Dimitry Savich

Demetrius St. Metropolitan of Rostov (in the world Daniil Savich, nicknamed Tuptalenko, 1651–1709). In December 1651, in the town of Makarov, 40 versts from Kyiv, along the Zhitomir highway, a son, Daniel, was born to an ordinary Cossack of the Makarov hundred of the Kyiv regiment, later a centurion, Savva Grigorievich Tuptal-Savich († 1703), and his wife, Marya Mikhailovna († 1689). Dimitri's parents were distinguished by great piety, which, of course, affected their son: the greatest influence was probably exerted by the mother, since the father, “the honor and glory of the Zaporozhye army,” was almost constantly at war in this troubled era for Ukraine. The saint's three younger sisters subsequently also took monastic vows. The saint received his initial education at home; At the age of 10 I learned to write in Slavic. His parents moved to Kyiv in 1660 and settled “on the parade ground of Neidys Saltanovsky” near the Florovsky Convent. In the 12th year, Daniel entered the Kievobratsky school monastery, which he then reopened and in which the famous scholastic preacher Ioannikiy Golyatovsky was rector and taught. The miraculous discovery of the miraculous icon of the Mother of God of Bratsk, on which a Tatar who was drowning in the Dnieper by swimming saved himself, its solemn entry into the monastery, then the destruction of the monastery in 1665, constant fears of “military carelessness,” family influence, poor health - all this led to the fact that on July 9, 1668, Daniel took monastic vows with the name of Demetrius in the Kirillov Monastery, from the hands of Abbot Meletiy Dzik, Little Russian patriot, supporter of Doroshenka and Metropolitan Joseph of Tukalsky. Thus, Dmitry joined the party of the black clergy of Ukraine, which was a champion of the independence of the Little Russian church. Patriarch Nikon, a supporter of the South Russians, had already been replaced, the Moscow government did not recognize Metropolitan Tukalsky as a supporter of Doroshenko, and one of Nikon’s successors, Patriarch Joachim, began to directly work for the annexation of the Little Russian Church to the Moscow Patriarchate: hitherto it belonged (since the 14th century) to the Constantinople. On March 25, 1669, in the city of Kanev, Dimitry was ordained hierodeacon by Metropolitan Tukalsky, and six years later in 1675. On May 23, already in the Gustynsky monastery and a person closer to Moscow, Lazar Baranovich, Archbishop of Chernigov, Dimitri was ordained as a hieromonk and quickly gained fame as a talented preacher. At the behest of Baranovich, Dimitri wrote his first historical work: “Irrigated Fleece,” a description of miracles from the miraculous image of the Mother of God in the Chernigov Trinity-Ilyinsky Monastery, published in 1680, and in 1683 published in the second edition. From 1677, for almost two years, Dimitri stayed in Lithuania and Belarus, visiting Slutsk, Novy-Dvor, Vilna and surrounding monasteries, preached sermons everywhere, which unfortunately have not reached us, became close to the Bishop of Slutsk Theodosius Vasilevich, the governor of Tukalsky and a fighter against the Uniates, and returned to Chernigov only on January 29, 1679. On February 6, he moved to Baturyn, where he was treated kindly by Hetman Samoilovich. At the request of the hetman, Dimitry was appointed by Baranovich as abbot of Maksakovsky on September 9, 1681, and on February 7, 1682 he was transferred as abbot to the Baturinsky Monastery, which he had just abandoned for 5 months, where he moved on March 1. All this data is drawn from the diary (diary), which Demetrius began to keep during this time of various displeasures with Patriarch Joachim regarding church affairs. Leaving the abbess on October 26, 1683, Demetrius on April 23, 1684, at the invitation of Varlaam, the newly elected, but not yet confirmed in Moscow, archimandrite of the Kiev-Pechersk, moved to Kyiv, to the Lavra. This wandering life was difficult for the future saint. Recording the death of an acquaintance in his diary, Dimitri exclaims with bitterness: “God knows where you will lay the chapter for me.” At the Lavra, Demetrius became an official preacher, and then on May 6, 1684 he received “the obedience to write the lives of the saints,” a task that he dearly loved and which glorified his name. In 1686, February 6th, Metropolitan of Kiev Gideon-Svyatopolk Chetvertinsky and Hetman Samoilovich convinced Demetrius to accept the abbotship of Baturin for the second time, during his visit to Baturin with Archimandrite Varlaam Yasinsky, but even at the abbess Demetrius did not leave work on the lives of the saints. Thanks to the efforts of the hetman and the metropolitan, through Prince Vasily Vasilyevich Golitsyn, Dmitry managed to obtain the Makaryev Chet-Minea (Uspensky) from Moscow and compile an index to the prologue to facilitate his work, which was also patronized by the next hetman, Ivan Stepanovich Mazepa. In July 1688, the first part of the Chet-Minay (September, October, November) entered the printing house of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. At this time (1685–1690), a fierce controversy broke out between Moscow and South Russian theologians on the issue of the time of the transubstantiation of St. Darov. If Demetrius himself did not take a direct part in this struggle, where on the one side stood Patriarch Joachim, the Likhud brothers, monk Euthymius, Ignatius Korsakov, Afanasy Kholmogorsky, and on the other, Sylvester Medvedev, Innokenty of Monastyrsky, Metropolitan Gideon, Varlaam Yasinsky, then he at least shared the opinions of the South Russian clergy. Joachim, accusing the Little Russian Church of non-Orthodox opinions, found something non-Orthodox (about the immaculate conception of the Mother of God) in the printed book of Chet-Minea. On these issues, envoys of the Little Russian Church, including Dmitry, went to Moscow in July 1689, and Mazepa went with them. They arrived in Moscow on August 10, just at the time when the party of Princess Sophia and the Miloslavskys broke with the party of Peter and the Naryshkins and the case of Shaklovity on the civil side and Medvedev on the church side arose. Mazepa and Dimitri visited Moscow, and then went to Trinity, where Dimitri kissed the “hand” of Tsar Peter Alekseevich. The fall of Golitsyn and the execution of Shaklovity obscured the church feud, the unfortunate Sylvester Medvedev died, and the Little Russians safely went home, theological disputes fell silent, and Demetrius even received the blessing and letter of Joachim to continue writing the Chet-Menai, although, apparently, he was not convinced of the correctness of Moscow’s views on the time of transubstantiation and the immaculate conception of St. Virgos. In 1692, on February 14, Demetrius left the Baturin abbot to quietly write the “lives of the saints” and settled in a special cell built for this purpose, and then moved to Kyiv to print the second part of the Ch.-Menei in the Lavra printing house. In July 1693, in the Kirillovsky Monastery, where Innocent of Monastyrsky was the rector, and Demetrius-Sava's father was the ktitor, Demetrius pronounced the Word on St. Day. Trinity. Here, by the way, we note that if the Chet-Minea represent an excellent example of the Church Slavonic language, only occasionally interrupted by minor Little Russianisms, then the saint’s sermons represent the opposite phenomenon: the text now being printed was cleaned and corrected in the middle of the 18th century by the famous Archpriest Peter Alekseev. Patriarch Adrian was very sympathetic to the representatives of the South Russian church. In March 1694, on his instructions, Demetrius wrote “The Legend of the Glorification of St. nine martyrs of Kizichevo,” and in 1695 he was awarded a patriarchal letter, sending ten rubles of money and the following books of Chet-Minei. At this time (from June 22, 1694 to June 20, 1697) Demetrius was the abbot of the small Glukhov monastery and worked diligently on the Ch.-Mineas. The year 1697 was a year of unexpected events in the life of Demetrius. In January, he was elected abbot of the Kyiv Cyril Monastery in place of his deceased old friend Innocent of the Monastery, and on June 20 he was installed by the new Bishop of Chernigov, John Maksimovich, as archimandrite of the Yelets Monastery. Dimitri's relationship with Maksimovich, for a reason unknown to us, it seems due to some kind of monetary settlements, was quite strained, which did not prevent Dimitri in the winter of this year, marked by severe famine and high mortality, from showing widespread charity to the victims from his own funds. Demetrius's sermons delivered during this time, even if they retain scholastic techniques, are already significantly different from the previous ones, in greater simplicity and clarity. Demetrius spent the whole of 1699 in household chores about the monastery and worries about printing the third part of the Menaion; it was published in 1700, and on September 17 it was transferred to the Archimandry of Novgorod-Severskaya. The elderly Metropolitan of Kiev Varlaam Yasinsky was busy in Moscow about the appointment of an assistant (vicar) and called bishop. Zakharia Kornilovich. But Peter, who at that time paid special attention to Siberia and the Chinese border, perhaps under the influence of Leibniz’s project, in view of the insanity of Metropolitan Ignatius Korsakov of Siberia († 1701), demanded the sending from Kyiv of Bishop Zacharias Kornilovich “and Archimandrite Dimitri of Novo-Gradsky of Chernigov, so that one of them could be appointed metropolitan of Siberia.” On February 10, 1701, Dimitri left his homeland, never to return to it, and on March 23 of the same year he was appointed Metropolitan of Siberia in Moscow. He was 50 years old, his health, always weak, was upset by intensive work, he fell ill in Moscow; but was only waiting for the passage of the rivers to go to Tobolsk. Peter visited Demetrius, canceled his decree, and on January 4, 1702, the Siberian saint was installed as Metropolitan of Rostov and Yaroslavl. Here begins the second and last most glorious and fruitful era of his life. The saint uses all his energy to care for the enlightenment of the flock entrusted to him: the ignorant, illiterate clergy and the dark masses, seduced by various schismatic teachers. Realizing that it was difficult to raise the low level of general development with decrees alone, the saint turned to another weapon: personal tours of the diocese (a measure rarely used in those days), sermons, epistles, deliberate writings against the schism, schools for clergy and simpletons. With all the monastery estates coming under the jurisdiction of the monastic order, the funds of the Rostov ruler became so small that he was sometimes unable to satisfy the most insignificant personal needs, not to mention the diocesan needs, and meanwhile the saint tried, if possible, to introduce strict order, lower the duties of the servants and not burden the subordinate clergy with various exactions. Here he often had to fight with the orders of the monastery order and its representatives, who, in view of the then political circumstances and government needs (1702–1709), unceremoniously treated representatives of the church and their property. In his sermons (especially abundant in the period 1702–1706), the saint is a representative of high Christian charity, especially towards the lower classes of the population, and in this sense agrees with John Chrysostom. From the outside, the saint's sermons lose their scholastic character; they are imbued with warmth of feeling, are distinguished by bold, free eloquence, and often contain hints of contemporary events. Such are the sermons about the walk of the personified Kingdom of Heaven through the royal and boyar treasuries, through shopping arcades and orders and town halls, sermons about the search for Christ, about fasting in the army, about royal dignity and vices, etc. (Works of St. Demetrius vol. III, pp. 244, II, 166, 341, IV, 208, 416, II, 67, 205, etc.). The preacher’s main desire is to make people kinder and better; the main theme is love and mercy. While sympathizing with education, the saint more than once hints at the harsh aspects of Petrine reform, which ran counter to the ideals developed by church life; It was not for nothing that Dimitri was a friend of Stefan Yavorsky and an admirer of Pososhkov. The saint's sermons, which often amaze us with their witty antics, were so liked that they have come down to us in numerous handwritten copies, despite a number of printed editions (since the middle of the 18th century), and are still printed by the Holy Synod and the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra both in their entirety and in extracts. Having completed his work on the Chet-Minea on February 9, 1705 and having printed the fourth part by May of the same year, the saint erected an eternal monument for himself in the history of the Russian church: his Chet-Minea are still reprinted by the Synod with minor abbreviations and hitherto remain the only ones for Christians of the Orthodox confession; Moreover, we must remember that this is the work of one person, while in the West entire congregations of Bollandists worked on the lives. During the first time of his Rostov life, from 1702–1706, the saint was also concerned with the fate of his school (1702–1705). This is the first diocesan Rostov school, with South Russian teachers; open to the clergy and common people, it is also interesting for its general educational humanitarian character among the exclusively technical utilitarian schools of the Peter the Great of this period (digital schools opened in 1702). Theatrical performances of a religious nature, given for the entertainment of students of the Rostov school, forestalled the requirements of “actions and comedies” of the spiritual regulations and gave rise to rumors about Demetrius’s dramatic writing, which we certainly reject. The last time of his life, already in the midst of illness, the saint devoted to the fight against the schism and the compilation of the Cell Chronicle (a type of biblical chronicle that the saint wanted to bring to modern times). For the latter, Demetrius ordered a number of foreign books from abroad, which after his death constituted his main and only asset; from Moscow through his friend, Hieromonk Chudovsky Theologist, with whom the saint became friends during successive services in Moscow (1705–1706 and 1708), Demetrius obtained Russian chronographs and chronicles; however, the work remained unfinished. The result of the study of the schism was the famous polemical work of the saint, Search on the Bryn faith, completed in 1709. It is important as a modern presentation of the then state of the schism, based on direct acquaintance with the schism teachers and the writings delivered to the saint at his request. Part 3 of “The Search” is especially interesting in everyday life. The saint's polemical methods are distinguished by such sharpness that schismatics put the name of St. Demetrius next to the name of Patriarch Nikon, and the moral authority of the saint forced Peter the Great to subsequently enter the following phrase in his book: “to write the book of beatitudes against the schismatics and to show that by the deeds of Rostov and his comrades.” But the health of the saint, due to the bad climate of Rostov and the illness of Demetrius, grew weaker and weaker. On October 27, 1907, the saint, calling his singers to the chamber of the cross in the Rostov Kremlin, ordered them to sing several psalms, including his own compositions, then he told his beloved cell attendant about his life and bowed to him to the ground, and on the morning of October 28, 1709, the saint was found resting on his knees in prayer. Placed by birth in the middle circle of society, Dimitri Savich could equally well get to know both the upper and lower classes of the Little Russian people in general and the clergy in particular. Traveling through Lithuania and Belarus gave him the opportunity to get acquainted with the internal structure of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the plight of the Orthodox. The Moscow order became no less clear to him, both during his stay in Kyiv and during the controversy about transubstantiation and his first trip to Moscow. The main shortcoming that caught the eye of the future saint was, both here and there, the lack of broad education, especially on the part of church history. In the name of glorifying the Little Russian Church, under the influence of the educated figures around him, Baranovich, Gisel, Yasinsky and others, Savich began the enormous church-historical work of compiling and reworking the Chet-Minei. On the other hand, yielding to the demands of life, he also indulges in economic and practical activities in the monasteries entrusted to his abbot, although this takes him away from scientific work. On September 21, 1752, under Bishop Arseny Matseevich, during the renovation of the cathedral church of the Rostov Yakovlevsky Monastery, the body of Demetrius, buried, according to his instructions, to the right of the entrance doors, was found incorrupt, and on April 22, 1757 he was canonized. In 1763, Empress Catherine was in Rostov to witness the placement of the relics of the saint in a silver shrine arranged by Empress Elizabeth. The saint's works, very numerous, are listed in detail in Gennad's Dictionary of Russian Writers, vol. I, pp. 303–305. The complete collection of his works, which we had, dated 1857, in 5 parts, is distinguished by great negligence. The Chet-Minea are not included in this edition, but are published separately. The edition available to us is marked 1855. The literature about it is collected in a study without the name of the author (Nechaev, Barsky and Gorsky) St. Demetrius of Rostov, M. 1849 (II 2032 n.) and Shlyapkina, St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time St. Petersburg. 1891 (XIV 460 102 3 n.) (Notes of the historical and philological faculty of the Imperial St. Petersburg University, vol. XXIV). Bishop's later articles Uglichsky Amfilochiya (Dushep. Reading) and others are insignificant.