St. Demetrius of Rostov and his time (1651-1709)

In memory of friends and mentors Alexander Antonovich Revvi, Orest Fedorovich Miller, Urban-Morbert Rokicki. M. Pogodin wrote in 1849 about the book “St. Dimitri Rostovsky" M. 1849, comparing it with Granovsky's work "Abbot Suger": "This is an excellent study about the unforgettable author of the Cheti-Minea, but not his biography... In Suger you can see, more or less, a living person, but here it’s as if you see only holy relics! The author is always afraid, as if to say too much, and does not say what is necessary, constantly thinks about decency, as if every line should have a dogmatic or canonical character, which is why much is compressed, cramped, dry.” This remark of our famous historian prompted the undersigned, back in 1881, to begin researching the life and writings of St. Demetrius, in which intention he was supported by his late teacher O. F. Miller. The topic was all the more interesting because it touched on one of the most important moments of Russian historical life - the era of Peter the Great: the view on the latter, even until now, despite the mass of wonderful works, cannot be called completely established. How to approach such a topic, how to develop it, where to get materials from? It was possible to study specifically the literary activity of St. Demetrius, to develop the question of the sources of the Saint's Chet-Minya, especially in Russian Lives, to compare the saint's sermons with the sermons of previous and contemporary speakers, Russian and Polish, to explore the language of his writings, etc. But, as we study the writings of St. Demetrius, I became more and more interested in his personality, and the result of studying it in connection with the literary activity of the saint and the circumstances of his time was the present essay. The life of the saint sharply falls into two periods: Little Russian and Great Russian. In the first period, the saint, judging by the materials available to me, does not seem to be a sharply defined figure: he is a pious, scholastically educated monk, with an ardent attachment to his native church and country, looking suspiciously at the Moscow clergy, in a word, in his external activity, this is the same general type of Little Russian spiritual figure that we see in Gisela, Ioannikiy Golyatovsky, Anthony Radivilovsky, Innokenty Monastyrsky and other South Russian spiritualists. Perhaps this monotony is explained, in addition to the all-leveling monasticism of the above-mentioned persons, and by the lack of historical material about them. For the last reason, and when reviewing the first period of St. Demetrius, I had to talk more about the environment surrounding the future saint than about him himself. The second Great Russian period of his life, on the contrary, bears a sharper personal imprint. The saint gains fame not as a learned writer of lives, but as a great spiritual speaker. If St. Demetrius was not a metropolitan and did not act during the great era of transformations, then his word “even wise and dissolved in salt” would not have immediately received that high assessment and the meaning that it enjoyed already during his lifetime and which it rightly enjoys now not only among educated people, but, most importantly, among the masses. In a great era, great personalities emerge and occupy prominent positions, embodying the best aspects, the best aspirations of that time, which are not clearly recognized by the masses. These people, in addition to their personal merits, are especially important when they embody not the individual ideals of one or another circle, but when they concentrate in themselves “the joy of all Israel.” The powerful personality of Peter the Great is infinitely majestic and arouses involuntary reverence, but thanks to numerous studies it became clear that the reforms of the great Transformer were reforms only of the state, and that they led only to narrow-class results without winning the sympathy of the masses, as the reforms of Hus or Luther acquired them. This mass reacted indifferently and mutely to Peter and his cause. The genius of Peter did not succeed, and there was no time, to remake the worldview of the Russian people: what it was in the time of Peter, so it remained during the reign of his successors, and only now, from February 19, 1861, a slow internal movement began in the course of ideas, in the development of the consciousness of the entire Russian society. Otherwise, of course, these reforms would have been accepted in Western Europe, in any state where they were the result of life lived. Conducted in Russia, they, however, made it possible for several persons to come into the world, unthinkable under the old Russian order - but they were only a window to Europe, a window cut high, into which only people of high mental stature could look, and the rest remained outside the light of this window; and yet it is felt that these others, long before Peter, had already tried to cut through the door, although not in the same direction where Peter cut the window; it is felt that among these others there were people who wanted something new, fresh, who did not want to revolve within the old, narrow boundaries of a worldview and way of life that had been established once and for all. Southwestern Rus' came to their aid and merged with them, with its leaders who, while remaining Russian and Orthodox people, knew how to take from the West what was good there, without rejecting that of the Byzantine heritage that belongs to the common heritage of all mankind. But both those and other faces almost disappear in the rays of the charm of the powerful personality of Peter and his associates, people of the same direction as him: how little we value and are familiar with Peter’s contemporaries: Pososhkov, Metropolitan Job of Novgorod, St. Mitrofan of Voronezh, Stefan Yavorsky, not to mention the predecessors of the converter: Tsars Alexei and Theodora, Princess Sophia, Prince V.V. Golitsyn, etc. Among these names the name of St. Demetrius should be included. In the harsh era of Peter's innovations, the saint appeared as the guardian of the old heritage of the Russian people - the living Orthodox faith, operating through love. The people sensed this, and it was not for nothing that the saint’s works belonged and still belong to the favorite reading of the Russian people. My essay is dedicated to elucidating the character and position of this enlightened, in the best sense of the word, popular figure of past times. In addition to printed publications, many handwritten data served as material for my work. Trying to save them for the use of future researchers, I cited them in their entirety, despite their varied value, sacrificing the evenness of presentation. Some of them are already difficult to read: such are the rotten manuscripts of the Yaroslavl consistory and Pribilovich’s theses; others may not always be available to persons interested in our questions and unable to check them at the storage location in Rostov, Yaroslavl, Uglich, Moscow, Kyiv, St. Petersburg. Printed editions of the saint's works are extremely unsatisfactory, not excluding the last (third), which was at our fingertips - Moscow, 1857, five parts 1. The same should be noted about the Chet-Minaia, published during the life of the saint: they were corrected by an entire commission at the Lavra (see below). Few authentic manuscripts of the saints have survived. The rough manuscripts of his works, placed with him in the coffin according to his will, were found decayed when the relics were found 2 . Much has disappeared not so long ago. Such, for example, are the saint’s handwritten verses, mentioned in the Inventory of the Putivl Molchansk Sophronium Hermitage, St. Petersburg. 1846, p. 33, but now, as we were kindly notified in 1889 by Fr. abbot of the desert, no longer there; the saint’s diary (see below), the prayer book that was in the Bauze library, etc. disappeared. Among the manuals, we point out the above-mentioned excellent study “St. Dimitri Rostovsky, M. 1849,” edited, as we heard, by A.V. Gorsky from two student essays by Fr. Nechaev and Barsky. We will not dwell on the remaining printed and handwritten works of Priklonsky (director of Rost.-Yakovl. mon. No. 370), Ambrose (director of I.P.B.), Dobroslavin, Chernyshev, unknown (director of the Romanian museum). We will only note the synodal printed life written by Arseny Matsievich (Ruk. I.P.B.Q No. 288 l. 71 vol.), to which we repeatedly refer. Of course, it is not for me to judge how accurately and vividly the identity of the saint has been clarified in my many years of work, but I cannot help but express deep gratitude to the people who contributed to me with moral and material support: His Eminence Johnathan, Archbishop of Yaroslavl and Rostov, Fr. Archimandrite Juvenaly, Viceroy of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, Fr. Archimandrite Hilarion, rector of the Rostov Spaso-Yakovlevsky Monastery, Fr. Archimandrite Vladimir, librarian of the Synodal Library in Moscow, Fr. Archimandrite Vladimir, librarian of the Spaso-Yaroslavl Bishop's House, Fr. Abbot Gabriel, sacristan of the Rostov Spaso-Yakovlevsky Monastery, Fr. Archpriest of the Kiev St. Sophia Cathedral P. G. Lebedintsev, N. M. Anichkov, S. I. Baltromaitis, I. A. Bychkov, V. P. Lambin, A. S. Rodossky and A. A. Titov. We offer our sincere gratitude to our comrade P.F. Kadykin for compiling the index. “Where I will be described or rewritten, honor by correcting God by sharing, and do not curse, for the books are worn out, but the mind is not young,” Apart from many works that do not belong to the saint at all, the lexical side itself is no good: the works of the saint have been translated and corrected. Correspondence about the publication of the saint's works in 1758, Yaros. Ep. Ved. 1872 No. 2 et seq. From the works that do not belong to the saint, we note the Spiritual Alphabet, probably of Kopiinsky, the General Confession of Sins and the Epistle of Chrysogon to Anastasia from the works of Callistus Xanthopoulos, Kissing the Wounds of Christ by Demetrius Cantakouzenos, sermons on the worship of icons and in week 27 according to the Holy Spirit (Works vol. II, pp. 54 and 627) by Stephen of Yavorsky, Council on Jesus of Nazareth (see appendix), etc. Yar. Ep. Ved. 1879 No. 51, p. 404. For those interested in the discovery of the relics of St. Demetrius can be cited as Wanderer 1885, No. 3, p. 446 and No. 12, p. 663.