Глава XIV
Machine translation from the original · Show original
At the Caucasian Theological Seminary, with the arrival of the new rector Archimandrite Herman and the new inspector appointed to this position from the professors of the Novgorod seminary, cathedral hieromonk Isaac, the work of teaching and supervision in general in the seminary, and at the same time the moral life of the students, noticeably changed for the better. At the request of the bishop, in a short time the inspector was elevated to the rank of archimandrite.
The first orders of the bishop included resolution 169, which he put on the journal of the seminary board regarding the punishment of guilty students.
“I wish,” the bishop wrote, “that the following punishments be used in the religious schools of the Caucasian diocese:
1. A reprimand without using swear words - words that only humiliate humanity and suppress the sense of honor in young men, which feeling, if understood correctly, is a treasure.
2. Placement in a corner or penalty table, simply or on your knees.
3. Left without lunch and without dinner, on bread and water.
4. Punishment with rods, with the exception of students of the seminary itself.
5. Punishment: arrest in a dark room, complete deprivation of communication with comrades and subsistence on bread and water.
This last type of punishment should be used primarily for seminary students, proportioning the duration of punishment to the importance of the offense. In cases of violation of the rules of subordination, politeness before superiors, decency in the church of God, and especially in cases of rudeness to superiors and in cases of bitterness, continue the arrest until the time when the punished person completely relents and begins to express and bring sincere repentance. The premature release from arrest of a person who has become embittered and stubborn causes significant harm to the character of that person.
Punishment by blows, pulling of hair and ears will be expelled from theological schools. At that moment when the teacher personally punishes the pupil, at this miserable moment humanity suffers moral humiliation both in the person of the pupil and in the person of the teacher. But in the person of the teacher such humiliation is incomparably deeper than in the person of the pupil. By such actions, the teacher deprives himself of the respect of his students, their love and trust.
The high, noble character of the teacher is the main constraint and threat for the pupils. I invite educators of Caucasian spiritual youth to this height, the rise to which is filled with spiritual fruit, but is not alien to significant labor with oneself. A pious and well-intentioned teacher should make it a rule not to resort to either reprimand or punishment in the hour of his anger. The hour of anger is an hour of madness for everyone who is angry, even if the angry one belonged to the foremost sages. Let punishment be the fruit of a mature, impartial judgment; only under this condition is it beneficial for children and elevates the opinion of their teacher. Punishment should not be cruel, but complete; weak punishment spoils children.
This is my desire to announce in all theological schools of the Caucasian diocese.”
Soon after taking over the administration of the diocese, namely January 25, 1858, the bishop considered it necessary to inform Prince Baryatinsky, the viceroy of the Caucasus, in letter No. 11,170, about the miserable situation in which the Caucasian episcopal see was located. He writes:
“Having reviewed the funds that the Caucasian and Black Sea Episcopal House currently has for its maintenance, I have the honor to place these funds at the discretion of Your Excellency. The picture of these means inevitably gives rise to questions:
1. Can a bishop with a staff assigned to him maintain everything required of him? 2. Therefore, can the newly established diocese itself exist?
These questions have already been partly resolved by the fact that the Holy Synod has hitherto given the bishop one thousand rubles in silver in addition to his salary and one thousand five hundred rubles for the maintenance of him and the bishop’s house.
To this I consider it worthwhile to add the following: the diocesan states were approved in this form at the end of the last century, when money was incomparably more expensive and consumer goods incomparably cheaper. Since that time, the states remained unchanged, and their deficiency was compensated for by economic benefits, that is, various land and quitrents, which were most often issued by the treasury, and sometimes acquired privately.
From the two statements attached herewith, please see both the microscopic size of the staffing position for the bishop's house and the microscopic size of the land allocated to it to support the staffing situation. With such means, it turns out to be absolutely impossible to support the bishop himself, especially the steward, confessor, hieromonks and other officials of the house itself, which monastics should be, as well as the maintenance of the secretary and officials of the Consistory, whose office work is in no way less than the office work of provincial boards. The cathedral archpriest and other members of the white clergy, as having support from their parishes in addition to their salaries, are assured of existence.
Being convinced that Your Excellency desires the existence of the Caucasian diocese, I considered it my duty to present to your view the present state of its means of existence, for the sole purpose that you would deign to have a complete and clear understanding of this subject. Allow me, having looked more closely into matters, to ascend to Your Excellency with the most humble idea of ensuring the maintenance of the bishop's house. This summer I hope to personally introduce myself to Your Excellency, and, having learned Your Excellency’s view on this subject, on the one hand, and, on the other, having become familiar with the means of securing it, I believe it is possible for me to present the matter to you with all clarity.
Calling upon you the abundant blessing of Heaven with feelings of great respect” and so on.
Simultaneously with this letter, the bishop began correspondence about replacing the regular servants at the house with money. This correspondence was carried out exclusively with the civil department, and due to the extreme moderation of the bishop’s demands that each worker be replaced with a house payment of 40 rubles per person per year, this matter was completed with complete success. The idea of this of the prince governor was highly approved, and the ministers were replaced with a monetary contribution of 1,760 silver rubles per year. This payment began to be made in February 1859.
When Bishop Ignatius left St. Petersburg, the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, Count A.P. Tolstoy, repeatedly repeated his promise that he, following the example of his predecessors, would be given 1000 rubles in silver to supplement the 285 rubles of the salary determined by the state. Upon arrival in Stavropol, although the bishop repeatedly wrote, reminded and asked for the release of this promised benefit, presenting the extremely meager funds of the department, and its disorganization, and the local high cost of all life's needs, and his own illness, but all these reminders were in vain. It is obvious that, despite Metropolitan Gregory’s goodwill towards him, he was gloatingly given over to sorrow and hardship through the intrigues of the synodal office. We see confirmation of this from the following correspondence regarding the arrangement of premises for the bishop’s residence.
On the twenty-sixth of January, 1859, the bishop entered the Holy Synod with a presentation on the means by which the temporary premises of the bishop were built, and asked the Holy Synod to give a blessing to those who contributed to the success of this work with donations, which, however, the Synod refused, reprimanding the bishop for acting incorrectly, which exceeded his rights in relation to donations from the purse sums of parish churches. These circumstances are set out in detail in the report and therefore are not repeated here.
Let us note, however, that the bishop’s order was made “in relation,” as he wrote in his submission, 171 “to Art. 134th Statute of Consistories, following the example of how this was previously done in the Caucasian diocese and how it is done in other dioceses. I have chosen as a model the form that was used in the Vologda diocese (in 1832 or 1833 - I don’t remember exactly in which year) for the repair of the warm cathedral, and Bishop Stefan of Vologda and Ustyug invited churches and monasteries through formal relations to donate to the restoration of the cathedral, which did not have any own funds for this, and I, being the rector of the provincial Lopotov monastery, participated in the contribution of offerings - a form that brought complete clarity to the matter, approved by the Holy Synod, which declared its blessing to the donors.
My appeal was made through the dean, receipts were sent to the churches for the money received... I formed a special construction commission to carry out the work. I invited Fr. to the commission. O. the rector and inspector of the seminary, priest Feodor Orlov, secretary of the Consistory, and the head of the Stavropol merchants Derevshchikov.
Reporting this to the Holy Governing Synod, on the basis of Article 142 of the Statute of Spiritual Consistories, I have the honor to submit before the Holy Synod the most humble request that the Holy Synod would honor the effort and zeal of the Caucasian flock to firmly establish the diocese in the region, which, undoubtedly, was achieved to a positive extent by the arrangement of a very modest, but a convenient and lasting shelter for the bishop on the spot, also provided free of charge by the zeal of the citizens.
Such an action eliminates the position of the bishop in the Caucasus, which has fluctuated for fifteen years; such an action can completely eliminate the correspondence about the issuance of a sum from the Holy Synod for the initial establishment of the episcopal house, which correspondence was actively carried out under the Most Reverend Jeremiah both in the spiritual and civil departments of the region, fell somewhat silent under the Most Reverend Ioannikis and would inevitably arise with new vivacity, due to that disastrous position to which the bishop's house has reached... I submit before the Holy Synod the most humble request that the Holy Synod deign to declare a blessing for donations to the Caucasian clergy, who are worthy of encouragement and in need of encouragement, as well as to the Stavropol merchants, who have become unaccustomed to donations to the Church and in the present case have taken a step in a new direction, in which they need support and encouragement, that will inevitably benefit the Holy Church both materially and morally.”
The Synod did not pay any attention to the needs of the diocese, to the needs of the bishop and the department, to the benefit of the Church and surrendered the bishop and the Church to hatred and possible oppression, with which, in spite of even the first present Metropolitan Gregory, as we will see later, the official people of the Synod Office found the opportunity to persecute the bishop, hated by these people for his straightforwardness, for his fearless fight against the abuses of these people, for his persistent the bishop's concerns for the welfare of his flock and the entire church system.
Simultaneously with this submission to the Synod, the bishop, trying to support the petition, wrote to the director of the Synod office, actual state councilor P. I. Solomon, asking for his assistance in satisfying this most humble request. This letter was completely useless. The answer to this was the above-mentioned remark of the Synod. Equally unsuccessful were the bishop's petitions that, following the example of his predecessors and according to the promise of the Chief Prosecutor and Metropolitan Gregory themselves, he should be given an allowance of a thousand rubles in addition to his salary.
All these circumstances forced the bishop, in relation to the means of life, to bother the Eminence Gregory with a petitionary letter sent on February 2, 1859, No. 9. He wrote: 172
“My predecessors in the Caucasian See, the Eminences Jeremiah and Ioannikiy, in addition to the bishop’s salary, 285 rubles of salary and 457 rubles for board and carriage, received 1000 rubles in silver annually. Upon my promotion to the rank of bishop, while still in St. Petersburg and having learned about the poverty of the department of the Caucasian diocese, I asked in writing and personally to His Excellency the Synodal Chief Prosecutor Count A.P. Tolstoy, that I, following the example of my predecessors, be given the indicated auxiliary thousand rubles. The main reason for such a request was my extremely painful condition. His Excellency, out of his characteristic kindness of heart and realizing the full validity of my request, assured me with his honest and noble word that my request would certainly be granted.
Upon my arrival in Stavropol, I found the episcopal house in incomparably worse condition than I expected to find it in. I found it a ruin in every way.
This state of the house increased the needs of the bishop. Hoping that the promised assistance would be delivered to me, I was calm and even allowed myself, from the crumbs that were left from the journey, to give three hundred silver rubles to the office of the Consistory, since its officials suffered a special need due to the unusually harsh and long winter of 1858. Made from the mentioned crumbs and other expenses for the benefit of the diocese. I immediately canceled some incomes, which supplemented the bishop’s salary in addition to the auxiliary thousand and which seduced the region, which was virgin and strictly looking at the way of action of the clergy. The bishop's means of support passed from a state of moderation to a state of extreme poverty.
The sudden reduction in my means of support would have put me in a very difficult situation, precisely because of my illness, which had long required the use of mineral waters, if the special mercy of God had not unexpectedly helped me. A certain person, very little acquainted with me, without even a hint on my part, delivered me a thousand silver rubles with the notification that he was giving me this help, having learned about my special need to use mineral waters and about the lack of means for this.
I recognize this help as sent by God: for the waters produced a wonderful shock, excitement and transformation throughout my entire body, which continues to this day, freeing me gradually, although with painful action, from the scrofulous matter that nests in abundance in all members of my body. If I cannot recognize myself as completely healed due to the old age of my illness and the depletion of strength it produces, then I must, with a deep sense of gratitude to the mercy of God and to the instrument of this mercy, recognize myself as significantly improved.
Upon my return to Stavropol from a vast diocese, with a sparse population, although living in populous villages, seeing that the auxiliary thousand rubles were not sent to me, which made my situation very difficult, I depicted in the most humble petition to the Holy Synod dated September 25, 1858, No. 200, the peculiarity of the position of the Caucasian See and my basis based on this peculiarity difficult situation in terms of content.
This position of an Orthodox bishop is very natural in a heterodox and heterodox country, in which he has no civil significance; it is inapplicable in an Orthodox country, in Russia, where the bishop must necessarily preserve the customs observed everywhere, for example, traveling in a carriage and receiving visitors decently. And here, moreover, it is necessary to especially favor all classes and all different administrations: for, according to the news of the diocese, the bishop needs the special favor of all classes and all administrations.
The content that the Bishop of the Caucasus previously received, due to its meagerness, served as a source of temptation for the local public. Now the temptation has intensified, because the complete cessation of maintenance, which was considered meager, is known to all officials of the Treasury Chamber and the Treasury, and through them to the entire city. The thousand rubles sent to the bishop himself were not sent either in 1858 or 1859, and the 1,500 rubles sent for the maintenance of the house were sent in 1858, but were no longer sent in 1859.
The information that the Caucasian bishop was in extreme difficulty in terms of content passed through the Caucasus Mountains to Tiflis through the mediation of officials from the civil department, where it became the subject of conversation and temptation. The Caucasian governor, Prince Baryatinsky, wrote to the synodal chief prosecutor, asking him to petition me for a thousand rubles, which my predecessors received in addition to their salary. I was informed about this by formal means. I am very sorry that Prince Baryatinsky had to write about this to Count Tolstoy, this should not have happened.
It is necessary that here they respect the voice of the Holy Synod. The degree of this respect will constantly be in harmony with the actions that it will be pleasing to discover. Disfavour towards the individual must be sacrificed to the interests of the Church. The barely past moral position of the Caucasian bishop, a situation in which complete inattention to him and the diocese was expressed, serves as sufficient proof of this.
As for me, I cannot be satisfied enough that the Lord took me out of the noisy capital, for which I am not capable either in soul or in body. The place here is very calm, very secluded. Residents visit the bishop only on great holidays, then a lot of them gather.
I had to borrow a thousand rubles for house expenses. This money must be returned, which I hope to do by the grace of God, for the prince governor formally notified me that he is petitioning the sovereign emperor to provide the Caucasian episcopal house with annual financial assistance from the treasury in lieu of land that the region cannot provide. This assistance will replace the money of 1,500 rubles in silver, sent directly to the house. For this reason, I only petition for the provision of the thousand rubles that were allocated to the bishop himself.
Please accept, Your Eminence, this letter with favor, as a tribute that I bring to my duties to my rank and service. I will try to take all measures, if the Lord grants me so, so as not to do anything out of passion and to remain in the church field in which I am placed. If this turns out to be impossible, then I kiss this impossibility from now on with all my love, with all my joy, as if arranged by the Providence of God in favor of my accursed soul, which has to dissolve its body and stand before the impartial judgment of God. Having fulfilled my duty, I leave the rest to the will of God and the discretion of Your Eminence.
In my letter to the Synodal Chief Prosecutor, which I sent via the same mail and about the same subject, I referred to this letter to Your Eminence. Take upon yourself the long labor of showing this letter to the count, since I did not consider it proper to write to his excellency what is posted here and what I could only say before you as the high priest. I humbly ask you not to make this letter official, as it is completely confidential, it was written by me with my own hand.
Entrusting myself and the flock entrusted to me to your holy prayers and asking for your archpastoral blessing, I have the honor to be with a feeling of deepest respect and devotion,” and so on.
Simultaneously with this letter to Metropolitan Gregory, Bishop Ignatius wrote to the synodal chief prosecutor dated February 2, No. 11. 173
“Your Excellency, dear sir!
I had the honor to trouble Your Excellency with my most humble request personally and in writing, immediately after my ordination to the rank of bishop, while still in St. Petersburg, to provide me, following the example of my predecessors at the Caucasian See, with thousands of silver rubles to supplement my annual salary of 285 rubles. It is desirable that this last amount be used for medicines for my illness. My request is a consequence of need. She was graciously listened to by Your Excellency, and I received from you the repeated assurance that you will not deprive me of the necessary maintenance.
Between the many more important matters with which you are busy, it is no wonder that you have not yet had time to pay attention to my most humble request, but I, standing face to face with extreme need, again allow myself to bother you by repeating the same request. I outlined in more detail the reasons for this repetition in my letter via the same mail to His Eminence, Metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg. I asked His Eminence to show this letter to Your Excellency. I am confident in the kindness of your heart and that you will not want to imitate the evangelical rich man, who, in the short period of his earthly abundance, did not show compassion for the difficult condition of his neighbor. It was so arranged that the Gospel about this event was read at the liturgy at which I was ordained a bishop.
With feelings of great respect” and so on.
These letters had the same fate as the bishop's previous petitions on this subject.
At the beginning of 1859, the bishop, monitoring the activities of the people of his department, entered the Holy Synod with a proposal for the elevation of the rector of the local Holy Cross Monastery, Hegumen German, to the rank of archimandrite, for the awarding of the rank of archpriest of the teacher of the Ekaterinodar military gymnasium to the candidate of the Theological Academy, priest Kiparisov, and for the granting of a master's degree to the inspector of the Stavropol district school Archpriest John Tikhov-Alexandrovsky. All these ideas were approved in accordance with the petition of the bishop, from which, by the way, it is clear that in the Caucasian diocese at that time there were only three white clergy who had completed a course of science at the Theological Academies.
Soon after, Archpriest Tikhov-Alexandrovsky was introduced and approved as a member of the Caucasian Spiritual Consistory in place of Archpriest Gremyachinsky, who petitioned for his dismissal from this position. In his presentation to the Holy Synod of May 1, 1859, No. 35,174, His Eminence Ignatius says:
“At the same time, I consider it a sacred and most pleasant duty to add that Archpriest Gremyachinsky, in those personal explanations that he had with me on the occasion of the request he submitted, expressed truly Christian humility, which I contemplated with deep heartfelt tenderness and consolation. Archpriest Gremyachinsky joined in unanimous action with me in favor of the Church, and although he wants to leave the Consistory, where it seemed unnatural for him to remain due to the revision of many previous cases and changes in decisions on them due to subsequent replenishments, he decided to participate with all zeal in other diverse assignments, in which he, due to his experience and abilities, can be very useful. Even before Archpriest Gremyachinsky, Archpriest Macarius Znamensky came to a peaceful spiritual dispensation; he carries out the ministry entrusted to him with zeal and benefit. It can be unmistakably said that only Archpriest Krastilevsky remained in a state of disorder, with little hope of correction.”
As an expression of the relations of the individuals who made up the Stavropol society, one cannot pass by in silence that at the same time, that is, at the beginning of 1859, the chief of staff of the Right Wing troops, Major General Zabudsky, on behalf of the officers of the General Staff, presented the bishop with a beautifully made map of the Caucasus region as a gift.
At the same time, as can be seen from the bishop’s attitude to the head of the province dated May 2, No. 36, by their mutual agreement, work was undertaken and completed to raise the arch of the bridge built at the dacha of the bishop’s house across the Zhelobovka River, with a branch road at the entrance to the Cross Church, and to lay a highway at the very entrance to both the church and the house. These works, introduced into one general system of work with the city's bridge works, required only an addition of two hundred rubles from the bishop's house to the city's bridge funds and were carried out with great care and precision. They seemed to have completed the restoration of the bishop's premises and the entrances to his Cross Church and to the house he occupied.
The circumstance of the bishop’s involuntary collision with the Chief Priest of the Caucasian Army Gumilyovsky is not without interest;
“The Caucasian seminary board presented me with its journal dated June 24, 1858, for consideration, in the article ?II of which the following is stated: “Relation of the chief priest of the Caucasian army dated May 29, 1858 No. 1329, by which he is notified that, due to the attitude of the seminary board dated April 22 of this year No. 407, he entered through the chief of staff of the Caucasian Army to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, who deigned to admit that the clergy subordinate to him should not provide the information about schismatics required by the Caucasian Theological Seminary. If the diocesan authorities or the seminary needed any information regarding the schismatics, they could turn to the appointed ataman of this army, who, at his discretion, would provide the required information, and if necessary, first enter into communication with me or ask for permission from the commander-in-chief.”
At the same time, the chief priest adds that the clergy subordinate to him, in relation to the course of action with schismatics, has until now been guided and is now guided by the rules and instructions set forth in the secret order of the Holy Synod of April 5, 1845, and that the books sent out to them serve as an important aid to the clergy in converting schismatics to Orthodoxy: 1) “Truly ancient and truly Orthodox Church"; 2) “The history of the Russian schism.”
Reference: the seminary board regarding the improvement of teaching in the missionary department referred to the Chief Priest of the Caucasian Army dated April 22, 1858 No. 407 on the obligation of the line clergy to provide the seminary board with information about the progress of the conversion of schismatics and the measures that are being taken to this end.
Definition of seminary board: “Having taken note of this attitude, apply it to action.”
I cannot help but confess to Your Excellency that it seemed strange to me on what basis the diocesan authorities were attached to the seminary board, while the relations of these two departments to the department of the chief priest are completely different. The Caucasian diocesan authorities, neither in this case nor in any other, gave any reason for such an indication to be made against him. It, that is, the Consistory itself (§ 1 Ordinary spirit. Consist.), has no connection with the department of the chief priest, and the Caucasian seminary educates clergy for the line army, which is why its board is, of necessity, in direct and frequent communication with the head of the line clergy, the chief priest of the Caucasian army.
The Caucasian Seminary is, like all other seminaries, under the direct and complete authority of the Theological Educational Administration and one of the academies to the district of which it belongs. The local bishop has the right of immediate supervision over the seminary and verification of its actions, and in administrative, economic and academic relations it is completely dependent on its mentioned superiors and acts according to the instructions given to it.
Since the teaching of the schismatics has countless shades, the most diverse, then all the seminaries in Russia collect local information about the teaching of the schismatics and collect it precisely through the local clergy, as systematically trained in the dogmas of the Church, in order to timely acquaint students with the local errors of the schismatics and thus prepare pastors capable of successfully acting on the schismatics, in accordance with their local errors.
This is what the Caucasian Seminary did. She came with a representation to the Caucasian bishop, and as a result of her representation, an order was made so that the diocesan priests of those parishes in which there are schismatics should deliver information about their errors, and especially about the peculiarities of these errors, directly to the seminary board.
On the same basis, for the same purpose, on the same subject, in accordance with the procedure generally accepted throughout Russia, the Caucasian Seminary Board reacted to the Chief Priest of the Caucasian Army. It had no right not to do this! It did not have the right, could not even have the thought of eliminating a clergyman, when the subject of communication should be the dogmas of faith, and turning to a secular person. This is done in relation to all diocesan departments when the need for communication arises. The missionary class of the seminary most exists for the Linear Cossack clergy: in the Caucasian diocese there are very, very few schismatics - almost none.
Having presented to Your Excellency the actions of the seminary in due form, I turn to the relations of the Caucasian diocesan authorities proper to the chief priest. The Caucasian diocesan authorities fulfill all the needs of the chief priest with all haste, with all caution, with all love. Even the Consistory is not involved in these matters; for greater haste, they are decided by the bishop directly.
For their part, the Caucasian diocesan authorities did not bother the chief priest either in matters of schismatics or in any other matters, fortunately having no reasons for this. And I would not have paid any attention to the present review of the chief priest to the seminary board as relating solely to the spiritual students of his department, if the diocesan authorities had not been mentioned here, which did not take any part in the present matter, and if the matter had not been presented in this form to the prince governor, whose opinion I value as a treasure.
As the Chief Priest of the Caucasian Army presented his report to His Excellency the Prince Viceroy through Your Excellency, I consider it my most pleasant duty to humbly ask Your Excellency: take the trouble to report to His Excellency this letter, which serves as a replenishment and explanation of the matter, without which explanation and replenishment a shadow is cast on the actions of the Caucasian diocesan authorities.
The information obtained by the seminaries, after proper analysis, is presented to the highest spiritual authorities and serves as an important aid for the compilation of those excellent works about schismatics, with which Russian spiritual literature has been enriched in modern times. Your Excellency, who is so familiar with the scientific field, is quite obvious the importance of information from the living, obtained in the above manner, about the teaching of schismatics in seminaries. Such information is rarely found in textbooks that present the general misconceptions of sects.
What to do when, for the spiritual students of the diocesan department and for the spiritual students of the Line Army, the seminary - one seminary, having fulfilled its duty to the chief priest and to the students of his department, must now limit itself to books about schismatics, among which are two excellent works indicated by the chief priest, and that local information about the peculiarities of schismatic teachings in the region, which will be delivered from the diocesan priests. She was removed from responsibility to her superiors for the incompleteness of the collected local information by the will of the prince governor, announced to her in relation to the chief priest.
The seminary will hardly have the opportunity to treat the chieftain of the army; the need for this occurs more for the diocesan authorities, who have always acted according to their duties.
Calling on you." and so on.
Leaving Stavropol to review the diocese, the bishop reported this to the chief priest for information, and at the same time determined approximately the time of his return in case during this period of time the clergy of the military department encountered any needs for the actions of the episcopal spiritual authority. At the end of the year, in the fall, the chief priest, touring his churches, visited the bishop, and from the bishop’s letter to him dated May 4, 1859, No. 37, 176, we already see a significant change in the mutual relations of these two authorities of the spiritual world in the Caucasian region. The bishop writes to Chief Priest Gumilevsky:
“Your Reverence, dear sir!
Those signs of sincere brotherly love that you show me inspire me to inform you at your discretion as follows:
The Caucasian Seminary Board, guided by the instructions of the Kazan Academic Board, which is in charge of the Caucasian Seminary, asked both the Caucasian bishop and the chief priest of the Caucasian Army to provide information about the schismatics in their departments. Since this requirement, according to the news, did not seem quite clear, here the action of the seminary board was mixed with the Caucasian diocesan one, on the basis of which followed the correspondence known to Your Reverence and the order that the seminary board refer to the schismatics to the ataman of the Cossack Line Army.
Having seen this from the seminary journal, since I am looking through the journals of the board, I outlined in a letter to His Excellency the Chief of Staff of the Caucasian Army the relationship of the seminary to the bishop and to the academic board, dated July 5, 1858, No. 146. These relationships are a feature of the spiritual department and, quite naturally, they are unknown to the Caucasian military department.
The seminary board brought this order to the attention of the Kazan academic board, which instructed the seminary board to communicate with the ataman through the Caucasian bishop, since it is not customary for the seminary board to act on its own in these cases. The seminary board presented this order of the academic board to me in paragraph 1 of its journal dated March 14. I gave the following review: “I do not recognize the right to correspond with the city ataman about matters relating to the churches and clergy of the Cossack Line Army, for this would be a clear interference in a matter directly subject to the chief priest of the Caucasian army.” Regarding matters relating to the Caucasian Diocesan Department, I always fulfill this duty of mine.
The seminary board came to me with a request that I show it the way to obtain the information it needs and to fulfill the instructions of the academic board, as a result of the order of the Holy Synod.
Since this circumstance has become more clear than before, I turn to Your Reverence with the most humble request, would it please you to take upon yourself the work of communicating with the appointed ataman on your department, since I carry out this on the diocesan department. Attaching herewith a copy of the order of the academic board of the Caucasian seminary, I humbly ask you to honor me with a notification of your order on this subject.
I have the honor to be with feelings of complete respect and sincere devotion” and so on.
The obvious dislike of the Synod's office towards the bishop forced the bishop, in his needs, whenever the opportunity presented itself, to treat the viceroy of the Caucasus, who always treated the bishop's petitions very favorably. Thus, he entered with a proposal to the governor of the award of the Stavropol city head of the merchant Derevshchikov with the crown of the Order of St. Stanislav, 2nd degree (which Derevshchikov already had) for his participation in the donation, which made it possible to lay the foundation for the construction of, although not rich, but decent and quite comfortable premises for the bishop. At the request of the bishop, around the same time, by order of the viceroy prince, 330 acres of land were left to the bishop's house for the use of the village.
Kugulte, allocated for the settlement of full-time servants of the bishop's house, which the Chamber of State Property intended to annex to its lands on the basis that the appointment of full-time servants to the bishop's house by people was replaced by the release of money: 40 rubles per person, and that this replacement had already been approved by the highest permission.
The nobility of the Stavropol province petitioned His Imperial Majesty to establish a special committee from among them, which would draw up a draft regulation on improving and organizing the life of the landowner peasants. On January 15, 1859, after a solemn prayer service was performed in the cathedral, this committee, chaired by the provincial leader of the nobility, was opened by the head of the province.
This case aroused many rumors of the most outrageous direction. The bishop, knowing this and bearing in mind the influence that the clergy could have on the peasants in this matter, with a circular dated January 17, printed in the provincial printing house and sent to all parishes with the assistance of civil authorities as quickly as possible, explained to the clergy his view on this matter, tangibly drawn from the teaching of the Gospel, from the words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Here is the content of the circular. Having spoken in the introduction about the opening of the above-mentioned committee, he continues 177:
“It is very natural,” he says in circular No. 3 dated January 17, 1859, “that in this important matter, in which the beneficial light of the teaching of Christ, emanating from the Gospel and taught to the Holy Church, is especially needed to guide conscience and reason. Both landowners and peasants will turn to the shepherds of the Church for a word of edification, for a word of advice, for a word of consolation and reassurance. For this reason, I consider it my most sacred duty to teach the church pastors of the Caucasian diocese in all clarity and certainty the direction that they should acquire and constantly maintain in their conversations with the flock on a subject so important: improving the life of the landowner peasants.
The direction in this circumstance has already been taught by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and is stored, as in a treasury, in the Divine Gospel, in which an attentive and pious reader will find a solution to all perplexities and instructions for the most prudent and generally useful behavior in all various cases of life. The Holy Evangelist Luke narrates (Luke 12:13) that one day a certain man approached the Lord Jesus Christ and asked the Lord to enter into the matter of dividing the estate between this unknown man and his brother. The Lord responded with the following remarkable words, filled with deep wisdom and holiness: Who made Me to judge or divide you?... See, beware of covetousness (Luke 12; 14-15).
Further, the Lord depicted in a parable, understandable to everyone, how dangerous the passion of covetousness is, how deceptive are the seductive dreams depicted by this passion in the imagination, that they never actually come true, but only deprive the person slandered by them of virtue and the eternal salvation that crowns temporary virtue. The answer of our Savior and His behavior in the above-mentioned case can be, and therefore should be, completely satisfactory, completely definitive models for behavior and conversations for the pastors of the Church in this domestic issue. It is clearly seen that the Lord’s answer to a man engaged in dividing property with his brother contains two sections. Firstly, the Lord mentioned the material part of the matter, that is, the division of the estate itself, and deigned to renounce any participation in the judgment of the matter on his material, civil side.
Secondly, the Lord deigned all His attention and deep edification to the spiritual side of the matter, indicating that in this matter, and, consequently, in any similar matter, one must primarily be wary and beware of being carried away by the secretive passion of covetousness, from which, as from a seed, other passions, more obvious, already obviously disastrous for individuals and for society, should undoubtedly be born. These are: envy, suspicion, slander, murmuring, and finally, obvious hatred, enmity, quarrel with their sad consequences. The beginning of these consequences is the passion of extortion! And the Lord, as the omniscient God, shrewdly pointed out to the people who were faced with the division of their property, the hidden principle of evil, which in such circumstances serves as the source of all other types of evil - the passion for covetousness.
We have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16), said the holy Apostle Paul on behalf of the entire Christian Church. We Christians must think, we must reason, we must speak as our God incarnate thought, understood, and spoke. Such unity with the Lord should primarily be carefully instilled, carefully grown, carefully preserved by the shepherds of the Church, as those who bear the most sacred responsibility of leading the entire Christian brotherhood towards virtue and salvation. In the upcoming work, let the conversations, advice, and instructions of the shepherds be aimed at avoiding the flock from being carried away by passions.
Shepherds! Teach both landowners and peasants who turn to you for advice, so that in meekness of spirit, in pious self-sacrifice, they turn with frequent prayers to God, begging His mercy to grant them to wisely conceive, process and accomplish a great domestic work that should raise the state to a high degree of prosperity.
Teach the sheep of Christ, so that they constantly feed in the pasture of Christ, that is, constantly feed their souls with the teaching of Christ, which commands to carefully and constantly preserve love, mutual peace, mercy, goodness, which rejects all passions, no matter in what plausible vestment and cover these passions are dressed to deceive people. Wherever heat is revealed, there is certainly a secret engine - passion. True virtue is always accompanied by an undisturbed state of mind, a quiet and strong meekness, which constantly serves as a sign that the heart is under the guidance and authority of a sound mind.
Shepherds! Steadfastly and sacredly adhere to the direction taught to you here. Pay all your attention so that in the matter the spiritual side of it, entrusted to you by the very law of God, by your very sacred calling, retains its dignity, which is clearly indicated to it by the Gospel. The pious and godly direction of souls that you will nourish and support will undoubtedly have a beneficial effect on the material side of the matter. At the same time, carefully guard yourself not only from interference in civil orders and from any judgment about them, but also from any even private and seemingly confidential conversations and advice about the material side of the matter. This is forbidden to you both by the law of God and the law of the state. By faithfully fulfilling our sacred duty entrusted to us by God, we will fulfill our duty as Christians, which we owe to the Lord, and the duty of our subjects, which we owe to our most pious sovereign, our Emperor. Our king, led by the angelic kindness of his heart, wants to bring the highest prosperity to all his subjects without exception.
The consistory has to send this appeal to all the deans of the Stavropol province so that they immediately communicate it to all the clergy under their jurisdiction, obliging them to subscribe to strictly and unswervingly adhere to the instructions given here. Report it to the seminary board for its steady guidance and timely familiarization with it to the students of the theological school - future church pastors.
The original was signed by Ignatius, Bishop of the Caucasus and Black Sea.
In the short time since, regarding the liberation of landowner peasants from serfdom proposed by the government, in the “Orthodox Interlocutor” - a magazine published at the Kazan Theological Academy 178 - articles on this matter of the most outrageous content began to appear. Of these, the articles entitled “The Voice of the Ancient Russian Church on Improving the Life of Unfree People” and “The Word on the Liberation of the Peasants” were particularly prominent. The last of them was reprinted in the St. Petersburg and Moscow Vedomosti, was very publicized and aroused talk both in society and among the people, and the party of St. Petersburg liberals read these articles with delight at their gatherings.
The Caucasian diocese, being academically located in the spiritual educational district of the Kazan Theological Academy, received the magazine “Interlocutor” in significant quantities. The articles not only set forth a new teaching, unheard of in the Orthodox Church, but even in the latter an appeal was made to the rural priests, inviting them to act in the spirit of the author of the article. Seeing the need to protect the Caucasian flock from being carried away by the articles of the “Interlocutor” into wrong actions, the bishop recognized it as his duty with his accusatory word to explain to his flock all the falsity and maliciousness of the articles, which he did in the proposal of the Caucasian Spiritual Consistory dated May 6, 1859, No. 916. 179
This proposal, printed in the Stavropol provincial printing house, was sent to all parish churches of the diocese for their information and leadership. At the same time, the Eminence, in private letters, communicated copies of this proposal to all three metropolitans, the exarch of Georgia, the chief prosecutor of the Synod, the governor of the Caucasus, Prince Baryatinsky, and several other few people familiar to him from the local civil and military administration. This proposal, as a very remarkable prediction of everything that should give rise to such a direction in the press, is written in its entirety. The consequences of this proposal responded to the Reverend Ignatius with the general displeasure of the majority of the highest academic clergy towards him.
His Eminence Metropolitan Philaret soon then clearly took the side of the bishop’s enemies: Archpriest Krastilevsky and the rector of the seminary, Archimandrite Epiphanius, and the Exarch of Georgia, His Eminence Eusebius, in the fall of that year directly and personally expressed to the Eminence’s brother Peter Aleksandrovich Brianchaninov, the head of the Stavropol province, his disapproving view of this action of the bishop. Facts, one after another, consistently confirmed the validity of the bishop’s fears, so that on April 30, 1861, that is, a year after the bishop’s circular, the Chief Prosecutor’s circular No. 2531 followed, with which he informed the bishops that from many places there were complaints about the incorrect explanation by the clergy of the most merciful Manifesto on the granting of serfs the rights of the state of free rural inhabitants - an explanation that gave rise to the peasants to excitement. By the highest order, he asked the bishops to instruct the clergy to refrain from arbitrary, incorrect explanations of the said Manifesto.
“The clergy,” says the chief prosecutor, “must remember that the most important and essential duty of clergy in this matter is not to be judges, but peacemakers.”
A copy of the bishop’s proposal to the Caucasian Spiritual Consistory:
“In my proposal to the Spiritual Consistory dated January 17 of this year, No. 3, on the occasion of the opening in the city of Stavropol of the highest approved committee on the subject of improving the life of landowner peasants, I outlined the direction that the Caucasian clergy should follow in this important matter. The direction I have proposed is based on the laws of God and the state. The appearance of articles on this subject in the “Orthodox Interlocutor” - a magazine published by the Kazan Theological Academy - forces me to again turn with my archpastoral word to the pastors of the churches of the Caucasian diocese entrusted to me by God. The “Interlocutor” in its articles not only sets out a new teaching, unheard of in the Orthodox Church, but even makes an appeal to the rural priests, 180 thus enters his order into the diocese entrusted to the bishop, leaving, however, the consequences of this order on the responsibility of the bishop.
By such an action, the “Interlocutor” clearly violates the church law, which prohibits any authority or government office from directly entering, past the Holy Synod and the diocesan bishop, into the affairs of the diocese and allowing themselves to give orders in it (Charter of Spiritual Consist., Art. 2).
It is sad and painful to pronounce an accusatory word! But I see this as absolutely necessary. It is necessary for me to protect the flock entrusted to me, so that any of the clergy does not get carried away by the articles of the “Interlocutor” to wrong actions, does not violate the law of God and the state, does not violate public peace and order, does not expose itself to disaster and does not subject the Church and the clergy to criticism. This is all the more necessary because the “Interlocutor” article “The Word on the Liberation of the Peasants” was reprinted in the St. Petersburg and Moscow “Vedomosti”, was widely publicized among the people and serves as a reason for controversy. I am convinced that the Caucasian clergy will accept with confidence and love my word, pronounced out of inspiration of love, at the request of duty.
The state law defining the duties of the clergy in relation to the landowner peasants remains unchanged. In the newest edition of the Code of Laws of the Empire of 1857, sent to the Caucasian diocesan authorities by the Holy Synod, the above-mentioned duty of the clergy is stated as follows: “The clergy, especially parish priests, have the duty to warn their parishioners against false and harmful disclosures, to affirm good behavior and obedience to their masters, to try in every possible way to prevent the indignation of the peasants and keep them from doing so” (Art. 380, Section IV, Vol. XIV). The responsibilities of the landowner peasants are depicted as follows: “All peasants and courtyard people belonging to the landowners must calmly remain in their rank, be obedient to their landowners in quitrents, work and all kinds of peasant duties, and fulfill exactly the duties assigned to them by the laws” (Article 378, ibid.).
Volume XV, Section IV sets forth the laws regarding the penalties for disobedience to the government and the authorities established by it. Article 300 says: “An uprising against the authorities established by the government is also considered to be any indignation of peasants and serfs against their landowners, owners or managers and against volost and public administrations.” Order, tranquility and welfare of the state are based on obedience to the government and authorities. For this reason, the punishments to which those who overthrow the good and necessary yoke of obedience, as well as the instigators or teachers of indignation, subject themselves are also very severe. Participation in this crime is mostly associated with the deprivation of all rights of the estate; significant participation entails the most severe punishments. It is obvious that anyone who is carried away by the articles of the “Interlocutor” will be judged and punished not according to these articles, but according to the law.
How to understand, they will ask here, the matter of improving the life of the landowner peasants? We must understand it as it is. The matter was entrusted by the sovereign emperor not to the clergy. The progress of the matter is unknown to the clergy; interference in the material side of the matter is prohibited to the clergy. When the matter is completed, then, of course, rules for governing the peasants will be drawn up and promulgated. Until that time, these decisions, as not repealed, retain all their force. In relation to state laws, the articles of the "Interlocutor" inevitably belong to harmful disclosures.
They not only belong to harmful disclosures, but also to false disclosures, as will be explained below. False concepts always lead to disastrous consequences.
In literary terms, the interlocutor’s articles are news in Russian spiritual literature. As news, they may seem especially entertaining. Foreign literature is rich in such works, the composition of which the party of revolution and disorder is tirelessly working on. The method in all such writings is the same: they, exposing the abuse of power of some individuals, on this basis rebel against all authority, preach equality and perfect prosperity of people on earth.
Revolutionary works have had and still have many readers and admirers everywhere. This is natural: they are works of a heated imagination, not guided by either prudence or clear knowledge - they inflame, inflame, and captivate inexperienced readers. Often apparently acting against one kind of power, they always act against all powers, by the nature of their method. 181
The incorrectness of conclusions from the particular to the general is vainly reiterated and repeated by sound logic: most people do not pay attention to this rule and do not know it. There can be neither equality, nor perfect freedom, nor prosperity on earth to the extent that enthusiastic false teachers desire and promise. This was announced to us by the Word of God and proven by experience. The unfree state of people, which has many different forms, as should be known and understood by every educated person, is a consequence of the human descent into sin. 182
The first power was declared to be that of the husband, and the first dependence was that of the wife. From this moment on, power is associated with violence, submission is associated with suffering. They remain like this to this day, and will remain like this until the end of the world.
Our Savior gave spiritual freedom to humanity. But He not only did not eliminate any authorities - He Himself, during His earthly pilgrimage, submitted to the influence of authorities who abused power, submitting to the burden that humanity brought upon itself through sin. The Lord avoided any interference in the temporary government of the world, announced that His Kingdom was not from here (John 18:36), and told His unrighteous judge that he would not have had any power over Him if it had not been given to him from above (John 19:11). The relationship of power and subordination collapses with the destruction of the world: then superiority and power will cease (1 Cor. 15:24), then brotherhood, equality, freedom will be established, then the reason for the unity of power and subordination will not be fear, but love. In such a unity, power and subordination will be absorbed: while existing, they will no longer exist together.
In contrast to the Word of God, revolutionary writers proclaim the abolition of authorities, equality and brotherhood during the life of the world. In France, dreamers have more than once succeeded in captivating people in efforts to realize this dream, which can exist only in the imagination. What were the consequences? The consequences were torrents of blood, shaking the state with internal disorder. To get out of a difficult situation, the people had to restore power and authority. Experience has proven that when order is restored, power is invested with special rights and acts with special energy. Authorities from God have been established. Therefore, he who resists authority resists God’s institution, said the apostle (Rom. 13: 1-2). It is impossible for a weak person to eliminate the determination and order of God. As long as humanity is subject to the influence of sin and passions, power and subordination are still necessary. They will certainly exist throughout the life of the world: they can only appear, are, will appear in various forms.
The “Orthodox Interlocutor” in its “Voice of the Ancient Russian Church on Improving the Life of Unfree People” hid the progress of education of unfree people in Russia, and exposed only abuses. Thus, the historical side of the article is devoid of historical truth. This should have served as an inevitable source of false conclusions for the article. There have been abuses, without which no business, no society, no human class can do, but they turn out to be petty details in comparison with the main fact.
Russia - from the very beginning of its existence almost to modern times - has been a vast military camp. Its history is the history of an uninterrupted war. Russia either attacks neighboring nations or repels their attacks. For two centuries he has been engaged in an incessant internecine war, without stopping the war with his neighbors. Then he fights to overthrow the Tatar yoke, fights to restore autocracy, fights to enter the borders in which it was under Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir. He fights to open communication with Europe, to take a place among its powers. Finally, he fights against all of Europe to liberate Europe.
Given the military nature of the state, it is impossible for the military class not to take precedence in the state. Especially in ancient and middle Russia, the military element absorbed and overshadowed all other elements. According to the ancient custom of all nations, captives turned into slaves, and this category of unfree people initially received the name serfs and Chaldeans, since the captives belonged to the most Tatar tribe, which the Russians called the Agarian tribe, not really dividing the Tatars from the Ishmaelites and Chaldeans, not really pursuing historical truth.
Another category of unfree people was made up of outcasts, that is, orphans, beggars and other people of the Slavic tribe who lost their shelter due to various unfortunate circumstances, so characteristic of times of barbarism. Rich boyars and governors had vast lands. The outcasts worked the boyar lands for hire, and some of them became enslaved, that is, they registered themselves and their families in the hereditary possession of the boyars, finding at this time of state turmoil it was more profitable for themselves to belong to a strong and kind boyar than, using the vain name of freedom, to live in poverty without shelter and remain a defenseless victim of all kinds of violence.
With the introduction of Christianity in Russia, military men took care of enlightening their captives with the faith of Christ and gave them a settled life. Christian farmers - both free and unfree - received the name peasants, equivalent to the name Christians. Much more unfree people were formed when the descendants of Rurik multiplied beyond measure, and their possessions were crushed beyond belief. Not only insignificant cities, many volosts had their own separate princes. Monocracy was established in Russia very slowly: over the course of two centuries.
The independent princes, gradually becoming subjects of the Grand Duke of Moscow, did not immediately lose all power in their fiefs: first the cities remained under their control, then the estates with the peasants. The need to curb the willfulness of the common people and the impossibility of having a police force in an unorganized state forced Tsar Boris Godunov to assign peasants to the lands. Then all Russian peasants turned into unfree peasants. What fact does the Russian history of that time represent? During the strengthening of the peasants, less than 1/11 of them belonged to the unfree class, 10/11 were free, that is, for every hundred free people there were not ten unfree people. 183 Despite the above-mentioned course of formation of the unfree class and the abuses by which freedom was taken away from the free and which are so picturesquely exposed by the “Interlocutor,” some of the peasants became appanages of the king, others became landowners, and some became church members, since part of the offspring of outcasts occupied church lands.
The piety of the tsars and the Russian nobility, which included all the descendants of Rurik, endowed the monasteries with many estates and villages. Due to the simplicity of morals and piety of the people, this order was maintained for about two and a half centuries, without presenting anything strange.
By the reign of Empress Catherine II, the number of landowner peasants was already much less than the number of peasants who belonged to monasteries and bishops' houses. Russia, gradually growing, felt many needs that it did not feel in its infancy. For this reason and according to the spirit of the times, under Empress Catherine, the monastery peasants were transferred to the department of the state: this is the education of state-owned peasants. But this empress also saw the need for landowners due to the insufficient structure of the state, namely, “due to the lack of police,” as the empress put it. She distributed many hundreds of thousands of peasants to persons who provided special services to the state.
Emperor Paul I continued to grant peasants to his dignitaries. With all this distribution of state-owned peasants to landowners, the number of landowner peasants only became equal to the state-owned ones.
Since the time of Alexander I, the view on the subject has changed: the state was finally organized, a police force of officials was established everywhere, the people began to emerge from their state of childhood, received new ideas, and felt new needs. The nobility began to be burdened by their state of nurturing under the peasants, the peasants began to be burdened by the restriction of their freedom, their patriarchal life. All this began to be strongly revealed and expressed in the second half of the reign of Emperor Nicholas I.
The now safely reigning Emperor Alexander II found the matter prepared and found it necessary to change the form of government of the landowner peasants. What, in essence, is the importance of improving the life of peasants? This is a change in the form of managing them. They are given freedom, but not self-will. They leave the jurisdiction of the landowners, as if from under the supervision of educators and guardians, into an official, personal relationship with the state, through the agency of the authorities that will be established over them by the government.
The sovereign's command was marked by the happiest beginning, a magnificent execution that astounded Europe. Europe is accustomed to seeing coups d'etat accompanied by popular unrest and terrible bloodshed. In Russia, on the contrary, the coup is carried out with undisturbed calm. The words of the sovereign that “the beginning of a revolution by command from above prevents its beginning from below” should be inscribed in golden letters on the tablets of history. The “Interlocutor” should have paid attention to these words and not started the action that the sovereign wanted to prevent.
The nobility contributes - with the exception, perhaps, of some backward individuals - with all their zeal for the successful completion of a revolution, beneficial for both classes - both the noble and the peasant. Both had a patriarchal relationship to each other. This attitude made them feel embarrassed and tied. They are now moving towards a civil attitude. Farmers will remain farmers, with the exception of several thousand rich people who can move into the merchant class. A vast field of new activity opens up for the nobility in a country abundant in material resources.
These conditions are the guarantee of the well-being awaiting the noble class, well-being in a completely different form, more durable and extensive. The brief historical summary presented here shows the one-sidedness and incorrectness of the view of the matter, delivered by the “Interlocutor” to its readers by pointing out some private abuses that accompanied the acquisition of unfree people and their ownership.
Judging by these particulars and not knowing the method to which the “Interlocutor” obeyed, one can easily think that the unfree class was formed solely through violence, that the period of landowners’ ownership of the peasants in Russia was a period of continuous, widespread tyranny, and the noble class always consisted of the most inhuman and godless persons. According to an accurate study of statisticians, it turns out to be completely opposite. The life of the landowner peasants, despite private abuses, in its general composition is far superior to the life of peasants in all other European states. Many landowner peasants are equal in wealth to the leading merchants. But this way of life is outdated in moral and political terms.
The piety and zeal for the Church of the ancient Russian princes and boyars is sufficiently proven by the fact that they transferred half of their peasants to monasteries. The unquestioning and welcoming acceptance of peasants by monasteries into their possession is the actual voice of the ancient Russian Church - both about life itself and about improving the life of unfree people.
Having determined the meaning of the articles of the “Interlocutor” in relation to state legislation, to spiritual literature, to national history, it remains to determine their meaning in relation to the Divine Revealed Christian teaching, to the teaching of the Orthodox Eastern Church, although this meaning is already quite evident from the above. The Lord commanded: Listen! Beware of lying prophets (i.e., false teachers and false teaching), who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will recognize them (Matthew 7:15–16). The fruit of the Spirit, the apostle said, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, mercy, faith, meekness, self-control (Gal. 5:22).
True, godly teaching inevitably results in spiritual fruit, as depicted by the apostle. If the teaching is not evidenced by this fruit, then it is false, even if the one who pronounces it bears the name of a prophet, that is, any important and loud name associated with the concept of excellent knowledge and learning. This commandment of God requires special consideration, and at the beginning of it the Lord placed a significant word: “take heed.” Exactly: it requires the most careful attention and reasoning to execute!
False teaching is often presented brilliantly and entertainingly. Not everyone can give false teaching its proper value based on the analysis of the thoughts contained in it. But by its fruits it is immediately recognized, exposed, and evaluated. The Great Saint Barsanuphius said to a certain monk: “Know, my brother, that every thought that is not preceded by the silence of humility does not come from God, but clearly from the left side. Our Lord comes with quietness. Still, the enemy happens with confusion and rebellion. Although demons appear clothed in sheep's clothing, being inwardly ravenous wolves, they are revealed through the confusion they cause, as it is said: by their fruits you will know them (Matthew 7:16). May the Lord enlighten us all, so as not to be carried away by their truth” (Response 21).
The Monk Macarius the Great says: “A person who loves virtue should take great care to distinguish between things, so that he perfectly knows the difference between good and evil and can recognize and understand the various demonic intrigues with which the enemy usually corrupts under the guise of many ideas offered to the mind; for in all cases it is good to be careful to avoid dangerous consequences.
Due to weakness of mind, fearing seduction, do not obey the promptings of spirits, which can be arranged as if they were also heavenly Angels. But stand unshakably, subjecting everything to the most diligent examination, and then, if you see good, accept it, and if evil appears, reject it. For the effects of grace are not unknown, and sin, even if it took the form of a good deed, cannot give them in any way.
So, although, according to the Apostle, Satan can transform into a bright angel (2 Cor. 11:14) in order to deceive a person in this way, even if he presented bright visions, however, as has already been said, he will not be able to give a good action. This serves as a well-known sign of his deeds. For he cannot give neither love for God or neighbor, nor meekness, nor humility, nor joy, nor peace, nor curbing thoughts, nor hating the world, nor spiritual peace, nor desire for heavenly actions, nor can he tame passions and lusts, which is a clear action of grace. Spiritual fruit, says the apostle, is love, joy, peace, etc. (Gal. 5; 22). The enemy can especially easily instill pride and arrogance in a person, since he is very prone to this and is very strong in this. So, by action you will recognize the intelligent light that has shone in your soul - whether it comes from God or from Satan.” 184
This is the true and deep teaching of God, the teaching of the Holy Orthodox Church about the principles of good and evil, about the most subtle inexplicable thoughts, explained by their fruits and actions.
What is the fruit of the Sobesednik articles? They inflate the mind, inflame the imagination and blood, give incorrect concepts about objects, constantly drawing conclusions from the particular to the whole, disrupt the peace between classes, and attract them to mutual hostility and conflict. These consequences are already very sad, but behind them in the future lie the most gloomy consequences.
This effect of the articles is true evidence of their quality in relation to God and the Church, of their principles. The beginning of every good thing is the right thought. The beginning of every disaster is a false thought, according to the testimony of the Gospel, which shows the inextricable connection of lies with the destruction of humanity (John 8:44).
The “Interlocutor,” calling his first article “The Voice of the Ancient Russian Church on Improving the Life of Unfree People,” did not, however, present this voice in the promised meaning, in which it is necessary to present the teaching of the Church—both Ecumenical and Russian—about whether the ownership of slaves is allowed or prohibited in Christianity. The "Interlocutor" presented only the voice of the Church against abuses. The fathers of the Russian Church he cited rebel with holy zeal against abuses of power, and not against the power itself, not against its rights. In this they followed the shepherds of the Universal Church and the great universal teacher John Chrysostom, especially revered by the ancient Russian Church, who sealed his denunciations of untruth and violence with his martyrdom.
The Church’s teaching on slavery and civil liberty—a teaching whose precise explanation was so necessary for an article written by a clergyman and on behalf of the entire Church—is set forth by the “Interlocutor” in his “Sermon on the Emancipation of the Peasants.” In this “Word”, in order to support his own teaching and pass it off as the teaching of the Church, the “Interlocutor” resorts to:
1. To change the text in the Epistle of St. Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, which reads in the Slavic translation like this: If you can be free, enslave yourself more (1 Cor. 7:21).
2. The explanation of this text is the opposite of how the Church explains it.
This behavior of the “Interlocutor” requires that the exact teaching of the Orthodox Church on slavery and slave ownership be presented here. Civil slavery is a consequence of sin - sin in a broad sense, or that eternal death with which the human race was infected at its root, in the forefathers. 185 "The Interlocutor" finds the beginning of slavery in the curse pronounced by Noah on Canaan, the son of Ham, which came true over the distant descendants of Canaan. But, having said this, the Kazan magazine further says that the beginning of slavery is a sin. "ABOUT! - he exclaims. “If there were no sin on earth, there would be no slavery!” (March, pp. 335, 336, 337).
Sin, which declared and engulfed humanity and the earth, like a poison, like an infection, acting with the speed of electricity, made a monstrous transformation in the nature of man and in the nature of the earth immediately after the fall of Adam, immediately after the curse was pronounced on man and the earth by God, and not in the time of Noah.
From the biblical stories we see that the greatest righteous people of the Old Testament Church - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job - had slaves and passed them on as inheritance to their children. This is not enough: Abimelech (the king of Gerar), says the Book of Genesis, took a thousand didrachms of silver, and sheep, and bulls, and male and female servants, and gave them to Abraham (Gen. 20; 14). Abimelech gives slaves - righteous Abraham accepts slaves as a gift.
The great Abraham received the same gift of male and female slaves from the king of Egypt (Gen. 12:16).
Saint Sarah, the wife of Abraham, due to her barrenness, raises in her place on the bed of her holy husband the slave Hagar, an Egyptian. Hagar conceived from Abraham and became proud about this. Sarah complained to her husband about the behavior of her concubine. Abraham answered her: Behold, your servant is in your hands; do with her what you please. And Sarah began to oppress her, and she ran away from her (Gen. 16: 1-6). When Hagar ran away from Sarah and wandered in the desert, an Angel appeared to her and said: Return to your mistress and submit to her (Gen. 16:9).
These events are explained by the fall of man. From them, a true Christian can explore the full depth of human fall, since the events concern the greatest Old Testament righteous people. It is worthy of note that the Angel of God commands the slave to submit to the mistress who has upset the slave.
The behavior of the Old Testament righteous towards their slaves was different from the behavior of the pagan slave owners, who acted and now act incomparably worse with their slaves than with livestock. Residents of the Caucasus are aware of the treatment of slaves by their mountain neighbors. Due to the peculiarity of the relationship of the Old Testament righteous people to slaves, their slaves are called “household members” in the Holy Scriptures. The Mosaic Law allowed for temporary slavery for an Israeli from an Israeli, and in certain cases allowed for indefinite slavery (Ex. 21: 2-6). – The “Interlocutor” is silent about indefinite slavery. – But in general he demanded humane treatment of slaves of the same tribe.
The same law says: And so that you may have your male and female servant, buy yourself a male and female servant from the nations that are around you; You can also buy from the children of the settlers who settled with you, and from their tribe that is with you, which was born to them in your land, and they can be your property; You can pass them on as an inheritance to your sons as an estate; own them forever as slaves (Lev. 25; 44–46).
This decree of the Mosaic Law is silent by the “Interlocutor,” but it follows immediately after the words that the “Interlocutor” cited from the Book of Leviticus, and complements the concept of slavery among the Israelites.
Further, Moses says: But do not rule with cruelty over your brothers, the sons of Israel, over one another (Lev. 25:46). From these words and the entire decree regarding slaves, it is quite clear that the Israeli legislator was concerned with placing the Israeli people, as the chosen ones, above all other nations, and humiliating other nations before him. For this purpose, Moses sets a six-year term for the slavery of a Jew to a Jew and allows the Jew to acquire slaves from other nations for perpetual and hereditary ownership.
If you look from the height of spiritual contemplation at slavery, especially at the past and modern slavery among the pagans, at all the other diverse, countless disasters to which humanity is subjected on earth, then one cannot help but admit that through the fall it became, through the fall, a category of beings rejected by God, whose eternal suffering begins with a short earthly journey and receives full development with entry into eternity.
The Savior accomplished the redemption of the human race, accomplished it for all people, but together accomplished it only for those who want to accept it arbitrarily. The Savior left the sorrows of man’s earthly journey, including slavery, inviolable, demanding from people who believe in Him not only a heartfelt and verbal, but also an active confession of their fall. An active confession of the fact that people need a Redeemer - a confession consisting in the recognition of earthly sorrows as a just consequence of the fall and in humble submission to them. The God-Man Himself submitted to these sorrows, so that we would submit to them with Him. He demands that His uds—true Christians—conduct their earthly wanderings the way He did. It is impossible for me to be in a different state from the Body and Head, from the Church and Christ.
For this reason, St. The Apostle Peter said that Christians are called during their earthly pilgrimage to good deeds and suffering. For,” says the apostle, “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, so that we would follow in His footsteps.” He committed no sin, and no flattery was in His mouth (1 Pet. 2:21-22). For what reason did the apostle say this? He said, addressing Christians who, in civil terms, belonged to the class of slaves. Servants,” he says, “be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and meek, but also to the harsh (1 Pet. 2:18).
It is none of your business that your master is inhuman; God will judge him for this. You carry your cross, given to you by God for your salvation. Carry it without complaint, thanking and glorifying God from your cross, because God will also require an account from you: how you carried your God-given cross. The Savior of the world established His Kingdom on earth, but a spiritual Kingdom that can reside in any human society, no matter how this society is called by its civil structure - a monarchy, or a republic, or something else. Because the Kingdom of Christ, being not of this world (John 18:36), has nothing to do with the civil form of states, although it provides each state with the most virtuous and therefore most useful members.
In exactly the same way, the Lord granted spiritual freedom without destroying a single civil power. For the spiritually free, with all his civil subordination, is not subject to sin and passions, not subject to the most diverse circumstances and vicissitudes of earthly life, not subject to fear, having become through the power of faith in Christ and pleasure in Christ above human fear and above all earthly disasters. The influence of both human fear and earthly disasters is a sign of a hypocritical, superficial, misunderstood Christianity.
If they say to this that many Christians submit to the influence of misfortunes and fall under their burden, then the Savior Himself has a ready answer to this: Enter in at the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many go through it; because strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few find it (Matthew 7:13-14). He who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me (Matthew 10:38). Hearing these decisive words of Christ, it is better to cry before Him about your weakness, rather than to wade through earthly, carnal wisdom and tortuousness against the Cross of Christ and against the narrow path - that only path that leads to salvation.
What is the significant reason for such ranting? Rejection of the narrow path, desire for the broad path, rejection of the Cross of Christ. I do not want to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world (Gal. 6:12-14). This is what the apostle teaches us. He who is alive for the world, enters into its affairs with passion and fervor, proves and shows by this his deadness to Christ.
Church New Testament history represents many saints and righteous Christians who had slaves and passed them on as inheritance to their children, that they bought and sold slaves, as, for example, the father of St. John of Damascus bought the Monk Cosmas. A certain lover of Christ asked Barsanuphius, the great saint: “My Father, I want to acquire servants for myself, but I doubt whether they will be useful to me. Tell me: should I take them? And what should I do? The Great One answered: “Let us remember that we also have a Lord. If we obey our Master, He will cause our servants to obey us. Now you hear, go and take them in the name of the Lord.” 186
From this it is clear, firstly, that the primal Christian church did not forbid Christians to have slaves; 187 secondly, that the decree of the Mosaic Law regarding the slavery of the Jews to the Jews was not binding on Christians. Those Christians who strove for Christian perfection gave their slaves freedom, and sold their property and distributed it to the poor, thereby fulfilling the all-holy advice of the Lord: if you want to be perfect, go, sell your property and distribute it to the poor; and you will have treasure in heaven; and come and follow Me (Matthew 19; 21).
The Holy Great Martyr George, before embarking on the feat of martyrdom, freed all his slaves. This is what almost all the martyrs did, this is what everyone who entered into spiritual martyrdom and monasticism did. Saint Peter the Publican not only freed all his slaves, but also sold himself into slavery. Saint Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, sold himself into slavery to redeem the son of a widow. This behavior of many of God’s chosen ones, perfect Christians, was by no means a general rule for all Christians. The general Christian rule was and is love for neighbors - therefore, for slaves.
Christian slaves were primarily household members - they were not slaves. That Christian who allowed himself to be cruel towards slaves was rebuked and taught by the Church. There were cruel, inhuman, depraved gentlemen among the Christian gentlemen, but is it not the trampling of God’s commandments in other classes of all classes? Didn’t cruelty and debauchery appear in all classes, among the shepherds and archpastors?
Such is fallen man! The closest relations with the Incarnate God, the very office of apostle, the highest of all human orders, did not evade the greatest of human crimes from that man who arbitrarily chose evil for himself. The divine New Testament teaching about masters and slaves is set forth with all accuracy and satisfaction in the epistles of the holy Apostle Paul. We offer here this teaching, according to its interpretation by St. John Chrysostom, generally accepted by the Holy Church and especially respected by the ancient Russian Church.
Saint John Chrysostom, starting to explain the 13th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which says that the authorities and authorities are God's institution, draws the reader's attention to the previous chapter, in which the morality of a true Christian is truly, holy, and picturesquely depicted. “Notice,” says Chrysostom, “how opportunely the apostle started talking about this subject. After he offered his listeners various demands of Christian philosophy, set them up to live in peace with friends and enemies, taught them to be useful both for the happy and the unfortunate, and for the needy, in short, he implanted for everyone the rules of community decent for angels, exhausted anger, overthrew arrogance and completely softened their hearts - after all this he offers his admonitions about obedience to the authorities.
It is obvious that only that Christian in whose soul the rules of Christian morality are deeply implanted, in whose soul faith predominates, who tries to mortify himself for the world, who looks at earthly human relationships and earthly human situations with the eye of a wanderer, from the mind of Christ, who spends life on earth as on the threshold to eternity, can bear the yoke of subordination in a godly and spiritually beneficial way, while earthly power is almost always associated with greater or lesser abuses - according to the properties of fallen man, according to his sinfulness, according to his limitations.
It would not be out of place to note here that St. John Chrysostom explains the relations between authorities and subordinates established by the Holy Spirit at the end of centuries of martyrdom, when the authorities almost continuously for three centuries revealed such monstrous brutality and inhumanity, which the annals of the world have not represented either before or since. This is the same Chrysostom who uttered the strongest denunciations against the abuse of wealth and power and became a victim of revenge for his denunciations.
Chrysostom says: “(The Apostle), wanting to impress upon us that his commandment about submission extends not only to worldly people, but to everyone - both priests and monks - announces this in advance, saying this: Let every soul obey the powers that be. Even if you were an apostle, even if you were an evangelist, even if you were a prophet, even if you were someone else, obey. Submission to authority does not undermine godliness. The apostle here does not mean simple obedience, but submission. The first basis for such an establishment, which satisfies the minds of the faithful, is that the authorities were established by God.” Chrysostom claims that the apostle speaks in this chapter about the subordination of both servants to masters and subordinates to superiors. Calculating the types of authority and subordination established by God, Chrysostom mentions the relationships between husband and wife, between son and father, between an elder and a youth, between a slave and a freeman, between a superior and a subordinate, between a teacher and a student.
The “interlocutor,” intending to speak on behalf of the Church about improving the life of unfree people, did he remain faithful to the moral Christian principle set out in the 12th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans - that principle from which only one can reason about the proposed subject correctly, in the character of true Christianity, in the character of the Holy Orthodox Church? Unfortunately no! The “interlocutor” rejected the edification of the apostle, rejected the moral principle proposed by the apostle - he did not overcome evil with good. On the contrary, he exposed to everyone his obvious victory by evil.
In vain does the apostle say to him: Bless your persecutors; bless and do not curse, do not repay anyone evil for evil. Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but give room to the wrath of God. For it is written: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord (Rom. 12; 14, 17, 19). The “interlocutor,” instead of meekly admonishing those who are mistaken, entered into an altercation with secular writers and responds to barbs with barbs. The “interlocutor” humiliates the holy and important character of the Church, distorts her holy voice, before which everyone reveres and falls silent. The “Interlocutor,” having rejected the dignity that the Church accorded him, gave secular writers the right to harsh answers. And for answers, the method used by the “Interlocutor” can serve as an abundant source - the method of picturesque and eloquent publication of private abuses and conclusions about the whole from the particular.
Having lost the mood of peace and love, in which only the mind can remain faithful to the Divine Truth - Christ - and unity with the All-Holy Truth, the “Interlocutor” could not help but indulge in all the ways of false reasoning. In his heat and enthusiasm, he allowed himself to change the words of the Holy Scriptures and give them an arbitrary interpretation consistent with his goal, rejecting the generally accepted interpretation of the Church. Meanwhile, the Orthodox Church precisely rejects arbitrary, contradictory interpretations of Scripture, but accepts the interpretation of it by the holy fathers. 188 The Word spoken by the Holy Spirit can only be explained by the Holy Spirit.
“Here,” says the “Interlocutor,” is the direct teaching of Christianity on slavery: “Everyone be faithful,” says the Word of God, “to the calling to which he is called by God. Whether someone is called to be a slave, do not be embarrassed, but if you can become free, then be able to take advantage of this better. For he who is called in the Lord, that is, in Christianity, as a slave is a free man of the Lord, and he who is called as a free man is a servant of the Lord. You have been redeemed with a price; do not become slaves of men (1 Cor. 7:20-23).” 189
In the Russian translation of the New Testament, published with the blessing of the Holy Synod, verse 21 reads as follows: Whether you are called a slave, do not worry, but if you can become free, take advantage of it. The omission of the word “this” gives a different meaning! In the Slavic text we read: but even if you can be free, be more enslaved to yourself. So, in the Slavic text we discover a thought completely opposite to that which the “Interlocutor” wants to see and express.
In the interpretation of St. John Chrysostom on the 14 Epistles of the Holy Apostle Paul, published with the blessing of the Holy Synod in 1765, the mentioned text reads like this: But if you can be free, use this especially. This is the most literal translation from the Greek: at the edge there is also a very accurate translation, more understandable, more revealing of the apostle’s thought: servile yourself more. There is the following interpretation of Chrysostom on this text: “This means: the more enslave yourself. And why does he command that he who can free himself remain a slave? To show that slavery does not bring any harm, on the contrary, it brings benefits. We are not ignorant that some people think more precisely about what has been said about freedom, saying: if you can free yourself, free yourself.”
This saying would be completely contrary to Paul's purpose if it had such a meaning. He could not order a slave to seek freedom while he was comforting the slave and explaining to him that he was not in the least damaged by slavery. Use this means: use slavery through humility as a powerful means of salvation. The words of the Apostle, you have been redeemed at a dear price, do not become slaves of men - Chrysostom explains this way: “This is said not only to slaves, but also to free people. A slave, being a slave, can not be a slave, and one who is free can also be a slave.
How can one not be a slave while being a slave? Doing everything for the sake of God, without pretense, working not only in front of the eyes of masters: this means working for people and being free together. Again: how can anyone, being free, become a slave? This happens when someone serves among people in a crafty manner - either for the sake of gluttony, or for the sake of a passion for money, or for the purpose of lust for power. Whoever is like this is more enslaved than any slave.” 190 That the explanation of the thought of the Holy Apostle Paul is understood and taught by Chrysostom with complete correctness, this is evident from the apostle’s instructions to slaves and masters in his Epistle to the Ephesians: Slaves, he says, obey your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling, in the simplicity of your heart, as to Christ, not with only visible obsequiousness, as people-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul, serving with zeal, as the Lord, and not as men, knowing that everyone will receive from the Lord according to the measure of the good that he has done, whether slave or free.
And you, gentlemen, do the same with them, moderating your severity, knowing that above you and above them there is a Lord in heaven, with whom there is no respect of persons (Eph. 6:5-9).
From the letter of the Apostle Paul to Philemon one can see nothing more than the apostle’s respect for the rights of the master and the intercession of such a person who could command for a slave who had become a vessel of God from a vessel of unrighteousness. It is not clear why the “Interlocutor” cites this message to support his idea, which the message clearly contradicts. 191 Is it in the hope of hiding the exact meaning of the epistle from an inexperienced reader and presenting one’s view of the subject to the views of the holy Apostle Paul.
It is also unclear why the “Interlocutor” cites the Lord’s teaching about spiritual freedom, between which there is no relationship and civil freedom. 192 He who has spiritual freedom does not at all need civil freedom: he is free in slavery, in prison, in chains, in the hands of the executioner. On the contrary, someone deprived of spiritual freedom, even if he enjoys civil freedom, even if he enjoys complete civil prosperity, is a slave of sin and passions, a prisoner and an eternal slave.
Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria rightly notes that the Lord’s teaching about spiritual freedom did not satisfy His disciples who were disciples only in name and position and, not properly accepting the Word of the Lord, which is Spirit and Life (John 6:63), wanted to adapt this Word to their earthly well-being, that is, to give the Word of God a carnal meaning and action. The Sign of Christ is the Cross, the Word of Christ is the Word of the Cross: it was and is for the Jews - a temptation, for the Greeks - madness (1 Cor. 1:23).
The teaching of the Church presented here, in all its brevity, shows:
1. That both the Word of God and the Church - both Ecumenical and Russian - in the person of the Holy Fathers, never said anything about the abolition of civil slavery, that there is nothing in common between spiritual and civil freedom, that both slaves and masters were constantly taught by the Church the most precise, most conscientious fulfillment of their duties, that violators of Christ’s testament of love were subjected to reproof and admonition.
2. That the liberation of slaves has always been recognized by the Church as a good deed, a deed of mercy, a deed of brotherly Christian love.
From this teaching of the Church, the view of the present domestic event - the matter of improving the life of the landowner peasants and the granting of civil freedom to them - is majestic, magnificent. The most pious Russian autocrat showed the noble class the accomplishment of a great Christian deed, a deed of love. The Church calls upon God's blessing for the great domestic cause with the warmest prayers. Its shepherds invite the nobility to noble self-sacrifice, to sacrifice, to urgently sacrifice material benefits for moral benefits, and the peasants are instructed to accept the king’s gift with due reverence and humility - these sure guarantees that the gift will be used wisely and usefully.
It should not be thought that civil freedom will morally elevate only the peasants: the class of nobles must certainly achieve a high degree of moral success by abandoning slavery. This is the property of selflessness and sacrificing material benefits to spiritual benefits: it elevates, changes, and improves a person.
One cannot ignore some of the particulars with which the “Interlocutor” helps to reach a conclusion about the whole. For this purpose, the “Interlocutor” exhibited “Lamentation” by Daniil Zatochnik, an exiled slave. 193
The sharpener is presented as an innocent sufferer, his cry is heard throughout ancient Russia, repeated with sympathy by all the ancient Russian people, and the ancient Russian Church responds to his voice. However, not a single church writer with an opinion about the “Lamentation” of the Zatochnik is listed. Touching as this description is, so many important facts require satisfactory proof.
The “interlocutor” says that in the Sharpener’s voice one can hear some kind of bitter mockery, something like satirical bitterness. 194
Did none of the shepherds contemporary to the Sharpener understand that the correct Christian mood does not allow feelings of bitter mockery or satirical bitterness into the soul? Wouldn’t it be more likely to recognize as slander against the Church the immediate response attributed to her to the voice of murmuring and slander, similar to that heard from the lips of one of the thieves crucified with the Lord? The Church says about this robber that he was brought down to hell by the weight of blasphemy. 195 She teaches her children from the midst of earthly misadventures to pronounce and repeat the words of another thief: I accept what is worthy of my deeds: remember me, O Lord, in Thy kingdom.
One way to alleviate your difficult situation, to attract peace of mind to your soul, to give it spiritual consolation and pleasure is to recognize yourself as worthy of a difficult situation, and the difficult situation as God’s allowance. “There is nothing stronger than humility,” said the Monk Abba Dorotheos, “nothing defeats it. If something sorrowful happens to a humble person, he immediately turns to himself, immediately condemns himself that he is worthy, will not reproach anyone, will not lay the blame on anyone else, and thus endures what happened without embarrassment, without sorrow, with perfect calm.” 196
Everyone must correctly recognize himself as worthy of sorrow and punishment. Everyone is conceived in iniquities and born in sin, has within himself living and active sinful passions, this sinful infection that does not cease to give birth to sin, if not in deeds, then in thoughts and sensations. The Savior of the world said: He who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me (Matthew 10:38).
The cross, according to the explanation of the holy fathers, refers to those sorrows that God wants to allow us during our earthly journey. Sorrows are varied, each person has his own sorrows, sorrows most correspond to the passions of each, for this reason everyone has his own cross. Each of us is commanded to accept this cross, that is, everyone is commanded to recognize himself as worthy of the sorrow sent to him, to endure it complacently, following Christ, borrowing from Him the humility through which sorrow is endured.
The above words of the Lord contain a terrible sentence on those who cannot endure sorrow patiently: the Lord rejects them. They, uttering murmuring and slander from the midst of sorrows, thereby make a confession that their minds and hearts are not illuminated by Divine grace, that the Lord is alien to them, for it is none other than the Lord who teaches humility to His true servants. Learn - not from an angel, He says, not from a man, not from a book, but - from Me - that is, from My assimilation to you, illumination of you, action in you - for I am meek and humble in heart, and in thought, and in the way of thinking - and you will find peace from the inner struggle and relief to your souls from thoughts (Matthew 11:29) 197. Sorrow is called a temptation or test because it reveals the innermost structure of the soul. 198
Saint Isaac of Syria says: “Every difficult situation and every sorrow, not accompanied by patience, produces extreme torment. A person's patience resists his misadventures, and cowardice is the mother of torment. It gives rise to an overpowering force of despondency in a person, from which one feels a spiritual constriction - this is a foretaste of Gehenna. This induces a spirit of frenzy in a person, from which the darkness of temptations emanates: embarrassment, rage, blasphemy, complaint about fate, evil thoughts...
What is the cure for all this? - humility of heart. In proportion to your humility, you are given patience in your misadventures. As you endure, the severity of your sorrows becomes easier for you, and you accept consolation. As you receive consolation, your love for God increases. According to your love, your joy, delivered by the Holy Spirit, increases. Our merciful Father, when He deigns to bring His true sons out of temptation, does not take the temptation itself from them, but gives them patience in temptation, and they accept with the hand of patience all the above-mentioned blessings to strengthen their souls. May Christ God, by His grace, make us worthy, out of love for Him, to endure with thanksgiving from our hearts all that is cruel.” 199
This is the teaching of the Church! This is the voice of the Church! Here is her review of the voice of Daniil Zatochnik.
At the end of the last century, a certain clergyman in the rank of bishop was imprisoned. The shutter was long and so strict that the prisoner was forbidden to use ink and paper. The prisoner died in captivity. In his room they found an inscription scrawled on the wall: It is good for me, Lord, that You have humbled me, so that I may learn Your statutes (Ps. 119; 71). 200 Here is the voice of the Imprisoner, which can and should be recognized as a voice that completely belongs to the Church! This is the voice to which the Church must respond with a withdrawal of approval! All earthly disasters mean nothing before spiritual disaster: before the alienation of the mind and heart from the humility given to us by God.
The Church can only respond to the voice of Daniel the Imprisoner with the voice of painful lamentation for this lost and darkened soul, which may the mercy of God cover. May this mercy of God deliver from imitating Daniel all those who are now and will continue to be subjected to imprisonment, exile and other earthly, temporary disasters, may the grace of God instruct them in humility. And as long as man exists on earth in the state of his fall, he will make prison, exile, and other countless disasters inevitable - the consequences of the fall. He will be subjected to them rightly and wrongly: such is man, such is earthly life!
An incredible, horrifying scene appeared on the pages of The Interlocutor. 201
This is a trial over the soul of a long-dead master, a trial forbidden by God as the theft of the dignity of God, a trial over a soul that has long appeared before the judgment of God and heard God’s saying about itself. The spiritual will, about which the “Interlocutor” conducts a trial and in which the deceased confessed and counted his sins, already turns out to be pale and weak before the form of the judgment pronounced by the “Interlocutor”.
Judgment and form, by their nature of irritation, come to the fore, are themselves a crime, leading to horror and shudder, especially since the court is pronounced from the church pulpit, in the name of the Church, with a clear violation of the law of God and the law of the Church, of which the first forbids judging and condemning, the second forbids the publication of a sinner’s confession. Even if the confession was preserved on paper, it does not follow that the rule of the Church regarding it was eliminated.
The judgment is expressed with extraordinary cruelty. The author is dissatisfied with the sinner’s repentance, rejects, disparages this repentance, but it is not clear that the author was briefly aware of all the circumstances of the sinner’s death, so that the sinner’s fate after death was known. And this information is necessary to accurately determine what was the merit of the repentance brought by the sinner. The writer is dissatisfied with the fact that freedom was given to half of the slaves, and the other half was given to the remaining family of the master, considering it already proven and decided that all hitherto former slave owners are criminals and violators of the law of God.
We believe that with repentance, the omnipotent grace of God equally blots out all sins, both small and great. Human deeds during repentance are accepted solely as evidence of sincerity in repentance: for this reason we see that those who came to the garden of repentance already at the tenth hour of their lives received the same penalty of salvation as those who worked in the vineyard from their tender youth received (Matthew 20: 1-16). The merits of repentance can only be assessed by God, the Knower of the Heart. His Judgment is completely different from human judgment: Man looks differently from God, for man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).
From the Gospel we see that the Pharisees were constantly mistaken in their judgments about sinners who brought repentance. The Pharisee Simon erred in his judgment about the harlot woman, known throughout the city for her depraved life. While he was tempted and condemned not only the woman, but the God-Man Himself, the Lord pronounced a saying about the sinner that her sins were forgiven, that she loved God more than the Pharisee, who recognized himself as righteous, that is, who did not see his sins (Luke 8). The Jews grumbled at the Lord because He visited the famous sinner, Zacchaeus the tax collector. Zacchaeus, having accepted the Lord, immediately decided to change his lifestyle and presented evidence of the sincerity of repentance almost the same as can be seen in the will, about which the “Interlocutor” is indignant. Zacchaeus said: Lord! I will give half of my property to the poor, and if I have offended anyone in any way, I will repay him fourfold. Jesus said to him: now salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham, for the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost (Luke 19:8-10).
The Word of God reveals to us that Zacchaeus was definitely a sinner, already lost, but that his repentance was accepted by God and the lost sinner was suddenly counted among the saved. It is obvious that people could not know the reality of this repentance and, breaking the commandment of God, which prohibits condemnation, they sinned both before God and their neighbor.
The scribes and Pharisees brought before the Lord a woman caught in adultery. They, demanding judgment from the Lord, referred to the law of Moses, which commands the stoning of adulterers. The Lord said to the Pharisees: He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. They, being convicted by their conscience, went out one after another and left the unfortunate woman alone before the Lord. The Lord expressed forgiveness to her in the following most humble form: Woman! where are your accusers? no one condemned you?.. And I do not condemn you; go and sin no more (John 8:3-11). From this it is clear that the reason for the excessively strict judgment of neighbors is one’s own sinfulness, which is not paid attention to.
Saint John of the Climacus tells that a robber came to the monastery to a certain great father to repent and become a monk. This robber made a public confession of his sins, the most serious ones, and the great father saw a certain luminous man appear, holding the charter in his hands and erasing the terrible sins of the robber written on it as his confession revealed them. 202 Such is the power of confession. It is based on the infinity of the price by which we are redeemed.
The “interlocutor” demands the strictest repentance from the soul of the deceased, despite the confession of the deceased, not only pronounced before the confessor, but also set out in writing for the benefit of everyone. The “Interlocutor” tortures the soul of the deceased, as it may not have been tortured on its path beyond the grave - only the omniscient God can give a satisfactory answer to the “Interlocutor”. But that minister of the New Testament altar who is carried away by irritability and anger cannot be an infallible preacher of repentance, which is the manifestation of God’s love and mercy for fallen man, defiled by sins.
The Lord more than once told the Pharisees: go, learn, what does it mean: I want mercy, and not sacrifice? For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matthew 9:13). The “Interlocutor” method in this department is demonstrated with particular brightness. Having made an extract from the mentioned spiritual will, he exclaims: “Is it possible to hear this indifferently?! Is it possible to forgive this dying domination without judgment? and so on.
Exactly the same exclamations are made by the famous French writer Lamenais, who belonged to the revolutionary party, in his interpretation of the fourteenth chapter of Matthew. The same eloquence is scattered in order to attract the reader to a conclusion from the particular about the whole. Revolutionary writers in France, using their method, the absurdity of its basis and conclusions incomprehensible to the masses, picturesquely exposed the errors of the authorities, thereby shocked the authorities, picturesquely exposed the errors of the clergy, thereby shocked the faith of the people, created unrest in the state, and subjected it to terrible revolutions. “The Interlocutor” really counts on the effect of the scene he presented, because he repeats it twice - and in “The Voice.” and in the "Word." He was not mistaken in this calculation. May God's mercy cover Orthodox Russia!
One cannot ignore the persistent desire of the “Interlocutor” that the noble committees pay attention to the Law of Moses in relation to slaves. At the same time, as noted above, “Interlocutor” deprives the legislation it cites of its character. The Orthodox clergy cannot take part in such a demand, because the Council of the Apostles definitely decided that for pagan Christians neither the ritual nor the civil decrees of the Jews are at all obligatory (Acts 15). The Jewish law on slaves is not only not obligatory, but also not applicable either in Russia or in any other Christian state, like the ritual Jewish law.
The concept on which the Mosaic slave legislation is based is that one nation of Israel is the people of God, and other nations, rejected by God, are, as it were, excluded from humanity. For this reason, the Law of Moses established temporary slavery among the Jews only for Jews, providing for the acquisition of slaves for perpetual and hereditary possession from neighboring nations. The behavior of the Jews during such acquisition of slaves from neighboring nations, the treatment of captives, in general, the treatment of other peoples, their disposition towards them is terrible, they are explained by the above procedure. Let us present a few examples out of many.
The Israelites turned the entire Gibeonite people into hereditary slaves. “You are cursed,” the victorious leader of Israel told them, “you will be slaves forever, you will chop wood and draw water for the house of my God (Joshua 9:23). After taking the land of Midian, the Israelites destroyed with the edge of the sword all the captives from infant to old man, killed all the women, leaving only thirty-two thousand maidens alive for slavery (Num. 31). This was done at the command of Moses. When the holy King David took possession of the capital of the Ammonites, Rabbath, and the people who were in it, he brought them out and put them under saws, under iron threshers, under iron axes, and threw them into kilns. This is what he did with all the cities of Ammon (2 Kings 12; 31). In the psalms we read: Accursed daughter of Babylon... Blessed is he who takes and dashes your babies against a stone (Ps. 136; 8-9).
It is very clear that with the redemption of the human race by the Lord, the advantage of the people of Israel over other nations was destroyed. The Lord became at the cost of every Christian, and therefore Christians of all nations became spiritually brethren, equal to each other: there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11).
For this reason, the civil law of Moses not only could not take place among pagan Christians, but also the Jews who converted to Christianity were required to abandon this civil law, which separated them from all nations by the advantage of the flesh. Do not think of speaking within yourself: Saint John the Baptist already spoke to the Pharisees at the very beginning of the Gospel sermon (Matthew 3:9).
Due to their carnal advantage, given for a time, the Jews were extremely busy and pompous. They did not want to part with this advantage and for its sake they rejected Christianity. From the Lord Jesus they expected and sought the brilliant fulfillment in the flesh of the advantage granted by the Law of Moses and, having heard the Word of the Cross, the demand for renunciation of the fleshly advantage, they rejected the Lord. And now the Jews expect that they will be satisfied with the advantage of the flesh. If they formed an independent state, then even now they would act with other peoples according to the instructions of their old law.
The Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church never refer to the Mosaic Law in its literal sense, but cite it and the images of its fulfillment in a representative and mysterious sense. In relation to Christianity, it has the property of being like a shadow, which does not depict an object with complete accuracy, but an unclear likeness of the object.
Thus, the hatred and disgust that the Jews had towards foreigners represents the hatred and disgust that our inner man should have towards various types of sin. The merciless extermination of pagan peoples, commanded to the Israelites by the Mosaic Law, is an image of the New Testament commandment, commanding a Christian to decisively kill in himself all sinful thoughts and sensations (Matthew 5). The indefinite and hereditary ownership of slaves from other nations is an image of the constant possession of passions and the teaching of a way to own them to the Christian tribe. The name of the daughter of Babylon means a sinful infection in man, from which various active sins are constantly born. Blessed is the person who kills sins in their infancy, in their original thought, until they mature and become stronger in a person. Under the name of the stone on which such “babies” are killed, we mean the Gospel Teaching, on the basis of which sinful thoughts are rejected (Matthew 15; 19), and so on.
The “interlocutor” was carried away in his articles by the Jewish direction: he wants the teaching of Christ to interfere in civil affairs, to present his opinion about civil slavery in a civil sense, and not in a spiritual sense, to give an advantage according to the flesh and become an instrument of an earthly goal - in short, so that this all-holy and heavenly teaching ceases to be what it is - the Word of the Cross. For this reason, the “Interlocutor” turned to Jewish decrees that were optional for Christianity and inapplicable to Christianity, rightly hoping to find in them support for his carnal wisdom and unjustly imposing them on Christian society.
Quite unnecessary worries! The command and will of the sovereign is always sacred for Russians, and the teaching of Christ bequeaths to all Christians unwavering and decisive obedience to the supreme authority in all its civil orders.
The holy apostles, having rejected at their holy Council the demand of some Judaizing Christians, wrote a letter to pagan Christians. This message begins like this: Some who went out from us confused you with their speeches and shook your souls, saying that you must be circumcised and keep the law, which we did not charge them with (Acts 15:24). If in the primacy of the Church, by members of the Church, on behalf of the Church, but spontaneously, a demand was made that confused society, then one should not be surprised at a similar event in our time - spontaneous, but in the name of the Church and by a member of the Church. The apostles further say in the letter that they free pagan Christians from observing the Mosaic Law by the will of the Holy Spirit (Acts 15; 28).
I call on the clergy to holy contemplation in the Lord of the picture that human slavery represents in the Old Testament. Let's go up the mountain with Moses, look from this mountain at the Promised Land - let's look from the Mosaic Law to the New Testament sacraments. The picture that opens before us is amazing. The Holy Scripture, as we saw above, when counting the objects that made up the gift of both the king of Gerar and Pharaoh to the Old Testament righteous Abraham, puts slaves and female slaves in the same category as sheep and calves. This is not enough! Man stands on a par with soulless matter - with didrachms, that is, with money, with coin. What does this mean?
Moses, to whose law the “Interlocutor” refers and relies, commands, on the occasion of the above-mentioned extermination of the Midianites, the conversion of their maidens into slavery and the seizure of their property. From the soldiers who went to war, take tribute to the Lord, one soul out of five hundred, from people and from cattle, and from donkeys and from small livestock (Num. 31; 28). Next, the objects of self-interest received by the Israelites are calculated: six hundred seventy-five thousand small livestock, seventy-two thousand cattle, sixty-one thousand donkeys, people, women who did not know a man’s bed, thirty-two thousand all souls (Num. 31; 32–35). Again, man is in the same category as brutes! What does this mean?
And this must certainly have its own meaning: the lines in which man is placed in the same category with beasts and soulless matter were included in the Holy Scriptures at the behest of the Holy Spirit. These are those picturesque, tactile, true features that depict the depth of human fall. Just as a fallen angel, due to his fall, was numbered among the beasts of the earth (Gen. 3), so fallen man, due to his fall, became equal to the foolish beasts and became like them (Ps. 48:21). The God-man descended into this moral abyss to extract man from it! He, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) - not only took on the form of a servant, but also deigned to liken Himself to cattle prepared for the slaughter - this is how the Holy Scripture expressed itself about the Lord made man (Ps. 48:21, translated from Hebrew).
The first state of mind and heart produced by the overshadowing of grace, the first state of mind and heart, signifying their departure from carnal wisdom, is poverty of spirit. This is how the Lord determined: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:3). Poverty of spirit is the first of the bliss, the foundation of all bliss, their initial condition. When a person considers his fallen nature from the blessed, gracious poverty of the spirit, then he sees that this nature, through the fall, has lost all its dignity and has become completely indecent. With such a view of oneself, the need for a Redeemer becomes clear.
Just like the poor in spirit, there is the Kingdom of Heaven, that is, for only the poor in spirit, true knowledge and acceptance of the Redeemer is available, who already constitutes the entire dignity of the person renewed by Him. And I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, says the apostle, so that I may gain in Him, not my own righteousness, which comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that is from God by faith (Phil. 3:8-9).
Rationalists are alien to poverty of spirit. They reason and conclude about human nature, rejecting or omitting the concept of its fall. They see in this nature all possible virtues, without noticing that in it good is mixed with evil, and therefore its very good has become evil, just as fine food mixed with poison becomes poison. 203 For this reason, Christianity is humiliated and distorted by them, the Word of the Cross is rejected by them: they seek and demand for fallen nature such advantages as could only have been provided to nature if it had not fallen.
From false ideas came the most monstrous actions and consequences. Having presented to people their nature not in the form in which it really is, having given people a position (this the rationalists sometimes achieved for a very short time) which humanity cannot endure in the state of its fall, the rationalists created the most terrible disorders wherever their teaching was accepted, and, in order to return to order, the “noble exalted being,” fallen man, felt the inevitable need of both prison and chains, both on the block and on the gallows.
To be carnally minded, says the apostle, is death: but to be spiritually minded is life and peace, because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for they do not submit to the law of God, and indeed cannot (Rom. 8:6-7). On this basis, the apostle turns on behalf of God to all believers with the following testament: By the grace given to me, I say to each of you: do not think about yourself more than you ought to think; but think modestly, according to the measure of faith that God has allocated to each; do not be arrogant, but follow the humble (Rom. 12: 3, 16).
The appeal of the “Interlocutor” to the rural clergy, 204 past the diocesan archpastors, with the obvious elimination of the archpastors, is a clear and most impermissible violation of the hierarchical order. The Holy Synod, the Holy Synod alone, has the right to such an appeal, to which both archpastors and pastors owe attention and obedience. The Academy has its purpose: it must instruct the youth entrusted to it under the main supervision of the local bishop. The appeal and instruction of a member of the academy to pastors who are not at all subordinate to him in any respect is an abuse of right, an abuse of power. Such behavior already sufficiently evaluates the spiritual dignity of the appeal.
The dream that the landowner peasants will pass from the sovereign hands of the masters, as the “Interlocutor” puts it, to the pastoral hands of rural priests, that the power of the masters will be replaced by spiritual power, 205 is a completely false dream. The landowner peasants will pass in civil relations from the hands of the landowners to the hands of officials, just as state-owned and appanage peasants are under the control of officials.
When establishing a new management of the landowner peasants, the influence of officials on them should be very strong for two reasons: firstly, due to the need to accustom the peasants to the correct understanding and use of freedom, and secondly, due to the need to fulfill the conditions before the state and remunerate the costs that will be made when granting freedom.
Experienced persons from the rural clergy, practically familiar with the life of peasants from all departments, are very aware of the situation that awaits them in relation to the landowner peasants upon the granting of freedom. May they guide the young clergy with their advice, who can be carried away by the articles of the Interlocutor.
The Lord said: Every kingdom divided against itself will be desolate; and every city or house divided against itself will not stand (Matthew 12:25). Such must be the inevitable fruit of the clash of classes - the clash to which the “Interlocutor” leads. The Apostle foretells the same thing: if you bite and devour each other, he says, beware that you are not destroyed by each other (Gal. 5:15). The apostle also shows the reason why the conflict can and must occur. It lies in envy of earthly advantages, and the cause of envy is vanity, that is, the desire for earthly advantages (Gal. 5:26). These are the motivating reasons for Jacobinism in general.
The “interlocutor” sees in the present event the fall of the nobility, sees in the rise of the nobility that followed in the past century the humiliation of the clergy - both are completely false. European teachings acted hostilely against the Church, and therefore against the spiritual and material well-being of the clergy; they had an influence on all classes. The effect of European teachings on Russia is constantly intensifying - and the consequences of this action should also intensify. A momentary opposite action is unreliable: it must be destroyed and carried away by the all-destroying flow.
The real event is by no means the fall of the nobility. The nobility in Russia cannot be destroyed for a very clear reason - because in the vast Russian state, between the autocrat and the large population there must certainly be a serving class. Old noble families may fall. New personalities may appear and join the nobility. But all these are facts that have already been repeated and repeated, but have not destroyed the class necessary in the state.
When Russia was immersed in ignorance, torn apart by civil strife, oppressed by the yoke of the Tatars, it was natural that the clergy occupied the most important place in it, connected the individual parts with each other, and entered into state affairs. The clergy were the nurturers and educators of infant Russia. It is also natural that, after the establishment of autocracy, it gradually withdrew from interference in state affairs, limiting itself to the management of strictly spiritual affairs.
In the past century, Russia has unusually expanded its borders, joined the ranks of the top European states, and was formed in the image of these states. Again, it is natural that along with the importance of the state, the importance of government people and the entire serving class has risen. Naturally, in the spirit of European civilization, the Orthodox clergy became even more constrained in the range of their actions.
What does the future hold for us? We see an extraordinary material development in Europe. Russia, in order to harmonize with Europe and maintain its importance in it, must, out of state and political necessity, introduce European material development. Material development cools people towards the Christian faith, allowing for the most superficial engagement with it. With the strengthening of relations with Europe, a fact is inevitable: an increased invasion of its various religious teachings into our Fatherland. All these teachings, from papism to deism and atheism, are equally hostile to the Orthodox faith.
Meanwhile, the greatness of Russia must increase. Let us assume that it will remain within its present boundaries for a whole century. But at this time its own population should increase, according to the laws of statistics, to 200 million. Russia does not need to send its surplus population, like other European states, overseas. It can accommodate hundreds of millions freely and widely in its vast space.
According to the increasing population and material development, the importance of the state rises. As the importance of the state rises, so does the importance of the service class. Already now we see dignitaries with significance that did not exist at the beginning of this century. These are: governor of the Caucasus, governor of the Kingdom of Poland, governors-general of Novorossiysk and Eastern Siberia; their regions are entire kingdoms. They cannot stand on the same level as the governors Dimitri Donskoy, Mikhail Feodorovich, Alexei Mikhailovich.
With such state development, with such material development, with the invasion of European teachings into Russia, there is no hope that the clergy could return to the significance, both morally and materially, that it had in virgin Russia. They will say here: it is necessary to improve the material position of the Orthodox Church for the very welfare of the state. So! But the path to achieving this goal is not the one indicated by the “Interlocutor”.
The strength and essential importance of the clergy lies in its character. “You are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth,” the Savior tells us, the shepherds of the Church (Matthew 5; 13, 14). Let us show obedience to Christ through our lives, let us acquire Christ within ourselves: He will make us light for the world, salt for the earth. Our brothers of all classes, having seen the light shining from us, having felt the effect of the blessed salt with which we must be saturated, will give us everything we deserve and present us with everything we need for temporary life. The Lord Himself promised this to us. He said: So do not be anxious and say, “What shall we eat?” or what to drink? or what to wear... Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all this will be added to you (Matthew 6:31, 33).
On the contrary, if we lose our character, then our brethren will feel distrust of us, turn away from us, and show us every kind of disdain. And this was foretold to us by the Lord: “If the salt loses its strength,” He said, “how will you make it salty?” It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out to be trampled underfoot by people (Matthew 5:13). Alas, brethren, if we notice that people despise and trample upon us, then wouldn’t it be more accurate, wouldn’t it be fairer when, instead of blaming other classes for this, we turn our eyes to ourselves and try to correct our earthly situation by correcting ourselves in spirit?
The moral sign of Christianity is love. By this everyone will know,” said the Savior, “that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35). This holy sign must be primarily the sign of the clergy. Let us acquire love within ourselves and show it abundantly to all classes. Then all classes will involuntarily be filled with reverence for us and satisfy all our needs. A person cannot help but pay homage to love when he sees it in his neighbor, especially when he sees it in a shepherd: because love is God, before whom every creature of His humbles itself (1 John 4:16). To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.
With this proposal, 170 copies of it are forwarded for the same distribution of these copies, which was prescribed by my proposal of April 25, No. 809.
Subsequently, from this proposal, which caused the displeasure of the highest academic clergy, but justified by the indignation of the peasants - especially significant of them in the Kazan province - many thoughts appeared in the Manifesto of February 19, 1861. The newspaper Kolokol, published in London by Herzen, did not fail to respond to him. She accuses the bishop of allegedly denouncing the rector of the Kazan Academy, John, but since the articles of the “Interlocutor” were not signed by their compiler, not a single person was named in the bishop’s proposal.
Subsequently, it became known that they belonged to the pen of the academy professor Shchapov, who was convicted of leading action in the unrest that expressed itself in the Kazan Theological Academy after the pacification of the worried peasants by the aide-de-camp of His Imperial Majesty, Count Apraksin. We publish in full both the review of “The Bell” and the comments on it compiled by Bishop Ignatius.
Extract from the magazine “Bell”: 206
“We have never had much confidence in the sapper bishops. It has always seemed to us that people who point pontoons on temporary rivers are bad pontifexes when it comes to eternal pontoons, along which the souls of people should rise to heavenly villages.
For example, among the sappers, Bishop Ignatius, the former archimandrite of the Sergius Lavra and mentor of many Moscow Magdalenes, and now the Eminence Bishop of Stavropol, wrote an outrageous pamphlet on the peasant question. The purpose of the pamphlet is a Christ-loving denunciation of Archimandrite John of the Kazan Theological Academy, who published the “Sermon on the Liberation of the Peasants” (in the January book of the “Orthodox Interlocutor”) and a pious zeal to prove that slavery is a Divine institution, supported by the holy fathers of the Orthodox Church, strengthened by the pious kings.
Rzhevusky, wearing a cassock, likens the Kazan Academy and mainly the author of “On the Liberation of the Peasants” to “wolves appearing in sheep’s clothing,” restoring one class against another, undermining the throne, altar, etc. Then the angelic sapper enters into historical research about the origin of serfdom in Russia, proves that slavery was instituted by God Himself, that a Christian must only endure and does not dare even think about liberation.
Here the controversy focused on the text of the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 7; 20-23), which says: “if you are a slave, do not be embarrassed, but if you can become free, then know how to take advantage of it.” In the Slavic Gospel, this text, as you know, is distorted, it says: If you can be free, much more enslave yourself. But in the Russian translation, made by the Bible Society under Alexander I and then banned, it is translated as it has now been restored by the Kazan Academy, that is, “the better use it.”
The sapper Ignatius in Christ found fault with this and accuses the academy of distorting the words of the apostle to please the people. If the bishop were more or less conscientious, then he only had to look, if not at Greek and Latin, then at French or German text, and he, at least, knows French (in this language he admonished the Magdalenes) - it says exactly what the academy said.
Next, the bishop rebels against progress, mocks the fact that the academy uses this word and ends with an apology for slavery, proving that there is no happier state than serfdom. We heard that in the Aleutian Islands and Kamchatka there are hardened sinners who do not believe in the holiness of slavery, or in the salvation of rods, or in the purity of master’s rape, so that Rostovtsev could at least bother about transferring the sapper Ignatius there in Christ.”
“The publisher of the Bell, in his response to the Caucasian Bishop Ignatius, first of all pronounces the name of Christ, the Savior of men, with mockery. The person who harbors this kind of feeling towards his Redeemer and God is worthy of deep regret. Anyone who accepts reproach near his Redeemer and God should consider himself lucky in spiritual terms (Matthew 5:11). Contemporary detractors called the Lord a carpenter and a carpenter's son - why shouldn't Bishop Ignatius listen to the name sapper with a Christian frame of mind? A sapper's main weapon is an axe, and his occupation is primarily that of a carpenter.
The biographical information provided by the Bell about Bishop Ignatius is completely false. Ignatius did not serve as a sapper. After receiving his education at the Engineering School, he was among the engineering officers during the construction of the Dinaburg fortress for only six months. Then, having retired from service, he entered the monastery, being twenty years old, in 1827.
By voluntarily entering the monastery, he at the same time voluntarily renounced the right to have peasants by inheritance and the right to acquire them. Ignatius was never the rector of the Moscow Sergius Lavra and was not acquainted with Moscow pious ladies, but for twenty-four years he was the rector of the Sergius Monastery near St. Petersburg. Having been the rector of the desert, Ignatius brought about the transition to the free class for many people of the peasant and bourgeois classes, through petition and through his money. This means that by spending money and effort on such an object, Ignatius actually proved his consciousness that freedom, correctly understood and used, is a good for man. Several thousand rubles were spent on such costs.
When Ignatius took over the administration of the Caucasian diocese, one of his first actions was an agreement with the Chamber of State Property to replace the full-time ministers at the Caucasian Bishop's House with a monetary contribution. Ignatius agreed to accept for each servant half the annual price for which a worker is hired in Stavropol. This case was presented by the Prince Viceroy of the Caucasus to the Emperor and was awarded the highest approval.
The publisher of "The Bell" is as unfair to Bishop Ignatius's article as he is unfair to his face. The bishop's article is nothing more than an appeal to the Caucasian clergy, a home diocesan document unknown to the public. While showering the bishop with abuse, Kolokol showers the appeal with slander. The groundlessness of these slander would have been immediately revealed to everyone if the appeal had been known.
This behavior of the “Bell” is not new in church history. So, for example, the papist party slandered the behavior and writings of the Patriarch of Constantinople Photius because he acted energetically against the papists. It has not been forgotten among the censures that Photius was a court dignitary before becoming the patriarch; why shouldn’t the Jacobin representative shower Bishop Ignatius with curses and slander because he dared to open his mouth against the party and the Jacobin plans. 207
“The Bell” says that Bishop Ignatius rebels against progress, mocks the fact that the academy uses this word, and ends with an apology for slavery, proving that there is no happier state than serfdom. 208
The word “progress” is not mentioned at all in the bishop’s appeal. If by the name of progress we mean the advancement of mankind in Christianity, in virtue, in the sciences, in the arts, then Ignatius wholeheartedly sympathizes with such progress. But he is an enemy of Jacobin progress, which strives for success in godlessness, immorality, the rejection of all authorities and laws, and the moral and civil destruction of humanity.
Serfdom is discussed in detail in the appeal, that serfdom is out of date, that its abolition is an absolute necessity. True, the appeal expresses the desire that the abolition of serfdom be carried out by the government while maintaining calm in the state, and not by a popular revolt as a result of Jacobin outcries. This is what the party does not like, whose foreign representative rings the outrageous bell and calls the peasants to the axes.
"The Bell" calls the bishop's appeal a denunciation. The denunciation is made about something unknown, but the appeal was made when the Jacobin article was reprinted in the St. Petersburg and Moscow Vedomosti and, therefore, was announced throughout Russia. The appeal was made out of urgent local need and, as stated above, solely to the clergy of the Caucasian diocese. The bishop sincerely wishes that events would prove that such an appeal was unnecessary, and that the Jacobin articles were harmless. We must wait to see what events will say. A certain amount of time passes between sowing and harvest.
In the appeal, the name of Archimandrite John is not mentioned at all - it is announced by the publisher of the Bell and, perhaps unfairly, because the articles in the Interlocutor are not signed by the author. 209
The article “The Bells” is in the full sense a denunciation and sneaky accusation against Bishop Ignatius.
"The Bell", having proved the decisive ignorance of Bishop Ignatius precisely because he was a sapper, takes upon himself the humble duty of being his mentor and teaches the bishop how he should have explained verses 20-23 of the 7th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians of the Holy Apostle Paul. A wonderful phenomenon! The scoffer of Christ and His enemy begins to explain the teachings of Christ. His example, of course, was the audacity of that enemy of God who dared to explain the Word of God Himself to the Word of God Himself Incarnate (Matthew 4:6).
The proclamation shows various translations of the text with an explanation of the text by St. John Chrysostom. From this explanation it is clear that the Slavic translation expresses the apostle’s thought with all accuracy. Bishop Ignatius, recognizing it as his absolute duty to follow the rule of the Orthodox Church, which prohibits explaining Scripture arbitrarily, and commands us to unswervingly adhere to the explanation given to Scripture by the holy fathers, 210 considers it his indispensable duty to follow the explanation of the said text by Saint John Chrysostom and therefore refuses to pay attention to the explanation and instruction offered by the “Bell.”
If the publisher of the Bell knew the Greek and Latin languages, he would have seen that in the explanation the Greek text with a very accurate Latin translation was taken into account (See Novum Testamentum grecе et latine. Parisus MPCCCXLII), he would have stopped to give advice on consulting the French translation of the New Testament, since the French language by its design cannot in any way satisfy the needs of the most accurate translation, but of necessity must resort to paraphrase. Luther's German translation of the New Testament accurately conveyed the idea of the Greek text. 211
“The Bell” accuses Ignatius of recognizing the Jacobin teaching as undermining the throne (of the sovereign), the altar (that is, the Church), and so on. This is quite fair. Ignatius has these convictions and will remain with them in the Caucasus, Kamchatka, and the Aleutian Islands. The peasant question in the Jacobin system only stands in the foreground, serving as a screen behind which other questions are hidden.
The Jacobins strive to seize supreme power into their own hands, which they sought in France and achieved. Many good people, many aristocrats, were seduced by the cry for freedom: they learned their mistake already on the scaffold. The Girondins also had to step onto the scaffold beyond their aspirations. Events that are allowed to occur arbitrarily, forcefully entail other events that the instigators of the first events did not count on and did not foresee. This is the law of the sequence of facts.
"The Bell" calls Bishop Ignatius' appeal a pamphlet. This name cannot in any way belong to the appeal. The appeal was written in the most serious tone, dotted, so to speak, with quotations from the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers. The review of the “Bell” to the bishop must inevitably bear the name of a pamphlet, as it represents complete abuse and slander.
“The Bell” would have acted more fairly if it had called the teaching set forth in the appeal a teaching that is decisively contrary to the teaching and goals of the Jacobins. And this is the essential reason for the “bell” anger. It’s not the sapper’s fault here, it’s not the conversations in French with ladies that are unpleasant for gentlemen of the strictest morality - it’s the fault of the denouncer of the Jacobin system, Jacobin intentions. The Jacobins especially do not tolerate reproof. They love to act quietly, under guise and disguises, lulling and lulling their victims to sleep. With this course of action, they count on sure success, and the criminal worthy of all executions is the one who would notice and discover their actions.
The publisher of “The Bell” speaks of himself in the plural, as if involuntarily exposing the party: “We have never had much confidence in the bishops from the sappers,” he calls them “bad pontifexes.” Anyone can clearly see that this is a lie, not the truth, not distrust, but frenzied hatred: in Russia there were no sapper bishops, but there were the most worthy saints among military men. Metropolitan of Kyiv Peter Mohyla entered monasticism, leaving military service. The Slavic apostle himself, Saint Methodius Bishop, spent his youth in military service. Saint Demetrius of Rostov is the son of a centurion, a nobleman. They zealously opposed modern teachings hostile to the Church. However, Kolokol did not indicate which of the modern bishops he has power of attorney for.
In the columns of the loud magazine, curses are abundantly lavished on Metropolitan Gregory and other hierarchs of the Russian Church. What would be the reason for this? They were not sappers! The reason for the abuse is that these pastors are deep Christians who pronounce a teaching completely opposite to the teaching of the Bell, a teaching that acts on minds and hearts, leaving only a superficial effect on the ear for the Bell. How not to be indignant at someone who rings a bell incessantly and impatiently awaits the consequences of the ringing! The Christian teaching of well-meaning shepherds exposes the emptiness of the ringing and can make the ringing itself futile.
Zvon was at first interested in its news, but soon a general realization arose that “The Bell” was an empty magazine. Anyone familiar with the St. Petersburg gossip of the Jacobin circle will find it published in Kolokol. The beginning of the journal, like Jacobinism, is a false way of thinking. His weapons are sophisms, irony, curses. Character - frenzied insolence, rejection of truth, love, decency, decency. He can act with enthusiasm on the weak-minded; he has no power of persuasion. On the contrary, every serious person will immediately understand how “The Bell” understands freedom and how to use it - he will understand that the people, led by such an ecstatic leader, must certainly fall into confusion, take up axes and knives.
“The Bell” is an open enemy and scolder of Christ and Christianity. “The Bell”’s hatred of the Christian shepherd is the greatest praise for a shepherd. On the contrary, praising the “Bell” to a shepherd would be the greatest dishonor for him. A Christian pastor can only earn the approval of the “Bell” by betraying Christianity.
“The Bell” accuses Ignatius of likening the academy, mainly the author of the “Tale of the Emancipation of the Peasants,” to wolves appearing in sheep’s clothing. Ignatius cites the words of the Gospel and the explanation of them by the holy fathers in the holy sense that the words have in the Gospel, by which all false teaching and all false teachers hiding behind the guise of truth are called wolves dressed in sheep's skin, and not in the character of insane cursing, supposedly directed at the face, which the “Bell” gives them. There is not a single word about the person in the appeal, and the only reference is to the magazine “Interlocutor”, which included articles of the Jacobin direction.
Ignatius outlined the teaching of the holy fathers of the Orthodox Church on distinguishing false and harmful thoughts from correct and good thoughts. In this presentation, he did not mention either the academy or the author of the Lay, but spoke generally about false teaching and pointed out to articles written in the Jacobin direction that they belong to harmful false teaching and, in the sense of the Gospel, are ravenous wolves, dressed in sheep’s skin. Ignatius still remains with this conviction.
“The Bell” presents itself as the defender of the Theological Academy and the author of the articles, and Ignatius as their enemy. Is both fair? Can “Kolokol” be a defender of the Theological Academy, when the academy is trying to strengthen and develop Christianity in the fatherland, and “Kolokol” is trying to destroy Christianity. This is an insidious subterfuge through which “The Bell” strengthens its efforts to restore the academy against Bishop Ignatius.
On the contrary, Bishop Ignatius zealously sympathizes with the success of theological education and its sources - the Theological Academies. Until the age of sixteen, he studied the law of God, Russian literature, and the Latin language from professors at the Vologda Seminary and students of the Moscow Academy. Ignatius, practically familiar with the state of Christianity in Russia, zealously desires that the Theological Academies succeed, improve, prosper more and more: the spiritual well-being of the Church is based on them, they have the responsibility to resist countless modern false teachings, to expose them, to protect the Church from them.
The modern scholarship of the world certainly requires corresponding scholarship in the main clergy. This church need cannot be satisfied in any way by our monasteries, in which the element of asceticism predominates almost exclusively in its simplest form. Ignatius, in the rank of bishop, pays special attention to persons who received an education at the academy, as persons who can be especially useful for the Church. He even knows that the Jacobin party would like to invade the Theological Academies and influence the young and inexperienced with the news of ideas. It is known that clergymen who are carried away into Jacobinism, as can be seen in France, can act very strongly in the party’s views. So, here’s the thing: “The Bell” would sincerely wish that the Academy, caught by his amazing logic, his inimitable conscientiousness, believed him at his word, bowed to his side, became his instrument, considered Ignatius his enemy and helped sell Ignatius, hated by the Jacobins, to the Aleutian Islands, according to the proposal of the “Bell” and the long-standing general desire Jacobins.
“The Bell” is trying to prove that the opinions of the Jacobin articles that crept into the journal of the Kazan Academy belong to the academy. Unfair. The appearance of these articles was only a consequence of chance: as soon as they appeared, they stopped appearing. False teachings constantly arose in the Church, often headed by the highest persons in the hierarchy, the patriarchs themselves. Is it really for this reason that false teachings have become an integral part of the Church, its teaching? The Church, by rejecting them, proved that they were alien to it, and they, by preaching what was alien to the Church, proved about themselves that they were alien to the Church (1 John 2:19). So the Academy, having rejected the articles of the Jacobin trend, proved that both the articles and their direction were alien to it.
False teachings have appeared and will continue to appear: this is the property of the fallen human spirit. The clash of false opinions with true ones should still exist today. Academies are arenas for the clash of opinions, voluntary and involuntary. For this reason, the attention of the highest spiritual authorities is mainly paid to them.
We see from church history that many venerable and learned people made mistakes, accepted or invented false teachings. When they, having been exposed, renounced their wrong opinions, their temporary deviation from the truth was not held against them by the Church. Mere persistence in false opinions entailed cutting off from the Church. But even such excommunication lasted only until the time of repentance; unrepentance made the excommunication decisive.
Bishop Ignatius must do justice to the unanimity and like-mindedness of the party to which the publisher of the Bell belongs. A publisher from England demands that Ignatius be exiled to the Aleutian Islands; Ignatius heard the same thing in the last days of his stay in St. Petersburg from the Jacobins and from fools infatuated with the Jacobins. This desire was expressed in his eyes. “You should,” a kind, long-time acquaintance told him, “to the Caucasus or Kamchatka.” He answered: “I would go to Kamchatka with great pleasure if my poor health did not interfere.” Fate chose the Caucasus for Bishop Ignatius.
Let us end these sad remarks with a sincere heartfelt desire that the peasant question be resolved safely to the joy and happiness of the people and the Tsar, without unrest, without state upheavals, so that the ringing of the foreign Jacobin “Bell” and other Jacobin bells and bells does not disturb the peace of the people, so that the freedom of the landowner peasants is for them and for all of Russia a gift from the Tsar, and not a consequence of plans, plans, Jacobin cries.
Resolution of St. Ignatius on the journal of the seminary board regarding the punishments of guilty students of the Caucasian Seminary [Jan. 1858]. Published in: Stavropol Blagovest. 1999. No. 5 (May 27). P. 6 (abbr.); PST. T. 2. pp. 520–521.
Letter to St. Ignatius book A.I. Baryatinsky, Viceroy of the Caucasus, about the miserable situation of the Caucasian episcopal see (dated January 25, 1858, No. 11). PST. T. 2. pp. 521–522.
Presentation of St. Ignatius to the Holy Synod with a request to declare a blessing to the Caucasian clergy and Stavropol merchants for donations for the construction of temporary premises for the bishop (dated January 26, 1859). Published for the first time.
Letter to St. Ignatius to Metropolitan Gregory about the difficult situation regarding the maintenance of the Caucasian bishop (dated February 2, 1859, No. 9). About the failure to receive St. Ignatius 1000 rubles of annual episcopal support, which his predecessors received: bishops Jeremiah and Ioannikis. PST. T. 2. pp. 537–540.
Letter to St. Ignatius to the synodal chief prosecutor [A. P. Tolstoy] (dated February 2, 1859, No. 11). A request to provide the bishop with 1000 rubles, following the example of his predecessors. Right there. pp. 540–541.
Presentation of St. Ignatius to the Holy Synod on the dismissal of Archpriest Gremyachinsky from the Caucasian Spiritual Consistory (dated May 1, 1859, No. 35). Published for the first time.
Attitude of St. Ignatius to the chief of staff of the Right Wing troops, Major General Zabudsky (dated July 5, 1858, No. 146). On the delivery of information about schismatics of the diocese to the Theological Seminary. PST. T. 2. pp. 530–533.
Letter to St. Ignatius to the Chief Priest of the Caucasian Army Gumilevsky (dated May 4, 1859, No. 37) with a request, through the ataman, to deliver information about the schismatics of the region to the seminary board. Right there. pp. 541–542.
Under the title: “Archpastoral appeals of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov to the Caucasian clergy on the issue of liberation of peasants from serfdom.” 1. From January 17, 1859, No. 3 - published in the book: Nikolsky S. Ya. Anniversary essay: Liberation of the peasants and the clergy. Stavropol, 1911. pp. 7–8. (abbr.); Sokolov. Part 2. pp. 13–17; Literature and history: (Historical process in the creative consciousness of Russian writers and thinkers of the 13th-20th centuries)” Institute of Russian. lit. (Pushkin. House). St. Petersburg, 1997. Issue. 2. pp. 332–334. Publ. and note. A. M. Lyubomudrova; PST. T. 2. pp. 393–396. “During the preparation of the peasant reform of 1861, Bishop Ignatius, as the administrator of the Caucasian diocese, considered it necessary to enter into polemics with liberal, pseudo-Christian views on the peasant question, and then with the representative of the militant atheist wing, A. I. Herzen. These documents essentially reflect the clash of two fundamentally opposing views on the world. One of them, the liberal-educational one, recognizes the existing world... as requiring remodeling...
He is also distinguished by his belief in social and moral progress, the deification of the “rights and dignity of man.” Another worldview, the Christian church, in which the concepts of sin and redemption are central, sees the main goal of man “in deification,” that is, in internal purification. All attempts to organize earthly life by political, social, economic means, but outside the Church, not in the name of Christ, are considered as a manifestation of human arrogance and pride” (A. M. Lyubomudrov // Ibid. p. 374).
Orthodox interlocutor/Kazan. Spirits. academy. – Kazan, 1855–1917 – magazine.
Under the title: “Archpastoral appeals of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov to the Caucasian clergy on the issue of liberation of peasants from serfdom.” 3. On May 6, 1859, No. 916, published in the book: Sokolov. Part 2. pp. 18–47; Literature and history: (Historical process in the creative consciousness of Russian writers and thinkers of the 13th - 20th centuries) / Institute of Russian. lit. (Pushkin. House). St. Petersburg, 1997. Issue. 2. pp. 334–362. Publ. and note. A. M. Lyubomudrova; PST. T. 2. pp. 397 – 431. It should be noted that earlier the saint “did not participate in any ideological disputes, but when articles with similar tendencies began to appear in a spiritual journal, he considered it necessary to show the falsity of their views.” He determined “what was the distortion by the Interlocutor of the Orthodox understanding of freedom. Saint Ignatius resolutely separates internal, spiritual freedom and external, social and legal freedom, between which there is nothing in common” (A. M. Lyubomudrov // Ibid. pp. 379, 380).
Orthodox. companion. 1859. March. P. 354.
The “interlocutor” submitted to this violence of the method he had adopted. Recognizing the unfree state, the state of a serf, as humiliating and unnatural for humanity, through the mouth of Daniil Zatochnik he calls the nobles and boyars of the Tsar serfs. The silent thought here is very clear, very strong: it is a necessary consequence of what has been said (Jan., p. 48).
St. John Chrysostom's commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Chrisostomi in Epist. ad Ephes. Homilia XXII.
Peasants in Rus' // Rus. conversation. 1859. Book. 14. P. 94.
Word IV according to the Moscow edition of 1833.
Barsanuphius the Great. The answer is 656.
XL rule St. of the apostles proves that the apostles did not forbid bishops from having slaves.
The letter given to each newly ordained priest says: “It is fitting for a priest to diligently diligently read the Divine Scriptures, and not to interpret this differently, but like the church lights, our holy and God-bearing fathers, shepherds and teachers, interpreted with great agreement.”
Orthodox interlocutor. 1859. March. P. 337.
Orthodox. companion. 1859. March. pp. 347–348. LXXX The Rule of the Holy Apostles states: “We do not allow slaves to be promoted to the clergy without the consent of the masters, to the chagrin of their owners. For this causes disorder in houses. When the slave is worthy of being placed in the rank of the Church, which Onesimus himself was (Philemon’s slave, nominated by the “Interlocutor”), and the masters deign to free him and let him go from home, let him be promoted.”
Orthodox. companion. 1859. March. pp. 336–337.
Orthodox. companion. 1859. Jan. pp. 46–48.
Orthodox. companion. 1859. Jan. P. 47.
The second lesson is about humility.
St. John Climacus. Word 25.
Prpp. Callistus and Ignatius. Ch. 16. About how it is proper to endure temptations valiantly. Philokalia. Part II.
St. Arseny Matseevich, Metropolitan of Rostov, died in the casemate of the Revel fortress in 1772.
Orthodox. companion. 1859. Jan. pp. 69.71; March. pp. 342–345.
John Climacus. Word 4.
Barsanuphius the Great. Answer 59.
Orthodox. Companion. 1859. March. P. 354.
Bell. London, 1859. 15 Aug; Theologian Vestn. 1913. Feb. S. 196198. Note. Ep. Ignatius (Sadkovsky); Dept. ot.: M., 1913; Herzen A.I. Collection. cit.: In 30 volumes. M., 1958. T. 14. P. 140–141; Literature and history: (Historical process in the creative consciousness of Russian writers and thinkers of the 13th – 20th centuries) / Institute of Russian. lit. (Pushkin. House). St. Petersburg, 1997. Issue. 2. P. 363364. Publ. and note. A. M. Lyubomudrova; PST. T. 2. pp. 432–434.
Ignatius (Brianchaninov). Comments on the review of the magazine “Bell” to the Caucasian Bishop Ignatius // Theologian. Vestn. 1913. Feb. pp. 198–207; Dept. ot.: M., 1913; Literature and history: (Historical process in the creative consciousness of Russian writers and thinkers of the 13th – 20th centuries)” Institute of Russian. lit. (Pushkin. House). St. Petersburg, 1997. Issue. 2. pp. 364–372. Publ. and note. A. M. Lyubomudrova; PST. T. 2. pp. 434–445.
The thoughts expressed on the peasant question in the appeal two years before the highest Manifesto on the abolition of serfdom are strikingly similar to the thoughts expressed in the Manifesto.
Subsequently, it became known that the Jacobin articles were written by Mr. Shchapov, a professor at the Kazan Theological Academy and University, who was expelled from the clergy by his spiritual superiors for attempting to cause outrage. In support of Mr. Shchapov, both students of the Caucasian Seminary, who entered the Kazan Theological Academy, became interested. The last fact serves as proof of how much the Caucasian clergy needed a warning from the bishop.
It would be useful here to reveal Iskander’s opinion about the writings of the holy fathers. He calls this shrine “the nonsense of Basil the Great and other Byzantine corrupters of the mind” [Iskander Herzen “Comp., intro. Art. N.V. Elagina. Berlin, 1859. S. II 9].
The publisher of "The Bell", trying to assure that the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians calls on slaves to overthrow slavery, admits that the apostle thought differently when writing to the Romans. Iskander refers to the holy Apostle as follows: “The Apostle Paul did much less harm to the teaching of Christ when, under the name of Saul (Saul), he persecuted Christians with fierce fury, than when he, having become an Apostle, began to distort the very thought of Christ, pushing into it the notorious teaching about the need for obedience to every authority. By this he did more harm to Christ than Judas Iscariot himself” [Iskander Herzen “Comp., intro. Art. N.V. Elagina. Berlin, 1859. pp. 50–51].