New materials for the biography of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

With the opening of archives in which documents on the history of the Orthodox Church had been hidden for many years, researchers had an invaluable opportunity to take advantage of their funds. Documents discovered in the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) date back to the period in the life of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), when he was rector of St. Sergius Hermitage in the rank of archimandrite, and date back to the early 1850s. The fund of the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod contains the file “On the business trip of Archimandrite Ignatius in the case of the peasants of the landowner Strakhov” 1. The source represents the secret correspondence of the famous 3rd Department of the Chancery of His Imperial Majesty with the Chief Prosecutor's Office in connection with denunciations of high-ranking officials about the activities of the archimandrite in the High Commission established regarding the violence against serfs committed by the nobleman of the Novgorod province Strakhov. In this Commission, Brianchaninov was a deputy from the clergy. Briefly, the essence of the matter is this: in one of the villages included in the estate of the said landowner, the parish priest learns at Sunday service that almost all the girls - serf peasants, including minors, were subjected to violence by the master. The chillingly detailed story of driving victims to suicide, the simultaneous molestation of sisters, and the abuse of girls after their Communion during Great Lent appears from the pages of the investigative file. In his explanatory note, Archimandrite Ignatius exclaims that “Strakhov’s debauchery is somehow unnatural!” 2. It is important that this story took place 15 years before the abolition of serfdom, and not in the era of the notorious Saltychikha. She dispels the myth about a certain native Russian “whole-serf” way of life 3, understood almost as “monastic obedience.” So, at least, the famous spiritual author of the Russian diaspora, Archimandrite Konstantin (Zaitsev), wrote about serfdom in his book “The Miracle of Russian History.” This story might have remained unknown in the series of violence, if not for one circumstance: the priest, who witnessed the people’s suffering, acted with pastoral honesty and courage, and reported this to his spiritual superiors, Metropolitan Nikanor of Novgorod and St. Petersburg. Priest Ivanovsky acted as an intercessor for the peasants; moreover, when the villagers of the two neighboring villages of Yartsevo and Denisovo learned that they were being sold at auction to the rapist Strakhov for the debts of the previous landowner, the priest helped write a petition to the illiterate. Archimandrite Ignatius quotes it very abundantly in his explanatory note on the case, which was reclassified from the “Case of landowner violence against peasants” into “The case of serfs disobeying their master and inciting rebellion.” Thus, it was no longer the landowner, but the priest and serfs who became the criminals. To feel the mood of the people, to understand how the Orthodox pastors raised and protected them, let us turn to the text of the petition: "We dare to turn to you with a request, which consists of the following words. We were the landowner of the aforementioned but now it is appointed to sell the estate at auction. On this occasion, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Fedorovich Strakhov went to Moscow. A single rumor brought horror and trembling to our hearts and plunged us into such grief that our legs cannot walk from grief, we do not know what to do now. Your Honor! Be our benefactor, mentor and patron. Our mood is this: we thought of turning to the Tsar with a petition in the sense that the treasury would satisfy all debtors and we would annually contribute 1,750 rubles to the treasury from 35 plots. Instruct us, who do not know how to proceed in this matter while we are not yet sold, if the treasury does not agree to satisfy the creditors, then at least we would find ourselves a good landowner for whom we could live and not cry. Make us forever pray to the Lord for your kind, God-fearing soul. Your good deed done to us will serve as an eternal monument not only for ourselves, but also for our children” 4. Such a humble request was qualified as a state crime. Two commissions of inquiry acquitted Strakhov. Priest Ivanovsky was detained by the police with violence incredible even for that time (the future patron saint writes about all this). In broad daylight, the priest of God was beaten by law enforcement officers, his cassock and hat were torn off on the street, half-naked, he fled to the house of the dean, who not only sheltered his brother, but also went with him to the police station. The result was sad. The priest was put in an unheated secret room for two days, where he was not fed. As a result, he was sick for three weeks. Further: he was removed from the parish and put in prison for three and a half months. The family was expelled with their young children from the church home; deprived of the means of subsistence, she is doomed to poverty and death. The persecutors did not even spare the son-in-law-priest, depriving him of his place. An investigative case was also opened against the dean. The fate of the peasants was even worse. 5 walkers were arrested and died in or immediately after captivity. A team of soldiers was sent to the villages to suppress an imaginary rebellion, but in fact in order to forcibly marry the scolded girls and thereby hide the traces of the crime. The intervention of Archimandrite Ignatius in this case was due to the fact that the clergy who had previously participated in the investigation refused, to their credit, to sign the indictment, expressing an honest judgment. The future Saint was appointed to the third commission, created by the Highest command. His consistent position on protecting innocent peasants and clergy (he acts as an experienced investigator!) causes extreme irritation among those in power. Here's what he writes: "The reluctance to belong to someone else's landowner, who was convicted of cruelty and adultery, is completely innocent, just as it was natural to want to belong to another landowner, for whom one could live instead of cry! Where is the law that prohibits asking in such a situation, even in a letter, and asking prudently? If they had been instructed as they should, would there have been consequences? And why did the second commission not include this letter in the paperwork, an extremely important act, on which it itself based the accusation priest in a criminal offense?” 5. The patrons of the criminal Strakhov, in order to decide the outcome of the case in their favor, slandered the saint in a state crime by writing a denunciation to the gendarmerie. The chief of the 3rd Division, Adjutant General Orlov, immediately sends a secret message to the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod: “We have now received information that Archimandrite Ignatius urged to assist in the acquittal of the perpetrators, hinting at the participation of Her Highness Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna in this case” 6, and further in the records of the Synod the accusation states that “Archimandrite Ignatius openly said that he sent to redo the investigation in favor of the peasants and that’s where it stands” 7 . The investigation lasted about 2 years. However, this did not frighten Father Archimandrite; he conducted a thorough investigation - his report and explanations contain about a hundred pages! The deputy from the clergy not only made bold conclusions about the innocence of the serfs and the clergy (“By refraining from pronouncing my own verdicts and opinions, I forced the case itself to speak for itself everywhere. The actions of the Commission are devoid of legal dignity, therefore incorrect and illegal”) 8, but also achieved with his strong principled position the reinvestigation of the case. Not without his participation, the priests involved in the case as witnesses were sheltered from the violence of the local authorities in a monastery with their salaries retained. But what is much more important is that the great saint made important generalizations that go beyond the scope of the matter itself: “Now it is necessary to turn to the very actions against clergy during the investigation of the case, to those actions that, being partly examples, in general, of rudeness, cruelty, rage, insolence, to which people allow themselves to resort, used by the government as an instrument of the law, always fair and meek in its very severity; in particular, they were even the most disastrous examples of the complete disrespect of government officials for the clergy, desecration of the priesthood - and even blasphemy against the sacred. In such cases, it will be in vain to try to excuse, to cover up in writing this kind of action; their true meaning is not written on paper, inaccessible to the crowd, but is deeply engraved in the hearts. The concealment of vile acts of immorality, the perversion of the truth and disrespect, and even more so the humiliation of religion, combine to form that terrible poison that, little by little, over time, completely dissolves the conscience of the people and plunges them into wickedness, giving rise to all disasters. Who does not know that the dishonor inflicted on the servants of the altar relates to the altar, to the God present in it and worshiped? To disgrace religion in the person of its representatives means to humiliate to the highest degree any power established by religion. Civil willfulness always begins its actions with an attack on religion and its representatives; but the policy of well-ordered states strictly protects, by the force of wise laws, popular respect for faith, as the only condition of love, obedience and patience, on which all legitimate power is established and rests” 9. These lines allow us to see the spiritual appearance of St. Ignatius in a new way. Before us appears not only a teacher of smart work, a mentor of monasticism, a subtle theologian, but also a mourner for the Orthodox people, in the best traditions of our Church. This phenomenon was already unique in the 19th century. The previous century of persecution of the hierarchy had weaned the clergy from arguing with secular authorities. Very indicative were the threats of the all-powerful Arakcheev to the archpriest of his Gruzino estate, the altar server, who dared to take the blessing from the ruling bishop for the burial in the church (at the request of the count!) of Arakcheev’s mistress. The count promised that “there will be no place for him not only in Siberia, but also on earth” 10. Even passive resistance to lawlessness was unsafe. And here only the abbot of the monastery, not a bishop or a member of the Synod, allowed him to express frank judgments about the actions of the authorities in a written report! Alas, they turned out to be prophetic... At the same time, he did not sink to the level of social struggle, remaining within the church, pastoral framework of resolving the issue. Communicating with the serfs, he persistently called on them to obey, diligently restraining them from a senseless rebellion, which would serve as a pretext for bloody reprisals against innocent sufferers. Of course, the success of his intercession is connected with the saint’s feat of prayer and God’s help. But it is no coincidence that Providence chose as its instrument a man of great intellect and education, who was able to conduct his own investigation and reasonably reject all slander. The noble origin of the Saint and his connections at court played a significant role. Apparently, Archimandrite Ignatius really enjoyed the support of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna. His monastery - Sergius Pustyn - was a place of spiritual nourishment for the ladies-in-waiting of the Empress, wife of Nicholas I; many of them found their last refuge in the monastery graveyard. A separate topic for research is the significance of the synodal system for church life. Agreeing with the traditional opinion about its non-canonical nature, we are forced to admit that in this particular case the Chief Prosecutor's Office played a positive role. Neither the diocesan bishop, nor especially the parish clergy, could single-handedly resist the well-knit noble class, which, as a rule, had extensive family ties with the capital's bureaucracy 11 . It is very characteristic that the first commissions were headed by Strakhov’s relatives or people close to him. The future Hierarch of the Church will fall into the category of unreliable for a long time. It is no coincidence that in one of his letters we find a transparent hint of surveillance. “In letters sent by mail, I do not forget to insert words for politics, I am forced to hold something back for fear of an oblique revision,” 12 writes Archimandrite Ignatius to his friends. Much later, speaking shortly before his death about the fate of the Church, he will say that “for the first time the Chief Prosecutor came to express sympathy” for him. And further: "What a time! To maintain the Church, a secular person needs to be at the head of the government; the bureaucrats have destroyed the essential meaning of the Hierarchy in the Church" 13 . It was the synodal officials with the established system of legal proceedings for investigating the actions of clergy that were able to protect the priests who were witnesses and accused in the case of the Strakhov peasants, sheltering them in the monastery from persecution by the serf owners. The nameless collegiate assessor, closing the case, cites the following words, in which the voice of Archimandrite Ignatius (Brianchaninov) is heard: “The Senior Deputy, at the first glance at the paperwork of the second Commission, recognized it as devoid of legal dignity, incorrect and illegal According to the heartfelt feeling, it is a deep abyss of evil, in which the conscience and honor of the investigators, the innocence and well-being of the innocent, and the criminal offense of a criminal inveterate in crimes are drowned. Unfortunately, the actions of the Members of the Commission, which unworthily bore the name of the Highest Established, became obvious and clear not only to the educated circle of Ustyuzhna, but also to the common people, who do not always immediately understand the untruth committed against them, but almost always feel it, understand it later by its fruits and become infected with a terrible illness of distrust of the Government, and this illness is strengthened by the very patience of untruth, especially when she remains not exposed by the Higher Influences, which were the Members of the Second Commission in Ustyuzhna. Here is a weak sketch of the feat they accomplished” 14. This case destroys the illusions about the well-being of the Church in Imperial Russia, so popular in patriotic journalism. It shows the degree of guilt of the authorities before their own people and the Church, which, in this state of affairs, could not save the fatherland from social catastrophe. The great feat of Emperor Alexander II, a sufferer killed by terrorists, - the liberation of peasants from serfdom - has not yet found worthy comprehension in modern church historical literature. The established cliché of a negative, “apostasy” perception of any liberal reformation of the Autocracy clearly prevails in research. The Russian Orthodox kingdom was unable to fulfill its historical calling - to be a prototype of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and God allowed its destruction. RGIA. F. 797. Op. 22. D. 240. Archimandrite Konstantin (Zaitsev). Miracle of Russian history. M., 2000. P. 307. RGIA. F. 797. Op. 22. D. 240. L. 24. Arakcheev: evidence from contemporaries. M., 2000. P. 303. It is possible, however, that it was the very presence of the Chief Prosecutor's Office that prevented the canonical use of the power of the bishops and the influence of the clergy. – Ed. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). Letters to various persons. Vol. II. St. Petersburg, 1993. N. 87. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). Collection of letters. M.-SPb., 1995. pp. 778–779. RGIA. F. 797. Op. 22. D. 240. L. 198.