have all unquestionable faith that the essence of bread and wine is transformed into the essence of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ by the action of the Holy Spirit” 115. The last condition, it seems, is said not in the sense that the Sacrament will not be performed in the absence of such faith, but in the sense that an unbelieving priest serves himself in condemnation 116. An interesting remark about marriage: “What kind of grace of God is taught in this mystery? The honest birth of children, and also love for one’s wife, is not an obstacle to the love of God” 117. Repeating St. Isidore Pelusiota, St. Demetrius teaches that virginity can be likened to the sun, widowhood to the moon, and an honest marriage to the stars. The saint also expresses the opinion that women are more willing to sin. Let us complete our review of the theology of St. Demetrius of Rostov in the words of Archpriest. Valentin Asmus: “If the saint found something in Western everyday life that seemed valuable to him, he did not hesitate to translate or rework Western texts 118. Among his prayers there is even a translation from Ignatius of Loyola. And his “Prayers of Five Numbers” is nothing more than a reworking of the Latin Rosary 119. A big place in the spirituality of St. Demetrius is fascinated by the veneration of the Passion of Christ, which has obvious Western prototypes and analogies. In prayerful contemplations of Christ’s feat, the saint confesses the Theanthropic reality of the incarnate Son of God - not only His Divinity, not only His physicality, but also the fullness of the reality of His spiritual life: “The Creator of my soul and body, with all my soul and feelings, not all my body suffered for the sake of me...” The saint rejected Latin teachings, which were not shared by the Orthodox Church. Confessing the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, he could not even mention the Catholic dogma Filioque. The saint does not recognize the “indelible character” of the Sacrament of Confirmation, proposing, in accordance with the practice of the Orthodox Church, to accept through confirmation those who have departed from the Orthodox faith “to the Turkish or Jewish faith.” In understanding the Sacrament of Anointing, the saint, not accepting the Latin concept of the “last anointing,” teaches that in this Sacrament “the grace of the All-Holy Spirit is given to the sick, and healing from illness, and remission of sins.” The sacrament is given to the weak, but those who are healthy can receive it on Maundy Thursday or on Holy Saturday. The sacramental moment of the Eucharist is the epiclesis. “The purifying fire that the papists claim to exist does not exist, has not happened and will not exist.” However, a sinner can be freed from hell before the general judgment “not by himself, but by alms received from righteous possessions, and prayers, and even more so by a bloodless sacrifice.” All of the above allows us to conclude that St. Demetrius was a theologian of his time, which was characterized by the decline of Eastern theology and the rise of Western theology. There is no doubt that the Catholic West influenced the saint. But this was a cultural influence, not a confessional one. Everything that in the works of the Saint irritated the Moscow scribes and irritates the current zealots of Orthodoxy, does not go beyond the framework of true Orthodoxy, the Orthodoxy of the Holy Fathers, and not the polemicists of the 19th – 20th centuries, who were not always successful and not always knowledgeable” 120. St. Demetrius of Rostov, with his theological works, provided an invaluable service to the Russian Church 121. And to this day, in our rich spiritual literature, he remains one of the most read authors. We are talking only about church-wide glorification. Some locally revered saints are not taken into account, whose memory has been celebrated for a long time, and who were included in the monthly words of the Typikon and the Followed Psalter, which, in fact, implied the establishment of church-wide veneration: St. Mikhail, Metropolitan Kyiv, and the blessed prince Theodore of Novgorod, brother of the noble prince Alexander Nevsky. Canonization of St. Demetrius was of great importance for the Russian people. Priest M. Popov notes: “The illustrious Saint Demetrius of Rostov became the favorite mentor of the Russian people. The works of St. Demetrius were read with special love, presenting spiritual food that is inimitable in its accessibility to this day. He himself is a model of life and a prayer book for everyone. For the Church, during its struggle with the schism, the glorification of St. Demetrius was extremely important. It was a direct defeat of the opponents of the Church. All his life, the Pleasant admonished bitter schismatics, and now the miraculous power of his relics and the incorruptibility of his body clearly indicated the rightness of the fighter for Orthodoxy and the unreasonable stand of the Old Believers for the letter. The opponents of the Church felt this, and, having no means against the obvious victory against them, they attempted to destroy the relics of St. Pleaser." Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 346. In 1766 a gang of schismatics decided to steal and burn the relics of the Saint, but were unable to commit this crime, since the Saint himself informed the Archimandrite of the Spaso-Yakovlev Monastery about the plan of the villains. Thus, Patriarch Joachim in 1677 decanonized St. Anna Kashinskaya; in 1682 St. Efrosin of Pskov was transferred from a generally venerated saint to a locally venerated one; St. Petersburg was probably decanonized by verbal prohibition. Maxim Grek. These decanonizations were mainly related to the fight against the schism. See Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Canonization of saints in the Russian Orthodox Church // Orthodox Encyclopedia. ROC. M., 2000. pp. 352–353 Derzhavin A., prot. Chetyi-Minea St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov, as a church-historical and literary monument // Theological Works, 1976, No. 15, p. 61 Gorsky A., prot. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. M., 1849. pp. 104–105 In one of the sermons of St. Demetrius says: “Fornication usually occurs in people of great rank, who live autocratically by their own will, who have no one to fear, and who should be better than all others to be abstinent, to honestly observe a pure life in the image of the people who exist under them: for there are also judges and executioners of human sins. They multiply fall into the uncleanness of the flesh, despising their honor and rank, and are enslaved by their passions: and even those who rule over nations, they themselves become rulers out of their own uncontrollable lust.” Quote by: Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 428. The saint also denounced Peter's irritability, passion for Protestantism, and the abolition of fasting in the troops. It is unlikely that he shared Peter’s decree on barber shaving, which ordered everyone to shave except priests and deacons, and a significant penalty was imposed on those who opposed. It is known that Peter did not really notice the accusations against him. In this regard, the case of St. Mitrofan of Voronezh, who refused to enter the royal palace where pagan statues stood. Peter was seriously angry and promised to execute the saint; only the prudent, but firm and courageous behavior of St. Mitrofan softened the king's anger. St. was also aware of this. Demetrius: “In real life, the truth is very weak... do not tell the truth to anyone... unless someone wants troubles and persecution... the Forerunner, Christ, Stephen the First Martyr suffered for the truth. And even now, just begin to speak the righteous truth and the true truth, no less than you will suffer.” Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. III. M., 1840. pp. 116–117 “Interpretation of Christ’s Sermons on the Beatitudes” published in 1722 The chronicler was first published in 1784 during the reign of Catherine the Great. It is paradoxical, but it is a fact that it was during the reign of Catherine, who took away church estates, that the Chronicler was published, which included a discussion about church estates (about the inadmissibility of their seizure). As the priest noted. M. Popov, “the ideas of Nil Sorsky († 1508) did not master him; it is aligned with that practical view of monasticism that was established among us after the fight against non-covetous people.” Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 325. One can only partially agree with the researcher’s reasoning. The dispute between the “Josephites” and the “non-possessors” is a far-fetched dispute. It is enough to note that in the first place in the commemoration of St. Joseph of Volotsky stood St. Nil Sorsky, and St. Nila - Rev. Joseph. See the remarkable study by Met. Pitirim (Nechaeva) “Reverend Nil of Sorsky and Joseph of Volotsk” // Millennium of the Baptism of Rus' / Coll. materials. M., 1989, p. 75–85. This article was also published on the CD “Russian Theology of the XV-XVII Centuries.” St. Petersburg, Aksion estin, 2008 Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 430 I.A. Shlyapkin mentions in his essay that the work of Rev. A. Gorsky “St. Dimitry Rostovsky. M., 1849" is based on two edited student essays by Fr. Nechaev and Barsky, which, however, does not in the least detract from the dignity of the work. Christian reading, 1842, IV, p. 311–521 Derzhavin A., prot. They bring joy to the hearts of the faithful. Chetia-Minea of ​​Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov, as a church-historical and literary monument. Part I. M., VIPC "ICHTIOS", 2006. Part II. M., VIPC “ICHTHYOS”, 2008. See also: Theological Works, 1976, No. 15, p. 61–145; 1976, No. 16, p. 46–141 The father subsequently became a ktitor of the Kirillov Monastery in Kiev. Diarius, 1689 March 29 // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. pp. 488–489 Priest M. Popov writes: “The redemption of man is the focal point of all his teaching.” Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 202 These writers are: St. Athanasius the Great, Eusebius of Samosata, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Epiphanius of Cyprus, Climacus, Ambrose, Isidore Pelusiot, Jerome, Damascene, Blessed. Theodoret, Pope Leontius // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. P. 242 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. pp. 243–244 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. P. 244–260 Author of “The Science of the Albo Method on Addition of Testimonies.” Subsequently, he became the archimandrite of the Chernigov monastery. Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov), bishop. Vissarion (Nechaev), Archpriest. Alexander Gorsky, priest. M.S. Popov, I.A. Shlyapkin and others. Ivan Vygovsky - Little Russian hetman, who was subsequently shot by a military court as a rebel Gorsky A., prot. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. M., 1849. P. 4 Eingorn. Essays on the history of Little Russia in the 17th century. P. 325, approx. 315 Acts of southwestern Russia, vol. VI, no. 37, p. 93 Derzhavin A., prot. They bring joy to the hearts of the faithful. Chetia-Minea of ​​Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov, as a church-historical and literary monument. Part I. M., VIPC “ICHTIOS”, 2006. P. 118 Titov F.I. Saint Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. Kiev, 1908. pp. 5–6 Priest M. Popov notes: “There is news that young Daniel became a monk, probably out of imitation of St. Benedict of Nursia." Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 13 Diary - diary of Polish diets // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron Parisian teacher, a voluntary exile for his Orthodox beliefs. He became famous for compiling the monumental work “On the Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father Alone.” This work, written in Paris, remained unpublished during his lifetime. It was subsequently used by Feofan Prokopovich in anti-Lutheran polemics about the procession of the Holy Spirit, assuring that no objection to Zernikav’s well-founded arguments was conceivable. Zernikav's work was published by Metropolitan Samuel of Mislavsky of Kyiv in Konigsberg in two parts. The first came out in 1774, and the second in 1776. For the hagiographic material that existed in the Russian Church at that time, see the work of Bishop. Vissarion (Nechaev) “St. Dimitri, Metropolitan of Rostov." M., 1910. pp. 19–21 Published before the revolution by the Imperial Archaeographic Commission of the Chetya-Minea St. Macarius has been reissued in our time in electronic form on the CD “St. Macarius, Met. Moscow and all Rus'. Great Menaion of Chetia". St. Petersburg, Aksion estin, 2009. See St. Dimitri, Metropolitan of Rostov. Lives of the Saints. Book one. September, October, November. Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, 1764. Second preface. Sheet 3 Prot. Alexander Derzhavin suggests that these were not Makarievsky, but Milyutinsky Chetya-Minea. Derzhavin A., prot. They bring joy to the hearts of the faithful. Chetia-Minea of ​​Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov, as a church-historical and literary monument. Part I. M., VIPC “ICHTIOS”, 2006. pp. 106–107 Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. pp. 55–56 Gorsky A., prot. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. M., 1849. P. 18 The material is borrowed from Volume XV of the Orthodox Encyclopedia. M., 2007. P. 13. Demetrius, St. Vissarion (Nechaev), bishop. "St. Dimitri, Metropolitan of Rostov." M., 1910. P. 95 Diarius, 1685 // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. pp. 481–483 Diarius, 1689 // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. pp. 487–488 Porfiry (Popov), archimandrite. On the publication of the lives of the Saints in chronological order // Readings in the Society of Lovers of Spiritual Enlightenment, 1869, VI, p. 5 This means the Society of Lovers of Spiritual Enlightenment Porfiry (Popov), archimandrite. On the publication of the lives of the Saints in chronological order // Readings in the Society of Lovers of Spiritual Enlightenment, 1869, VI, p. 6 Chetii-Minei. Book two. December, January, February. Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, 1764. L. 53. Back Chetyi-Minea St. Demetrius were never translated into Russian. There is a paper edited by V.O. Klyucheskoy's revision of the Chetiy-Mineaion - “The Lives of the Saints in Russian, set out according to the guidance of the Chetiy-Mineaion of St. Demetrius of Rostov with additions, explanatory notes and images of saints." M., 1903–1911. Lives of saints in Russian, set out according to the guidance of the Chetyih-Menya of St. Demetrius of Rostov with additions, explanatory notes and images of saints." December. M., 1906. P. 181 Gorsky A., prot. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. M., 1849. pp. 132–191 Three extensive volumes of appendices to the master's thesis of Fr. A. Derzhavin. They examine in detail the text of each life of the Chetyih-Menya, and compare the texts of the lives belonging to St. Simeon Metaphrastus, Lawrence Surius, Peter Skarga, found in the Makariev Great Chetya-Minaia and many other sources, and the sources that St. actually used are established. Dimitri. See Derzhavina E.I. Archpriest A.M. Derzhavin. Life and scientific activity // St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. Research and materials. Spaso-Yakovlevsky Dimitriev Monastery. Rostov the Great, 2008. pp. 365–366 Both of them are mentioned in the proskomedia prayer of the nine-day prosphora Gorsky A., prot. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. M., 1849. pp. 195–198 A printer who decided to preach the coming of the Antichrist in 1703. Met. Stephen wrote the book “On the Signs of the Coming of the Antichrist.” Disc dedicated to Met. Stefan Yavorsky and Archbishop. Feofan (Prokopovich), is being prepared for publication by the Aksion Estin publishing house. Gorsky A., prot. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. M., 1849. P. 61 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. IV. M., 1835. pp. 33–36 Vissarion (Nechaev), bishop. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. M., 1910. S. 1–2 Let us note that none of the warring parties had any doubt about the actual transubstantiation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ; the only question was about the time of transubstantiation. Denial of transubstantiation was seen as a deviation towards Protestant views. Thus, Shlyapkin, mentioning a certain Yan Belobodsky, who denied transubstantiation, notes: “All these were Luthorian thoughts, and they were already afraid of them in the Moscow state.” Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 145. It is worthy of note that as a result of these disputes, the Orthodox teaching on the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts was included in the text of the bishop's oath in 1696. The first request was sent on March 29, 1686. Shlyapkin notes: “The patriarch himself took monastic vows in the Kiev Mezhigorsky monastery, and, of course, knew the deviation of the Little Russians from Orthodox customs. Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 176. It was not only a matter of the position of the Little Russian clergy on the issue of the time of the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts. Back in 1677, Patriarch Joachim ordered “to tear out sheet 239 from the psalter that was printed in Cherkassy Novgorod because the litanies in the prayer service are different from their own books and those from Moscow... and sheet 146 because the chronicler printed on that sheet is different from their books and those from Moscow.” Mansvetov. How we edited church books. M., 1883. P. 20. He also reproached Bishop Lazar (Baranovich) of Chernigov for ordaining several deacons and priests at the liturgy at once. Sumtsov. Lazar Baranovich. Kharkov, 1885. P. 174 Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 189 Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 186 Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. pp. 224–225 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. V. M., 1835. P. 106 Priest M. Popov, without giving any explanation, denies that St. Demetrius "Questions and answers about faith." Of all the researchers, he is the only one who holds this position. Based on the text of the “Questions” itself, we cannot agree with such a statement. This work reveals the style and spirit of St. Dimitri. We also consider the assessment of the labor researcher Metropolitan. Macarius: “An attempt to compile the “dogmatic teaching” of St. Our Father Demetrius, selected from his writings, is presented in Christian Reading (1842, IV, pp. 311–531). Unfortunately, the article is based on “Questions and Answers about Faith,” which do not belong to Dimiriy, although they are included among his creations in Part I (M. 1839, pp. 60–117). If you remove excerpts from “Questions” from an article, then it already loses both its integrity and value.” Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910, pp. 204–205. In this work, Met. Macarius (Bulgakov) quotes from almost all the works of St. Demetrius: lives, sermons, “Chronicles”, “Search”, etc., and not just from the mentioned creation. It would not be out of place to note that it was the “Questions” that the Saint used as a teaching aid in the Rostov school, and therefore, at least, he agreed with what was written. Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. P. 12 Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 378 Long Christian Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Church. M., 2006. pp. 78–79 Macarius (Bulgakov), Metropolitan. History of the Russian Church. M., 1996. Book. 6, vol. XI, p. 568 It is interesting that one of the leaders of the “Greek” party, the monk Euthymius, initially in his “Admonishment to the Priests” (director of the Synod. Bible No. 297) attributes transubstantiation to the words of Christ the Savior and only later (director No. 298) corrected his opinion. See Gorsky A., prot. Description of manuscripts of the Synodal Library, II, 3, p. 449. Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 168 Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. pp. 76–77 Demetrius’s companion on the trip to Moscow was Abbot Innokenty (Monastyrsky), who continued to zealously defend his false views, “like the oud rotten, it was cursed and sent away.” Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. pp. 206–207 Vissarion (Nechaev), bishop. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. M., 1910. pp. 36–37 Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 193 The situation was complicated by the fact that in the remarks of Patriarch Joachim there was also an unfair reproach, or, as Fr. A. Derzhavin, “nitpicking on the word.” Thus, the patriarch denounced the publishers of the first book of the Chetiy-Mineaion for the fact that in the names of the creators and chroniclers, “put the life of Jerome, who is named after the Orthodox teacher.” Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891, pp. 191–192. Prot. Alexander Derzhavin gives a more detailed extract from the message of Patriarch Joachim: “Why are you, in the book of your Eastern Holy Church, the teachers of the holy spirit-bearing fathers, simply writing the names, not a single one ascribing the name of an Orthodox teacher, who is precisely the only expositor of the Orthodox to be a teacher, and the one who is in the vigil is great”? The researcher also explains the reason for this remark by St. Demetrius: “Calling Jerome “Orthodox,” St. Demetrius did not at all think of singling him out from the number of other Holy Fathers as the most correct-minded. He only wanted to show that although Jerome is a Latin writer, he is alien to the mistakes of Catholicism, and therefore the Orthodox should not be embarrassed if in the Cheti-Menaia they encounter lives written by this teacher of the Church. Moscow, as you know, considered the Latins the most terrible heretics and feared them most of all. And at the time when the first book of Chetiih-Minei was written, this fear of Latinism was especially strong.” Derzhavin A., prot. They bring joy to the hearts of the faithful. Chetia-Minea of ​​Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov, as a church-historical and literary monument. Part I. M., VIPC “ICHTIOS”, 2006. pp. 57–59 Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891, pp. 238–239. In fairness, it is worth noting that perhaps this manuscript was written before the comments of Patriarch Joachim. When in 1688 the Patriarch, irritated by the position of the Little Russian clergy, demanded the return of the Great Chetiy-Minya Metropolitan to Moscow. Macarius, who were expelled at the request of Hetman Samoilovich, Dimitri himself wrote to the patriarch: “I give them [Cheti-Minea – priest. A.P.] to your Holiness with thanksgiving and inform you that in holy obedience entrusted to me by the Little Russian Church (1684, when Little Russia was not yet subordinate in spiritual matters to the Moscow Patriarch) I wrote the lives of the saints for six months [hence, for December - priest. A.P.], using the books of Metropolitan. Macarius and other Christian historians." Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 79. This is the message of St. Demetrius was written even before the publication of the first book of Chetiy-Minea. Derzhavin A., prot. They bring joy to the hearts of the faithful. Chetia-Minea of ​​Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov, as a church-historical and literary monument. Part I. M., VIPC “ICHTIOS”, 2006. pp. 160–161 Priest M. Popov calls another creation of St. Demetrius - “Adoration of the Passion of the Lord.” Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 83. This is probably just an error that went unnoticed when proofreading the text. This quote is found precisely in “Adoration of the Most Rev. Mother of God." Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T.I.M., 1839. P. 284. In the recently published three-volume edition of the works of St. Demetrius released these words. See St. Dimitry Rostovsky. Volume 3. M., 2005. P. 620 Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 83. See Teaching for the Feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy. Mother of God // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. III. M., 1840. P. 142 The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was dogmatized by the Vatican in 1854. Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. V. M., 1835. P. 24 St. Proclus of Constantinople, St. Hesychius of Jerusalem, St. Roman the Sweet Singer, St. Modest of Jerusalem, St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, St. Andrey ep. Cretan, St. Herman of Constantinople, St. John of Damascus, St. Tarasius of Constantinople, St. Theodore the Studite, St. Joseph the Penographer, St. Photius of Constantinople, St. Euthymius of Constantinople, St. Neophyte the Recluse, Herman II Patr. Constantinople, St. Gregory Palamas, St. Nicholas Cabasilas, St. King Manuel II Palaiologos, Joseph Bryennios, St. Simeon of Thessalonica, Gennady Scholarius Patr. Constantinople. The list was provided by Prot. Valentin Asmus. Interpretation of the blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria on Matt. 12, 46–49, which mentions the manifestation of vanity by the Blessed Virgin, is the private opinion of the interpreter and is not shared by the majority of authoritative church exegetes. See Synaxarion for the Ascension Written specifically for the article “The Theology of St. Demetrius of Rostov.” The doctrine of the involvement of the Most Pure Virgin in original sin was included in the general church statements of faith and in teaching aids recommended by the Holy Synod for teaching in theological schools: the Message of the Eastern Patriarchs. Member 6; Sylvester (Malevansky), bishop. Experience of Orthodox dogmatic theology. Volume III. § 64. Comments and reasoning regarding the various perverse and false opinions about ancestral sin and its consequences that have arisen and exist in the West. K., 1889. P. 462–478; Malinovsky N., prot. Orthodox dogmatic theology. T. III. § 84. Dogma of the Roman Church about the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God. Sergiev Posad, 1904. pp. 164–191. Reverend Plato, archbishop. Kostromskaya and Galichsky writes: “The Virgin Mary was not taken away from her ancestral sin; Both by birth and conception, she became a participant in hereditary corruption (Ps. 50:7; Rom. 3:10–12. 23). The Blessed Ever-Virgin Mother of God herself confesses the Son of God as Her Savior (Luke 1:43; cf. Matthew 1:21); for She also needed a Redeemer, like every person (Rom. 3:15. 5:17). But the Holy Spirit, according to St. John of Damascus, descending on her, cleansed her and gave her the ability to both receive the Word of God and give birth.” Plato, archbishop. Kostroma and Galichsky. An abbreviated statement of the dogmas of faith according to the teachings of the Orthodox Church, p. 97. (The Moscow Committee for Censorship of Spiritual Books allows printing. June 22, 1870. Censor Professor Peter Kazansky). Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 65 Wanderer, 1861, No. 4, 2 parts, p. 121–122 Vissarion (Nechaev), bishop. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. M., 1910. P. II The work of Metropolitan Macarius on the theology of St. Demetrius was compiled in 1842, ten years before the publication of his Dogmatics. “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology” was published in 1852 in five volumes. For it, the author received gratitude from the Sovereign Emperor and the full Demidov Prize. St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. Search for the schismatic Bryn faith. M., 1855. pp. 556–557 St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. Search for the schismatic Bryn faith. M., 1855. P. 558 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. IV. A chronicle telling events from the beginning of the world to the Nativity of Christ. M., 1849. Part I. pp. 2–7 St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. Search for the schismatic Bryn faith. M., 1855. pp. 292–294 Chronicle. Quote by: Macarius (Bulgakov), Metropolitan. Our Holy Father Demetrius of Rostov, the Saint and Wonderworker, dogmatic teaching selected from his writings // Christian Reading, 1842, IV, p. 378 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. IV. A chronicle telling events from the beginning of the world to the Nativity of Christ. M., 1849. Part I. P. 30 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. IV. A chronicle telling events from the beginning of the world to the Nativity of Christ. M., 1849. Part I. pp. 197–198 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. IV. A chronicle telling events from the beginning of the world to the Nativity of Christ. M., 1849. Part I. P. 77. Cf. with the saying of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov): “The human body is born infected with death and sin, it will be born into death, in the image of that body, which became the body of the first, created from dust and returning to dust, the lost man; but is reborn in the font of baptism into salvation in the image of the body that the Heavenly Man received, conceived and born of the Holy Spirit and the Most Pure Virgin.” Conversation on Monday of the First Week of Great Lent // Creations like those of our Father Saint Ignatius, Bishop of Stavropol. Ascetic sermon. T. IV. Sretensky Monastery, 1997. P. 75 Chronicle. Quote by: Macarius (Bulgakov), Metropolitan. Our Holy Father Demetrius of Rostov, the Saint and Wonderworker, dogmatic teaching selected from his writings // Christian Reading, 1842, IV, p. 379 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. IV. A chronicle telling events from the beginning of the world to the Nativity of Christ. M., 1849. Part I. P. 208 Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. IV. A chronicle telling events from the beginning of the world to the Nativity of Christ. M., 1849. Part I. P. 84 Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky), while still an archimandrite, in his speech “Theology and Freedom of the Church. On the tasks of the liberation war in the field of Russian theology” called for a fight against such an understanding of atonement, thereby seriously distorting Orthodox dogma. About the views of Archimandrite Hilarion on the Atonement, see the article by Archpriest. Valentin Asmus “Archbishop Hilarion of the Trinity and Orthodox theology” // Theological collection. Vol. 7. M., PSTBI, 2001. pp. 56–81 Strictly speaking, this remark is only true of the New Testament. In the Old Testament the concept of “satisfaction” is found: Lev. 26:34, 26:43; Is. 1:24, 40:2; Ezek. 5 – priest A.P Written specifically for the article “The Theology of St. Demetrius of Rostov” Seraphim (Sobolev), Archbishop. Distortion of Orthodox truth in Russian theological thought." M., 1997. P. 9 Life like the Saints of Our Father Sylvester, Pope of Rome // Chetya-Minea. Book II. January. 2nd number. Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, 1764. L. 258 – L. 258. Back The suffering of the five holy martyrs: Eustratius, Auxentius, Eugenius, Mardarius and Orestes // Chetya-Minea. Book II. December. 13th. Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, 1764. L. 101. Back Teaching on the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Bright Monday of the Resurrection of Christ // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. II. M., 1840. P. 144 Brief questions and answers about faith // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. P. 76 George Kedrin - Byzantine historian of the late 11th or early 12th century, author of Σύνοψις ί στορι ώ ν (Review of History) Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. IV. A chronicle telling events from the beginning of the world to the Nativity of Christ. M., 1849. Part I. P. 117 Brief questions and answers about faith // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. P. 102 Brief questions and answers about faith // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. P. 104 Brief questions and answers about faith // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. P. 106. One of the creations of St. Demetrius is aimed directly at the confirmation and disclosure of this Orthodox dogma - “Twelve articles that assure those who doubt or have unbelief about the transubstantiation of bread into the Body and wine into the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, showing many images” // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. V. M., 1835. pp. 130–134 St. Demetrius felt deep reverence for the Holy Gifts. The following incident from his life is noteworthy. In Rostov, in the bishop's house, lived the monk Varlaam, who died before 1709. He had a large beard and mustache and once, while serving St. Demetrius, took communion. At the same time, he soaked his mustache with the Holy Mysteries, and without wiping it off, he went to the washbasin. The saint, horrified by such neglect, forbade him to concelebrate with him forever. Shlyapkin I.A. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time. St. Petersburg, 1891. P. 449 Brief questions and answers about faith // Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. T. I. M., 1839. P. 113 Although, of course, the main sources of the theology of St. Demetrius, in addition to the Holy Scriptures and liturgical books, are the Eastern and Western Fathers of the Church. Priest M. Popov notes: “Scientific support for Chronicle studies and moral treatises was given to Demetrius by church writers and historians; He gave preference to some of them over others. In sermons and Chronicles, writers are mentioned in the following order: John Chrysostom; then St. Ambrose (37 times), I. Climacus (18), Jerome (17), Theophylact (up to 16 times), Gregory Dvoeslov (16), Augustine (12), Athanasius V. (12), I. Damascene (15), Cyprian of Carthage (18), Gregory the Theologian (6).” Others are less common. For a complete list, see Popov M., priest. St. Demetrius of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 238. Footnote. - priest A.P. Some of the prayers translated by St. Demetrius from the Latin language, were not published by him or recommended for general use, but remained in his archive; for example, the prayer of five was found among the papers of St. Demetrius, and published long after his death. We do not know exactly the purpose of such translations, and the question remains open whether Demetrius of Rostov himself used prayers borrowed from Catholic prayer books. Lev Karsavin, in his dissertation on Italian monasticism of the 12th-13th centuries, cites prototypes of the prayers included in the Rosary (in particular the prayer of five), which were already widespread in that period, so it is possible that they had an even earlier origin - Archim. Rafail (Karelin) Priest M. Popov notes: “If you collect everything written by St. Demetrius, then there would be up to 20 voluminous volumes.” Popov M., priest. St. Dimitri of Rostov and his works. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 223