Review of the scientific and literary activities of His Eminence Savva, Archbishop of Tver and Kashin

In No. 14 of the Tver Diocesan Gazette for this year, a brief news was published about the elevation of our venerable archpastor, His Eminence Savva, Archbishop of Tver and Kashinsky, to the highest academic degree of Doctor of Church History. Currently, we have the opportunity to print the full review of the Commission, compiled on behalf of the Council of the Moscow Theological Academy on March 15 of this year, to judge the merits of the scientific and literary works of His Eminence Savva. This Commission included: ordinary professor E. E. Golubinsky (Doctor of Theology), extraordinary professors G. A. Voskresensky and I. N. Korsunsky and associate professor A. P. Golubtsov. In pursuance of the instructions of the Academy Council, the Commission quickly submitted a review to him, which we publish on the pages of our publication. Based on this review and the presentation of the Council, His Eminence Sergius, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna, on June 3 petitioned the Holy Synod for the approval of His Eminence Sava as a doctor of church history, and the Holy Synod, by decree of June 21, made known its consent to such approval. To the council of the Moscow Theological Academy. Presentation In fulfillment of the Council’s instructions dated March 15 of this year, we have the honor to present a review of the scientific and literary activities of His Eminence Sava, Archbishop of Tver and Kashinsky. Among the modern hierarchs of the Russian Church there are few archpastors who, among the complex, varied and difficult affairs of diocesan administration, find leisure time for scientific and literary studies, moreover, performing both those tasks and these studies with dignity and honor. In all fairness, His Eminence Savva, Archbishop of Tver and Kashin, should be included among such archpastors. For 40 years now, his scientific and literary activity has been continuing, bringing and has already brought great benefit to the church, fatherland and science. From a young age, having received and cultivated a keen interest in enriching himself with various knowledge, His Grace Savva from a young age, thanks to the strict school of the good old days, also became accustomed to mental discipline. The first of these circumstances, in addition to its natural consequence - the actual enrichment of his information in various fields of science, entailed in him the development of another interest - the collection of book and manuscript treasures, which continued for more than four decades and resulted in that rich library, the largest and best part of which is now the Bishop of Tver, always a disinterested lover, a mover and patron of science and literature, bequeathed to our Academy, which gave him his education, for the general use. And the last of the mentioned circumstances, especially due to the fact that the Right Reverend Savva, in the very first stages of his independent activity after completing a course of science at the Academy, had to work under the penetrating gaze and wise guidance of such a hierarch as the deceased Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret was in God, gave firmness and thoroughness to the fruits of the mental work of the Tver archpastor, with his own, far from ordinary mental abilities. Thus, an abundance of information, thoroughness of research and firmness of thought and conviction have long been distinguished and still distinguish all the scientific and literary works of the Right Reverend Savva. The first scientific and literary work of the Right Reverend Sava, after school experiments, the last of which, “On oral confession,” gave him the degree of Master of Theology, was the famous, rather voluminous work: Index for viewing the Moscow Patriarchal (now Synodal) sacristy and library. Moscow, 1855. 8°, p. 155+II. We called this work an essay and do not go back on our word. Written according to the thoughts and inspiration of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow and intended to serve only as a reference book for visitors to the synodal sacristy and library, this work was the fruit not only of lengthy mechanical and technical processing, numerous mechanical certificates, checks, etc., but also of the author’s long, diligent mental work, which immediately required him to apply to the case a lot of scientific information that is usually not available in ordinary books. reference indexes, and the scientific formulation of the very matter of organizing, presenting and justifying this information. In short, the author (at that time a hieromonk, and then an archimandrite) immediately had to plunge into the vast field of archeology and philology with paleography. And then he fell in love with archeology and philology with paleography. The independence of the scientific side of the work of the Most Reverend Sava on the Index was also caused by the fact that before him, in relation to the sacristy and library, there were, in part, only short handwritten catalogs and inventories (official short ones), which did not have any scientific significance, moreover, even as reference books, far from perfect, - partly incomplete, scattered here and there descriptions of the objects of the sacristy and library manuscripts, in any case very inconvenient, and for many completely inaccessible to use, as was even the work of the famous professor X. F. Mattei, in Latin, in relation to the Greek manuscripts of the Synodal Library 1. His Eminence Savva not only published the Index of both the sacristy and the library in Russian and in a form convenient for general use, but also provided it with scientific apparatus, as far as possible for him and for his immediate purpose. His Index contained both a preface and an introduction (a historical sketch of the synodal sacristy and library), compiled in a scientific manner, and the presentation of the Index itself was accompanied by a scientific setting: scientific considerations and conclusions on places, numerous notes that revealed the rich erudition of the author, and a description of the objects of the sacristy and library, which also fully met the requirements of science. Then, starting in 1858 with a new edition of the same Index, the Right Reverend Savva did not declare himself to be reprinting only the previous edition, but completely reworked it, both in relation to the sacristy, and especially in relation to the library, bearing in mind the beginning of the major work of professors Gorsky and Nevostruev, which had already appeared in print by that time, on the description of the Slavic manuscripts of the synodal library (Moscow, 1855 and far) 2 . Meanwhile, in the first edition of the Index, after a historical outline of the formation or compilation of the Synodal Library, the author then limited himself to describing only a few, the most interesting manuscripts stored in it, both Greek and Slavic; in the second edition, he, on the one hand, significantly supplemented the history of the library with new data obtained from various places and sources, especially from the Moscow Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and from the archive of the Moscow Armory Chamber, and on the other hand, instead of the previous description of a few manuscripts, he compiled a complete bibliographic, scientifically arranged Index of all Greek and Slavic manuscripts of the said library, with appendices and an explanatory dictionary, both to the objects of the sacristy and to the treasures of the library, also quite scientifically compiled and according to the judgment of the scientists themselves, revealing much that was completely new even for scientists 3 . It is not surprising, therefore, that the very first edition of the Index was sincerely welcomed with high approval, both from modern scholarly and literary criticism, and from such a strict connoisseur as Metropolitan Philaret. The second edition of the Index in 1859, in addition to the fact that it was translated, in one part (the Sacristy Index), into French (Moscou. 1859. 8°, pagg. 96 + II), which indicated an even greater expansion of its circle of fame, even the Academy of Sciences awarded it a high award - the Demidov Prize, with a correct and flattering assessment of the work of the Right Reverend Sava from such an expert in the matter, such as the late academician I. I. Sreznevsky was. By publishing the Index for the review of the synodal sacristy and library, not only ordinary visitors to both and those studying in them were given the necessary reference reference book, but also to lovers of science and workers in one or another area of ​​science, deep soil and a wide field for observation and research were opened. Ancient Russian, especially church life, with its religious worldview, with its domestic and social life, with its art at various degrees of development of the latter, etc., was clearly revealed in the description of the sacristy, and numerous monuments of ancient writing, different in time in origin and varied in content, stored in the library and described in the Index, extending not only to Rus' at different times in its history, but also to other countries, especially Greece, opened up, according to the Index, a vast field for studying the state of education in these countries, for research in the field of theological, philosophical, historical, verbal, legal and other sciences. The convenience of using these monuments in the Index for those involved in them is facilitated by the fact that all manuscripts, both Greek and Slavic, are arranged in alphabetical order, and at the end of both Indexes (i.e., the Index of Greek and the Index of Slavic manuscripts) a chronological list of manuscripts according to the centuries of their writing is attached. And we see from the subsequent works of various scientists how the number of studies based specifically on the analysis of manuscripts of the Synodal Library has increased significantly; and the Moscow Archaeological Society, established shortly after the compilation and publication of the Index of the Right Reverend Sava, already in 1865 decided to take the Index of the Synodal Sacristy, compiled by the Right Reverend Sava, as a basis (among a few other sources) in the compilation of “Materials for the Archaeological Dictionary” 5 . We consider it unnecessary to talk about the numerous references to the Index of both the sacristy and the library, as a source and authority, found in various scientific and literary studies and articles over the past 35–40 years 6 . All this clearly shows what a strong impetus this Index gave to the scientific movement. The author of the Index himself, thanks to his work on the latter, who, as noted above, fell in love with archeology and philology with paleography, and in connection with this, history and other branches of science, did not limit himself to this important work, which in a short time went through several editions 7 ; Due to the scientific interest he aroused, he went further and further in his historical, archaeological, philological, paleographic and other studies. So already for the second edition of his Index, the Right Reverend Savva made, albeit a small, but quite scientific “appendix” (to p. 137 of the Index), containing an excerpt from the Antiquities of Church History of Ulpius the Roman on the bodily properties of the God-bearing fathers, with preliminary historical and philological comments about this passage (pp. 281–290). Then, in the same 1858, in volume VII of the “News of the Imperial Academy of Sciences for the Department of Russian Language and Literature,” a letter from Fr. Archimandrite Savva to the editor (I.I. Sreznevsky), reporting the discovery by him, Archimandrite Savva, in the manuscripts of the Synodal Printing Library of two monuments of the 11th century with the year of their writing. This is precisely the service menaion months of October and November. And in one 12th-century manuscript from the same library (service menaion for the month of July), Archimandrite Savva made out the name of one new Russian writer. The message is accompanied by a philological analysis and paleographic description of the aforementioned manuscripts. Meanwhile, back then, Fr. Archimandrite Savva conceived a new and also serious work, closely related to his work on the Index for viewing the synodal sacristy and library. These are paleographic photographs from Greek and Slavic manuscripts of the Moscow Synodal Library of the 6th–17th centuries. The publication of this work, however, for various reasons related to unexpected changes in the author’s career, took place only in 1863. This new one is also large in volume (half a sheet, countries. V + 46 and 62 tables of photographs) work, especially for the then state of the science of paleography in Russia, was of very great importance, which has not been lost to this day; and the Latin translation attached to the Russian text, both the preface and the description of the paleographic photographs, indicated that this meaning extended beyond the borders of our fatherland. Suffice it to say that paleography, as an aid to reading and disassembling ancient manuscripts, was completely unknown to us until then, and the work of the Right Reverend Sava was the first experience of this kind; Meanwhile, the need for reading and analyzing manuscripts for various scientific purposes, historical, philological, and others, has long been overdue and at the time in question was becoming more and more intensified. It is not at all surprising that this new work, this experiment, also executed with all the thoroughness of an expert in the matter and even grace 8, was met both in society and in the press with full approval and deep gratitude to the publisher for his work, and for scientists, especially beginners, also began to serve as a good guide in their studies not only of the Synodal, but also of any kind of manuscripts, as evidenced by many reviews about it and references to it in studies and articles of various kinds, published in both spiritual and secular, both time-based and non-time-based, and in Russian and foreign publications 9 . The changes in service that began for the Most Reverend Sava in 1859, which fairly quickly followed one after another 10 and required him to direct his attention to other, compared to previous, subjects, somewhat distracted him from the concentrated pursuit of research in his favorite scientific field, but on the other hand, little by little they drew him into the field of church history itself. The collection and publication of various kinds of church historical materials, for the most part very important for the development of historical self-awareness in our fatherland and for various branches of scientific work, is the main activity that marked the last 30 years of the scientific and literary activity of His Eminence Savva. But even this work of collecting and publishing materials is not a mechanical work for him, but deeply meaningful, with extensive prefaces preceding the publication and numerous notes accompanying it, belonging to the pen of His Eminence Savva, representing a living chronicle of the church and civil life of our fatherland for the time, starting from the last half of the past and ending with the last years of the expiring century, equipped with the best and strictly verified references, accompanied by a bright, true and impartial look at the events of that time, at the deeds of historical figures, etc. At the same time, accurate, mainly archival information and data, as primary sources, are in the most prominent place everywhere with the Reverend Savva. And the indexes of names and objects compiled for almost all of this kind of publications by the Right Reverend greatly facilitate the reference and use of these publications, many of which are very large in volume. A series of these church-historical works, these publications by the Most Reverend Sava 11, began with the message about the bringing of part of St. relics of the Venerable Euphrosyne, Princess of Polotsk, from Kyiv to the Polotsk Euphrosyne Monastery. Vitebsk, 1871. This bringing of the shrine to the Polotsk diocese, deprived of this kind of shrines, was served most of all by the Most Reverend Savva himself, who renewed his petition for this shortly after his accession to the Polotsk bishop’s see and achieved success in the goal of the petition after the failure of the petitions of his predecessors. Then follow the works and publications: 1) Memoirs of His Eminence Leonid, Archbishop of Yaroslavl and Rostov. Kharkov, 1877, 8°, pp. 7+347+34; 2) Memoirs (of an eyewitness) of the sacred coronation of Their Imperial Majesties in Bose of the late Sovereign Emperor Alexander Nikolaevich and Empress Maria Alexandrovna. Tver, 1883, 8°, p. 45; 3) Letters of Moscow Metropolitan Philaret to the late Archbishop of Tver Alexy, 1843–1867, Moscow, 1883, 8°, p. VIII+280; 4) Collection of opinions and reviews of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna on educational and church-state issues. Volumes I-V and additional volume, St. Petersburg. and Moscow, 1885–1888, 8°, pp. IX+510+XII; III+485+X; IV+600+XV; VIII+613+XIII; VI+1033+39+ХIII+ІІ+ХV; VIII + ХVI + 697, - both as a special, but also adjacent to this publication: 5) Collection of opinions and reviews of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna on the affairs of the Orthodox Church in the East. St. Petersburg 1886, 8° maiore, pp. XXVII+490+IX. Next: 6) Letters of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna to the Highest Persons and various other persons, parts I-II, Tver, 1888, 8° pp. IV+207+342; 7) Letters from Moscow Metropolitan Philaret to the abbess of the Spaso-Borodinsky Monastery Sergius. Tver, 1890, 8° pp. VII+41 and 8) Collection of letters from clergy of the 18th century. to the Right Reverend Arseny (Vereshchagin), Archbishop of Rostov-Yaroslavl, former Bishop of Tver and Kashin. Tver, 1893, 8° pp. LV+108+XIII. Of all these works and publications, which generally contain a lot of valuable material, mostly hitherto unknown in print, the Collection of Opinions and Reviews of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, extracted from the archives of St. Synod, theological educational institutions of St. Petersburg and Moscow, ministries of foreign and internal affairs and public education, etc. The extensive and insightful, moreover, strictly disciplined mind of the Moscow saint, his extraordinary quickness of sight, the firmness of the power of judgment, the well-known firmness of conviction and the rigor of the direction of thought and conviction, with deep, decades of acquired and cultivated experience and practical wisdom, with an immense breadth of relationships thoughts, words and deeds in which he had to engage, with extraordinary trust and deep respect on the part of persons, from the Highest Persons to ordinary villagers, for his mind, experience, his Orthodox beliefs and patriotism, as well as for his holy life, make his writings a rare historical monument of our time. And these writings, in the person of His Eminence Savva, one of the best and faithful pupils and guardians of the covenants of Metropolitan Philaret, found the best interpreter and publisher. Meanwhile, it is not easy to measure the entire volume, the entire magnitude of the significance and benefit of these writings for the church, for civil society and from the sciences - for church (and partly civil) history, for church (and partly civil) law, for literature (also church and civil), for theology in all its parts and forms, even for philosophy and, finally, for Church practice, “Placed by the providence of God on the candlestick of the Moscow Church,” says the Metropolitan Filarete, the Eminence Savva, in the preface to volume I of the said Assembly, the great hierarch shone and shone with the light of spiritual wisdom far beyond the borders of not only Moscow, but also the entire Russian Church. For half a century, both the Orthodox East and the non-Orthodox West listened to his powerful, archpastoral, instructive word and guiding advice with love and surprise.” His skillful, truly brilliant solution of both scientific and legal, often the most complicated issues and cases, church and civil, theoretical and practical, his extensive opinions, deeply based both on the age-old foundations of general truth and the principles of sound reason and on the solid supports of canonical and civil decrees, sacred scripture and church tradition - opinions that often represent entire reasonings and studies, his subtle critical reviews, etc., placed in edition of the Most Reverend Sava, with the latter’s appropriate comments and his hysterical references, are and will long remain an inexhaustible source of wisdom for theory and practice, church and civil, as well as for purely scientific and literary works of our and future times. Many examples of this could be given from all seven volumes of the Collection of Opinions, especially starting from the 2nd volume, which contains the papers of Metropolitan Philaret from the time he became a member of the Holy Synod, that is, from 1819 12. But if we said that in these works and publications of the Right Reverend Sava there is much that is valuable, important in various respects and, for the most part, hitherto unknown in print, then this has not said much. They often contain information and data that belong specifically to the Most Reverend Sava himself, as the author, which sheds completely new light on many historical figures and events, corrects and changes views that previously existed and have already been established in science, and opens up new starting points in scientific research. One of the many examples of this can be pointed to at least the personality of the above-mentioned Archbishop Arseny Vereshchagin, who (in the initial period of his activity), for example, such scientists as the late I. A. Chistovich (in the History of St. Petersburg Academy, p. 38), were confused with Arseny Buzanovsky. (See Eminence Savva in his edition, p. III, note I). Based on all of the above, we believe that the Council of the Academy will find it fair to petition in the proper manner before the highest authorities for the elevation of His Eminence Archbishop Sava to the degree of Doctor of Church History. Signed: Ordinary Professor Evgeniy Golubinsky, Extraordinary Professor Grigory Voskresensky, Extraordinary Professor Ivan Korsunsky, Associate Professor Alexander Golubtsov 1–2 T. Lipsiae, 1805. 8°. Vol. 1 describes the synodal manuscripts. libraries themselves, and volume 2 – synod libraries. printing houses. Suffice it to say that the second edition of the Index was almost three times larger in volume than the first, namely: in the Sacristy Index there were pages III-|-III-|-126 and for the Library Index VIII-|-292-|-40-|-IV. See 28th Demidovsky Awards, pp. 27–31, St. Petersburg. 1859. Not to mention other scientists who have died and are still living, it is enough to point to the example of the late Right Reverend Amphilochius, Bishop of Uglich. See page 15 of the Society's minutes in issue. 2; Vol. I Antiquities. Trudov Moscow. Archaeological Society. Moscow, 1867. Compare. then there... p. 131; vol. III, no. 2 (M. 1871), p. 145, etc., in the Collection of Ancient Russian Art for 1866 in the article by G. D. Filimonov and others. See, for example, in the publications: Collection of the Society of Ancient Russian Art for 1866 in the article by G. D. Filimonov; Antiquities. Proceedings of the Moscow Archaeological Society, vol. I, no. 2 (M. 1867) p. 131 (in the article by gr. A. S. Uvarov), vol. III, issue. 2 (M. 1871), p. 145 (in the article by I. D. Mansvetov), ​​p. 179 (in the article by Archimandrite Amfilochiya); vol. IV, no. 1, pp. 7, 23, 166 and many others. In materials for archaeological Dictionary, pp. 12, 46, 53, etc. We talked about the first and second editions. The third edition of the Index was published in 1858. Then and after there was more than one edition of it. Thus, the 4th edition of the Index, revised and expanded, in comparison with the third, in the 4th part of the sheet, with XV tables of photolithograved photographs of the most remarkable objects of the sacristy, was published in Moscow in 1863. And the 5th edition, published separately (also revised and expanded), was published in Moscow in 1883. The publication, which cost a lot of money, can be called luxurious. From the Russians, see, for example, in Sovrem. Chronicles of 1863 Nos. 9 and 12; in the Russian Archive 1863 Nos. 5–6; in Govt. Review 1863 No. 3; in the Collection department. Russian language and words. Imperial Academician Sciences vol. XV (1877), etc.; from foreign, Gardthazen, griech. Palaeographie, 5, 15; Tischendorf in Litterar. Centralblatt 1864, no. 23, etc. These are reviews. For references, see, for example, the publication: Antiquities. Proceedings of the Moscow Archaeological Society, vol. I, no. 2 (M. 1867), p. 199; vol. VI, no. 2 (M. 1876), p. 129, etc. In 1859, Archimandrite Savva was appointed from the synodal sacristans to the rector of the Moscow Theological Seminary; at the beginning of 1861 he was transferred to the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy; at the end of 1862 he was elevated to the rank of bishop-vicar of the Moscow Metropolis; in 1866 he was appointed to an independent bishop's department in Vitebsk; in 1874 it was moved to Kharkov and in 1879 - to Tver. We are not talking about the words and speeches of His Eminence Savva, the beginning of printing of which dates back to 1861 and which, in their own minds (Tver, 1892), with the exception of words (speeches alone), also represent a rather large book (p. 140-|-IX); Some of them are also distinguished by their church-historical character (for example, the speech at the entrance to the Kharkov flock, pp. 46–49; also not mentioned is an article of a polemical nature, although of church-historical interest, written in response to the leading article of the “Church and Public Bulletin” (for 1877, No. 45), published in the Kharkov Eparchy Gazette for 1877. etc. These are, for example, in Volume II Nos. 162, 172, 201, etc.; in volume III, especially opinions and reviews on the issue of unity of faith and schism (Nos. 252, 267, 273, 275, 293, etc.), on issues of marriage law (Nos. 251, 253, 294, etc.), on the case of church singing (Nos. 322, 327, 330, etc.); in volume IV about changing the order of coronation (Nos. 434, 435, 436; 441–442), about translating the Bible into Russian (Nos. 445, 467, etc.); in volume V on the liberation of peasants from serfdom with a draft manifesto about this (No. 568), about the zemstvo (No. 716), etc. You might be interested in: