On Line Library of the Church of Greece

Georges Florovsky

Ways of Russian Theology

CHAPTER IV

THE ST. PETERSBURG REVOLUTION

I THE CHARACTER OF THE PETRINE REFORMS

Reform of the church was not an incidental episode in Peter's system of reforms. The opposite is the case. Church reform constituted the principal and the most consequential reform in the general economy of the epoch: a powerful and acute experiment in state-imposed secularization. As Golubinskii once noted, "[it was] so to  speak a transfer from the West of the heresy of state and custom." The experiment succeeded. Herein lies the full meaning, novelty, incisiveness, and irreversibility of the Petrine reform. Of course, Peter had "predecessors," and the reform was in "preparation" prior to his reign. Such "preparation," however, is hardly commensurate with the actual reform. Moreover, Peter scarcely resembles those who came before him. The dissimilarity is not confined to temperament or to the fact that Peter "turned to the West." He was neither the first nor  the only westerner in Muscovy at the end of the seventeenth century. Muscovite Russia stirred and turned toward the West much earlier. In Moscow Peter encountered an entire generation reared and  educated in thoughts about the West, if not in Western thinking. He also found a firmly settled colony of Kievan and "Lithuanian" emigrants and scholars, and in this milieu he discovered an initial sympathy toward his cultural enterprises. What is innovative in this Petrine reform is not westernization but secularization.

In this sense, Peter's reform was not only a turning point, but a revolution. "He produced an actual metamorphosis or transformation in Russia," as one contemporary put it. Such is the way in which the reform was conceived, accepted, and experienced. Peter wanted a break. He had the psychology of a revolutionary and was inclined to exaggerate anything new. He wanted everything to be refurbished and altered until it passed beyond all recognition. He habitually thought (and taught others to think) about the present as a counterpoint to the past. He created and inculcated a revolutionary psychology. The great and genuine Russian schism began with Peter. The schism occurred between church and state, not between the government and the people (as the Slavophiles believed). A certain polarization took place in Russia's spiritual life. In the tension between the twin anchor points - secular life and ecclesiastical life - the Russian spirit stretched and strained to the utmost. Peter's reform signified a displacement or even a rupture in Russia's spiritual depths.

State authority underwent an alteration in its perception of itself and in its self-definition. The state affirmed its own self-satisfaction and confirmed its own sovereign self-sufficiency. And in the name of such primacy and sovereignty, the state not only demanded obedience from the church as well as its subordination, but also sought some way to absorb and include the church within itself; to introduce and incorporate the church within the structure and composition of the state system and routine. The state denied the independence of the church's rights and power, while the very thought of church autonomy was denounced and condemned as "popery." The state affirmed itself as the sole, unconditional, and all-encompassing source of every power and piece of legislation as well as of every deed or creative act. [...].

The acts of the ecumenical councils were also to be employed. Moreover, modern books by non-Orthodox authors could be used on the unswerving condition that Scripture and patristic tradition provide confirmational testimony in the exposition of even those dogmas where no direct disagreement between Orthodox and "non-Orthodox" exists. "However, their arguments are not to be believed lightly, but shall be examined to determine if there is such a phrase in the Scriptures or in the patristic books, and whether it has the same meaning as they assign." Of course Feofan understood "non-Orthodox" to mean "Romanists" and all of his warnings are directed against "Roman" theology. "And a misfortune it is that these gentlemen scholars [panove shkoliariki] cannot even hear papal tidbits without exalting them to be infallible."

Feofan himself profusely and sedulously used "modern" and "non-Orthodox" books, but these were Protestant books. His theological lectures most closely approximate those of Polanus von Polansdorf, the Reformation theologian from Basel.l6 One frequently detects the use of Johann Gerhard's compendium Loci communes theologici (first edition Jena, 1610-1622). 17 In the section on the Holy Spirit, Feofan does little but repeat Adam Zernikav. 18  Bellarmine's Disputationes 19 was always ready at his fingertips and not simply to be refuted.

Feofan must be termed an epigon, but he was not a compiler. He fully commanded his material, reworking it and adapting it to his purpose. A well educated man, he moved freely in the contemporary theological literature, especially Protestant writings. He had personal contacts with German theologians. And. it must immediately be added that Feofan did not simply borrow from seventeenth century Protestant scholasticism, he belonged to it. His writings fit integrally into the history of German Reformation theology. If the title of Russian bishop had not appeared on Feofan's "treatises," it would have been most natural to imagine they were written by a professor of some Protestant theological faculty. These books are saturated with a western Reformation spirit. Such a spirit can be detected through out- in his turn of mind and choice of words. Feofan stands forth not as a westerner, but as a western man, a foreigner. It is not an accident that he felt more at home with foreigners, foreign pastors, and learned German scholars at the Academy of Sciences. 20  He viewed the Orthodox world as an outsider and imagined it to be a duplicate of Rome. He simply did not experience Orthodoxy, absorbed as he was in western disputes. In those debates he remained to the end allied with the Protestants.

Strictly speaking, Feofan's theological system contained no instruction on the church. The definition of the church which he provides is wholly insufficient.

God desired to unite His faithful, who were established in Christ, as a civil society or republic, which is called the Church- in quadam certum republicam seu civitatem compingere, quae dicitur ecclesia - so that they might better know themselves, give mutual assistance, rejoice, and with God's aid defend themselves against their enemies.

Feofan neither experienced nor noticed the mystical reality of  the church. For him the church was merely a union for Christian mutual assistance and identity of outlook. Such an attitude makes comprehensible his entire ecclesiastical-political program and activity.

Feofan begins his system with a treatise on Scripture as the impeccable and wholly self-sufficient primary source of religious instruction. In doing so, he closely follows Gerhard's theological system, whose section on the Scriptures practically replaces the section on the church. Feofan ardently inveighs against Roman Catholic authors, while insisting on the completeness and self-sufficiency of Scripture. Scripture fully contains and utterly exhausts the entirety of  all necessary truths and beliefs. In theology, and in faith itself, only Scripture is principium cognoscendi. Scripture alone, as the Word of God, possesses authority. Human thoughts and reflections can achieve no greater force than that of theses or "arguments" and certainly cannot  become a standard of "authority." Scriptures are subject to exegesis and analysis. Rather than lower the level of reliability through auxiliary and human commentaries, the most promising method is to use Scripture to interpret itself. The ecumenical councils possess a subordinate right to provide interpretation. Even the consensus patrum is merely humanium testimonium as far as Feofan is concerned. Such testimony represents only an historical witness about the past, about the opinions of the church in a given epoch. Feofan reduces the theologian's function to juxtaposing and arranging texts. In this sense, following his western teachers Feofan speaks of theology's "formal" character and, meaning. For all of his distaste for Roman Catholic "scholasticism," Feofan, like the majority of Protestant theologians during the seventeenth century and earlier (beginning with Melanchthon), remained a scholastic. Despite his great familiarity with "modern" philosophy (he read Descartes, Bacon, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff), Feofan was much closer to Francis Suarez, 21 who had so many Protestant successors. At no point did Feofan leave that entrancing sphere of western academic theological polemic which fossilized the whole tragic problematics of the Reformation debates.

Among Feofan's special "treatises," numbers seven and eight dealing with man innocent and fallen are particularly important and interesting. Feofan wrote another treatise in Russian on this same theme entitled The Dispute of Peter and Pau1 on the Unbearable Yoke. 22 Feofan's teaching about justification in this pamphlet served as the first opportunity for his opponents to speak about his "points contrary to the church," his corruption by "the poison of Calvinism" and his introduction of Reformation subtleties into the Russian world. Such reproaches and suspicions were fully justified. Feofan proceeded from the strictest anthropological permission which explains his tendency as a young man to completely discount any human activity in the process of salvation. Therefore, he limited the significance of theological reflection. Man had been broken and reviled by falling into sin; he had been imprisoned and entangled by sin. Will itself had been incarcerated and deprived of strength. Feofan understood "justification" as a juridical concept - justificatio forensis.  Justification is the action of God's grace by which the repentant sinner who believes in Christ is freely accepted by Him and declared righteous. His sins are not attributed to him, but Christ's justice is applied ("gratis justum habet et declarat non imputatis ei peccatis ejus, imputata vero ipsi justitia Christi"). 23 Feofan emphasizes that salvation "is effected" through faith and that human actions have no power to achieve salvation.

There is no need to engage in a detailed analysis of Feofan's system. A general sense for its inner spirit is more important.  On that score there can be no debate or hesitation about the proper conclusion: "Feofan was actually a Protestant" (A.V. Kartashev).24 His contemporaries often said so. Feofilakt Lopatinskii, 25 and especially Markell Rodyshevskii, 26 wrote about it. 27 Both suffered cruelly for their boldness. A crafty and clever man, Feofan knew how to parry theological attacks. His pen imperceptibly transformed any expression of disagreement into a political denunciation, and he did not hesitate to transfer theological disputes to the court of the Secret Chancery. The most powerful weapon of self-defense - and the most reliable one - was the reminder that on any given question Peter approved and shared Feofan's opinion. Thus the Monarch's person came under attack, and Feofan's opponent found himself guilty of directly offending His Majesty: a matter subject to investigation and review by the Secret Chancery and not a matter for unimpeded theological discussion.

"Peter the Great, a monarch no less wise than he is powerful, did not recognize any heresy in my sermons." Such a reference to Peter was not simply an evasion, for in reality Peter agreed with  Feofan on many points. The struggle with "superstition," begun by Peter himself, was openly proclaimed in the Regulation. Feofan always wrote with a special verve against "superstition." Characteristic in this regard is his tragicomedy Vladimir, Prince and Ruler of the Slavonic-Russian Lands, Brought by the Holy Spirit from the Darkness of Unbelief to the Light of the Gospels. 28 The play is a malicious and spiteful satire on pagan "priests" [zhretsy], and their "superstitions." Transparent references to contemporary life abound. Feofan openly despised the clergy, especially the Great Russian clergy, among whom he always felt a stranger and a foreigner. He was a typical man of the "Enlightenment," who did not conceal his repugnance for ritual, miracles, asceticism, and even the hierarchy. He fought against all such "delusions" with the tenacity of an arrogant rationalist. At any rate, even if he was insincere in this struggle, at least he was forthright. "I despise with the utmost strength of my soul mitres, capes, scepters, candelabra, censers, and other such trifles." True, he made this remark in an intimate letter to a friend. Of course at that time there was a great deal of superstition in Russian life and customs. But Feofan and Peter wished to war upon it not only in the name of the faith, but in the name of common sense and the "general welfare."

Prior to Elizabeth's reign, 29 government authority and even  state law extended a certain special and preferential protection to Protestantism. Peter's government, not just from considerations of  state uttility and toleration, was very often ready to identify the interests of the Protestants with its own interests, thereby producing the impression that Orthodoxy is a peculiar, moderate, ritualistic Protestantism and that Orthodoxy and Protestantism are equally reconciled ("Facillime le itime ue uniantur " as Feofan's friend, the St. Peterburg academician Kol' wrote in his characteristic book Ecclesia graeca lutheranisans, [Lubeck, 1723]).30  Catherine II later maintained that there is "practically no difference" between Orthodoxy and Lutheranism: ole culte exterieure est tres different, mais l'Eglise s'y voit reduite par rapport a la brutalite du peuple & raquo; During Anna's 31 reign, that is, under Biron, 32 the state pursued a particularly harsh policy toward the church.

They attacked our Orthodox piety and faith, but in such a way and under such a pretext that they seemed to be rooting out some unneeded and harmful superstition in Christianity. O how many clergymen and an even greater number of learned monks were defrocked, tortured and exterminated under that pretense! Why? No answer is heard except: he is a superstitious person, a bigot, a hypocrite, a person unfit for anything. These things were done cunningly and purposefully, so as to extirpate the Orthodox priesthood and replace it with a newly conceived priestlessness [bezpopovshchina].

Such is the Elizabethan preacher Amvrosii Iushkevich's 33  recollection of Anna's reign.

Peter became dissatisfied with Stefan Iavorskii for raising the issue of Tveritinov 34 and for his critical and forthright statement on the points of difference between Orthodoxy and Lutheranism. Rock of Faith [Kamen' very] 35 was not published during Peter's lifetime precisely because of its sharp polemical attacks upon Protestantism. The book was first published in 1728 under the supervision of Feofilakt Lopatinskii and with the permission of the Supreme Privy Council. This edition of the Rock of Faith received many blows in Germany. Buddeus' "apologetic" rebuttal appeared in Jena in 1729. 36  Gossip ascribed this rejoinder to Feofan. Johann Mosheim 37 criticized Rock of Faith in 1731 . In Russia, Father Bernardo de Ribera, the household priest of the Spanish envoy Jacobo Francisco, Duke de Liria, came to Iavorskii's defense. The quarrel, becoming evermore entangled and complex, was finally resolved in the Secret Chancery. A decree of 19 August 1732 again suppressed Rock of Faith and removed it from circulation. The entire edition was seized and sealed up.

Our domestic enemies devised a stratagem to undermine the Orthodox faith; they consigned to oblivion religious books already prepared for publication; and they forbade others to be written under penalty of death. They seized not only the teachers, but also their lessons and books, fettered them, and locked them in prison. Things reached such a point that in this Orthodox state to open one's mouth about religion was dangerous: one could depend on immediate trouble and persecution. (Amvrosii Iushkevich) Iavorskii's book was restored to free circulation by imperial  order only in 1741 .

Rock of Faith was persecuted and suppressed precisely because it contained a polemical rejoinder to the Reformation. For this reason however, even those Orthodox who had no sympathy or enthusiasm for Iavorskii's Latinism greatly valued his work. Pososhkov was  one such Orthodox. 38

The book Rock of Faith composed by His Holiness the Metropolitan of Riazan' Stefan Iavorskii of blessed memory should be published in order to affirm the faith and preserve it from Lutherans, Calvinists, and other iconoclasts. Five or six copies of it should be sent to each school, so that those aspiring for the priesthood might commit this very valuable Rock to memory in order to reply automatically to any question.

Pososhkov was sincerely worried and confused by this "iconoclastic" danger, by "senseless Lutheran theorizing," and by the "idle wisdom" of Lutheranism. He enthusiastically supported Peter's reforms, but he did not believe that it was either necessary or possible to  repudiate one's own ancestral religion for the sake of any such  renovation or for the "general welfare," or replace it with something newly conceived and superficial. As vigorously as Feofan and Peter, Pososhkov criticized the religious ignorance and superstition of the people, even the clergy, as well as the widely prevailing poverty and injustice. He insisted on the general introduction of schools; demanded the "ability to read" [grammaticheskoe razumenie] from those seeking to become deacons; and invited those pursuing a monastic life to study and "become skilled in disputations." However, Pososhkov's ideal remained the "religious life" and not lay or secular life. Thus, despite Stefan Iavorskii's Latinisms Pososhkov felt a closeness to and a confidence in him. Above all, Stefan provided him with a good deal of useful material.

In this way circumstances unfolded in which Stefan, writing theology on the basis of Bellarmine, by the same token was able to defend the Russian church from the introduction of the  Reformation. Those circumstances became so complex that the fate of Russian theology in the eighteenth century was resolved in an extended debate between the epigoni of western post-Reformation Roman Catholic and Protestant scholasticism. Feofan eventually emerged victorious in that debate; he did not do so immediately. Due to a certain historical inertia, the earlier Roman Catholic Kievan tradition persisted until mid-century, even in the newly created schools. New ideas only slowly gained wider currency. Feofan conquered as a scholar this was a victory for Protestant scholastic theology.    

THE ECCLESIASTICAL SCHOOLS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

In the section of the Regulation entitled "Teachers and Students in Educational Institutions" Feofan outlines a coherent and reasoned program for education in the new schools. "When there is no light of learning there can be no good order in the Church; disorder and superstitions worthy of much ridicule are inescapable as are dissensions and the most senseless heresies." The Kiev Academy remained Feofan's model or template. He proposed the establishment of the "Academy" model for Great Russia. Such a school was to be uniform and general, lasting several years and containing many grades. All grades would progress together. The school was to aim for general education with  philosophy and theology forming the capstone. A seminary was to be opened in conjunction with the academy, and it was to be a boarding school "on the monastic level." In Feofan's estimation, this marked the point of departure. Once again he is relying on western example or experience ("these things have been made the subject of no little pondering in foreign countries"). He most likely had in mind the College of St. Athanasius in Rome, where he had studied. The life of the seminary was to be insulated and isolated with the greatest possible effort made to separate it from the surrounding life ("not in a city but aside"), away from the influence of both parents and tradition. Only in this manner could a new breed of men be reared and educated. "Such a life for young people seems to be irksome and similar to imprisonment. But for the person who becomes accustomed to such a life, even for a single year, it will be most pleasant; as we know from our own experience and from that of others."

Feofan immediately tried to establish such a seminary, and in 1721 he opened a school in his home at Karpovka. The school was only for the primary grades. Foreigners, including the academician Gottlieb Bayer 39 and Sellius, 40 taught there. The school was abolished when Feofan died. Zaikonospasskii Academy in the Zaikonospasskii Monastery in Moscow became the leading school in Great Russia. By 1700 or 1701, it had already been reorganized on the Kievan model as a Latin school under the protection of Stefan Iavorskii. Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem 41 justifiably rebuked him for introducing "Latin learning." Meanwhile the Jesuits in Moscow, who had founded their own school for the sons of Moscow aristocrats, commented very favorably on it. Students of the two schools maintained friendly relations and arranged joint scholastic conversations. It would seem that for a time Stefan had friendly relations with the Jesuits as well.

All the teachers at the academy came from Kiev and among them Feofilakt Lopatinskii deserves special mention. Later during the reign of Anna, he became archbishop of Tver and also unbearably suffered at the hands of cunning men. He suffered most greatly from Feofan, whom he accused and attacked for Protestantism. Feofilakt possessed a wide knowledge and a bold spirit, but he was a typical scholastic theologian. His lectures follow Thomas Aquinas. He also later supervised the publication of Iavorskii's Rock of Faith. 42

Generally speaking, the schools of that time in Great Russia were usually created and opened only by hierarchs from the Ukraine. (There was also a time when only Ukrainians could become bishops and archimandrites.) They founded Latin schools everywhere on the model of those in which they themselves had studied. Usually these hierarchs brought teachers (sometimes even of "Polish extraction") from Kiev or summoned them afterward. It sometimes happened that even the students were brought from the Ukraine. Such an emigration of Ukrainians or Cherkassy was regarded in Great Russia as a foreign invasion. In the most direct and literal sense, Peter's reform meant "Ukrainization" in the history of these ecclesiastical schools. The new Great Russian school was doubly foreign to its students: it was a school of "Latin learning" and "Cherkassian" teachers. Znamenskii 43 makes this point in his remarkable book on the ecclesiastical schools of the eighteenth century.

To the students all of these teachers quite literally seemed to be foreigners who had traveled from a far away land, as the Ukraine seemed at the time. The Ukraine possessed its own customs, conceptions, and even learning, coupled with a speech which was little understood and strange to the Great Russian ear. Moreover, not only did they not wish to adapt themselves to the youth they were supposed to educate or to the country in which they resided, but they also despised the Great Russians as barbarians. Anything which differed from that in the Ukraine became the object of mirth and censure. They exhibited and insisted upon everything Ukrainian as singularly better.

There is direct evidence that many of these emigrants remained unaccustomed to the Great Russian dialect and constantly spoke Ukrainian. This situation altered only during Catherine II's reign. By that time several generations of indigenous Great Russian Latinists had grown up. The school remained Latin. As a "colony" it grew stronger, but it never ceased to be a colony.

Without exaggeration one can say that "that culture which lived and grew in Russia from Peter's day onward was the organic and direct continuation not of Muscovite tradition but of Kievan or Ukrainian culture" (Prince N.S. Trubetskoi) 44 Only one reservation needs to be made: such culture was too artificial and too forcibly introduced to be described as an "organic continuation."

Considerable confusion and disorganization accompanied the construction of the new school network. By design the new school was to be a "class" school compulsory for the "clerical rank." The children of the clergy were recruited by force, like soldiers, under threat of imprisonment, assignment to the army, and merciless punishment. In the Ukraine, on the contrary, the schools had a multiclass character. Moreover, in the Ukraine the clergy did not become segregated into a distinct class until Catherine's reign. In addition to the Kievan Academy, the Kharkov Collegium also provides a characteristic example. Founded as a seminary in 1722 by Epifanii Tikhorskii, 45 the bishop of Belgorod, and with great material assistance from the Golitsyn family, the school had been reorganized in 1726. Sometimes it was even called the Tikhorian Academy. The theology class was inaugurated as early as 1734.

In any case, the hierarchy was obligated to establish new schools and to do so at the expense of the local monastery or church. These schools were founded from professional considerations "in the hope of the priesthood," for the creation and education of a new breed of clergy. However, their curricula provided for general education with theology studied only in the very last year. Very few surmounted the long and difficult curriculum to reach that class. The majority left the seminaries with no theological training whatever. Not just the poorer students left early ("for inaptitude for learning" or "for inability to understand the lessons"). Very frequently the better students were lured away to the "civil command" [svetskaia kommanda] in search of other professions or simply to enter "into the bureaucratic rank." Yet throughout the entire eighteenth century the ecclesiastical schools formed the sole, durable, and extensive educational system.

The expansion and development of such a network of multigrade schools seemed an impossible task, as was duly foreseen. Above all, the necessary number of teachers could nowhere be found or acquired, especially teachers sufficiently trained in the "highest learning" (i.e., theology and philosophy). In any case, only four of the twenty-six seminaries opened prior to 1750 taught theology and four more offered philosophy. Due to the lack of able teachers, this situation only slowly improved even at the Aleksandr Nevskii Seminary in St. Petersburg 46 Enlisting students proved difficult, although failure to appear was treated similarly to desertion from the army.

A police state draws no distinction between study and service. Education is regarded as a form of service or duty. The student (even the youngest) was looked upon as a servitor discharging his obligation and bound to perform all the tasks belonging to his office under threat of criminal prosecution and not simply punishment. Thus, only with the greatest reluctance were even the least capable students (including boys of unconquerable delinquency, cruelty, and violent  brutality) excused from enlistment in the education service, and when that happened, soldiering replaced their education. "In this regard, seminarians became sons of church soldiers [tserkovnye kantonisty]." Those failing to appear, those who disappeared, or those who deserted were tracked down and forcibly returned - sometimes even in chains - "for that training and testing of them depicted in the Spiritual Regulation." All of these measures failed to deter deserters. Sometimes nearly half the seminary ran away, and class lists contained the epicentry: semper fugitiosus.

Such wild flights by students and their concealment by others did not result from some dark quality, laziness, or obscurantism on the part of the clerical rank. The reason for such rejection of education did not derive from some ignorant or superstitious quality in the clergy, a topic on which Peter and Feofan so eloquently declaimed. The reason lies concealed in the fact that the new Russian school was foreign and exotic: an unexpected Latin-Polish colony on the Russian clergy's native soil. Even from the "professional" point of view such a school can be shown to have been useless.

The practical mind detected no benefit in Latin grammar, that is, in some `artful mannerisms' acquired in the seminaries and utterly failed to discover any reasons to abandon the old familiar ways of preparation for pastoral duties at home in exchange for new unfamiliar and doubtful ways. It still remained to be proven who was better prepared for the clerical life: the psalmist who had served in the church since childhood and learned reading, singing, and liturgical routine through practice or the Latin scholar who had learned a few Latin inflections, and a few vocabulary words. (Znamenskii) In the Latin schools, students grew unfamiliar with Slavic and  even the Scriptural texts used during their lessons were presented in Latin. Grammar, rhetoric, and poetics were studied in Latin. Rhetoric  in Russian came later. Understandably, parents mistrustfully sent their children to "that damned seminary to be tortured," while the  children themselves preferred imprisonment if it meant escaping such educational service. The dismaying impression arose that these  newly introduced schools, if they did not actually alter one's faith, did replace one's nationality.

During Peter's reign Russia did not acquire the "humanist foundations" of European culture, but merely western routine. This routine was introduced through compulsory measures, and such means frequently proved morally debasing, particularly in the "all-embracing poverty," that is, outright destitution which prevailed in the schools even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow, speaking about his own school days, noted  that clerical youths "from the lowest grades to the highest prepared themselves for church service more through fortitude and endurance than because they possessed any material advantage." True, in the second half of the century this situation improved and another, more fruitful, pedagogical ideal prevailed. Even French became part of the curriculum. The ideal found scarcely any reflection in life.

The establishment of schools undoubtedly constituted a positive step. Yet the transplant of Latin schools in Russian soil signified a breach in the church's consciousness: a breach separating theological "learning" from ecclesiastical experience. The rift could be felt all the more keenly when one prayed in Slavic and theologized in  Latin. The same Scripture which rang out in class in the international language of Latin could be heard in Slavic in the cathedral. This unhealthy  breach in the church's consciousness may well have been the most tragic consequence of the Petrine epoch. A new "dual faith," or at  least "dual soul," was created. "Once one has gone to the Germans, leaving them is very difficult" (Herzen). 47

The cultural construction was western; even the theology was western. During the eighteenth century the term education usually designated scholarly "erudition." This theological erudition of  Russia's eighteenth century Latin schools came to be regarded (and with reason) as some foreign and superfluous element in the church's life  and customs, responding to none of its organic needs. Such erudition was not neutral. Theology studied according to Feofan's system resulted in all questions being posed and viewed from a Protestant standpoint. Psychological transformation accompanied this new erudition; the spiritual dimension was "Reformed." Is this not actually the most powerful reason for that lack of faith in and obstinate indifference to theological culture which still has not yet been outgrown among the wider circles of the congregation and even among the clergy? This is also the reason for the continuing attitude towards theology as a foreign and  western appendage forever alien to the Orthodox East which has so tragically impeded (and continues to impede) the recovery of Russia's religious consciousness and its liberation from both ancient and modern prejudices. This is an historical diagnosis, not an assessment.

"Many seminarians who are studying Latin language and Latin subjects have been observed to become suddenly bored," as it was noted in a very curious request for the reinstitution of  Russian entitled "Lamentations of Sons of Merchants and Those of Mixed Ranks" addressed to the then archbishop of Tver, Platon Levshin, 48 in 1770. Such "boredom" and even "affliction" (that is, injury to the mind) sprang from a spiritual contusion or rupture. Quite sufficient  reasons and grounds for disbelief and suspicion were provided not only during Peter's rein but subsequent years supplied them with greater frequency. Learning opposed "superstition" and often faith and piety were understood to come under that hated designation. Naturally this was the "Age of Enlightenment." The business-like and utilitarian struggle with superstition during Peter's reign anticipated the luxurious freethinking and libertinism of Catherine's reign.

In dealing with "superstition" Peter proved more resolute than even Feofan, for he was cruder. Still, Feofan was no apprentice. In this regard, the Petrine legislation regulating monasteries and monasticism is very instructive. Peter considered monasticism as knavish and parasitical. "Whenever several [such] sanctimonious bigots went to visit the Greek emperors, they more frequently visited their wives." "At the very outset [of Russian history] this gangrene became widespread among us." Peter found Russia climatically unsuited to monasticism. He planned to convert existing monasteries into work houses,  foundling homes or veterans homes. Monks were to become hospital attendants and nuns were to become spinners and lacemakers, for which purpose skilled lacemakers were brought from Brabant. "They say pray, and everyone prays. What profit does society get from that?" The prohibition against monks studying books and engaging in literary affairs is quite characteristic, and a "rule" to that effect was appended to the Regulation. 49

For no reason shall monks write in their cells, either excerpts from books or letters of advice, without the personal knowledge of their superior under penalty of severe corporal punishment; nor shall they receive letters except with the permission of the superior. In conformity with the spiritual and civil regulations no ink or paper may be owned, except by those permitted by the superior for a general spiritual use. This shall be diligently watched among the monks, for nothing destroys monastic silence as much as frivolous and vain writings.

Apropos of this prohibition, Giliarov-Platonov 50 once rightly noted that :

When Peter I issued the decree forbidding monks to keep pen and ink in their cells, when that same rule ordered by law that the confessor report to the criminal investigator those sins revealed to him in confession; then the clergy must have felt that henceforth state authority would come between them and the people, that the state would take upon itself the exclusive instruction of the popular mind and strive to destroy that spiritual bond, that mutual confidence, which existed between shepherds and their flocks.

True, Peter also wished to educate the monks in the true understanding of the Scriptures. As a first step, all young monks (that is, those less than thirty years old) were ordered to assemble for study at the Zaikonospasskii Academy. 51 Such a decree could only produce further unrest, for it could only be understood as an effort to extend the educational-service requirement to monks (which was fully in keeping with the spirit of the "reforms"). Such service was to be done in Latin schools at that. Somewhat later Peter proposed to convert the monasteries into nursery beds for the cultivation of enlightened men especially capable of translating useful books.

Above all, the new school was regarded as a form of state arbitrariness and interference. These new "learned" monks of the Latin-Kievan type (the only sort Peter and Feofan wished to train)52 whose uncomprehending and excited minds were forcibly acquiring and being drilled in lifeless Latin knowledge, could hardly be reconciled to the closure and destruction of the old pious monasteries or with the silencing of God's service within them. 53

The Petrine State extorted the acceptance of this religious and psychological act. Precisely because of this extortion religious consciousness in the eighteenth century so often shrank,  shrivelled, and covered itself with silence, quiet endurance, and a refusal to pose questions for itself. A single common language-that sympathetic  bond without which mutual understanding is impossible-was lost. The quips and banterings in which Russia's eighteenth century Kulturtrager and enlighteners rapturously engaged further facilitated this process. In general, all these contradictions and contusions during the eighteenth century powerfully and unhealthily resounded and found expression in the history of Russian theology and Russian religious consciousness.  

PROTESTANT SCHOLASTICISM

 

Feofan's influence in education did not become immediately apparent. He taught for only a short time in Kiev and he left no disciples behind him. His "system" remained uncompleted, while his notes were prepared and published much later. Feofan's system penetrated the school routine approximately at mid-century (in Kiev after Arsenii Mogilianskii 54 became metropolitan in 1759). During the first half of the century theology continued to be taught in the earlier Roman Catholic manner. 55 Course plans written by Feofilakt (that is, on the basis of Thomas Aquinas) usually constituted the theology taught in the new seminaries. At that time peripatetic philosophys 56 - Philsophia Atistotelico-Scholastica-was taught everywhere and usually from the same textbooks as those used by the Polish Jesuits. Philosophy passed from Aristotle to Wolff 57 almost simultaneously with the passage of  theology from Aquinas to Feofan Prokopovich. Baumeister's textbook long remained required and widely accepted. 58 The sway of Protestant Latin scholasticisrn began. Latin remained the language of the schools, while instruction and study went unchanged. Direct use was made of the systems and compendiums written by Gerhard, Quenstedt, Hollatius and Buddeus. 59 Compilations, "abridgments," and "extracts" were made from these Protestant handbooks in the same manner such books had been compiled from Roman Catholic texts, Few of these compendiums were published. The lectures of Sil'vestr Kuliabka, Georgii Koniskii, or Gavriil Petrov 60 were never printed Only much later did such compendiums appear in print: Feofilakt Gorskii's Doctrina (published in Leipzig in 1784 and based on Buddeus and Schubert); Iakinf Karpinskii's Compendium theologiae dogmaticopolemicae (Leipzig, 1786); Sil'vestr Lebedinskii's Compendium (St Petersburg, 1799 and Moscow, 1805); and finally Irinei Fal'kovskii'a compendium published in 1812. 61 All of these authors followed Feofan. One looks in vain for any free expression of thought in these books and compendiums. They were textbooks: the fossilized "tradition of the school" and the weight of erudition. The eighteenth century witnessed the age of erudites and archaeologists (more as philologists than as historians), and such erudition found expression in their teaching. The whole purpose of eighteenth century education resided in compiling and assembling material. Even in the provincial seminaries the best students read a great deal, especially the classical historians and frequently even the church fathers more often in Latin translation than in Greek, For the Greek language did not belong to the "ordinary" course work, that is, it was not one of the chief subjects of instruction and was not even required. 62 Only in 1784 was any attention paid to instruction in Greek out of "consideration for the fact that the sacred books and the works of the teachers of our Orthodox Greco-Russian Church were written in it: A more likely explanation for this decision is to be found in the political calculations related to the "Greek Project." 63 The reminder about Greek produced no direct practical results and even such an advocate as Metropolitan Platon of Moscow 64 found only ten or fifteen student willing to study in his beloved and well tended Trinity Seminary) Platon himself learned Greek only after finishing school. He hoped the seminarians might achieve the ability to speak "simple Greek and read "Hellenic Greek." He succeeded, for some of his students did acquire the ability to write Greek verses. The works of the church fathers as well as other books were translated from Greek and Latin at both the  Zaikonospasskii Academy and the Trinity Seminary. Greek, along with Hebrew, became compulsory with the reform of 1798.65

Among the Russian Hellenists of the eighteenth century first place must be given to Simon Todorskii,66 the great authority on Greek and Oriental languages and student of the famous Michaelis 67 Todorskii's students in Kiev, Iakov Blonnitskii and Varlaam Liashchevskii, both worked on the new edition of the Slavic Bible. 68 This was no easy task. The editors needed genuine philological  tact and sensitivity. A decision had to be made about which editions to use as a basis for corrections. The Walton Polyglot, 69 to be consulted in conjunction with the Complutensian Polyglot, 70 was finally decided upon. No immediate solution was devised on how to deal with cases of faulty translation in the old and new editions. One suggestion involved fully printing both editions-the old one and the new corrected one-in parallel columns. The printed Bible, however, merely gave an extensive index of all changes. The editors took the Septuagint as their guide. Feofan had opposed comparing the translation not only with the Hebrew text, but also with other Greek texts "which did not come into common use in the Eastern Church." His argument was to be repeated a century later by the adherents to "the return to the time of scholasticism." Iakov Blonnitskii at one time served as a teacher in Tver' and Moscow. Without completing the work on the Bible, he secretly journeyed to Mt. Athos, where he lived ten years in the Bulgarian monastery of Zographou  71 and continued his study of Slavic and Greek.

Biblical realism-the effort to grasp and understand the sacred text in its concreteness and even in historical perspective-constitutes the positive side of the new Biblical instruction. Moralistic  and didactic allegorism formed a powerful element in eighteenth century exegesis. Nevertheless, above all else the Bible was regarded as a book of Sacred History. An ecclesiastical apperception began to take shape.

In 1798 church history became part of the curriculum. Since there was no "classical" book (that is, textbook), Mosheim, Bingham, or Lange were recommended. 72  Translation of historical works occupied considerable attention at the Moscow Academy in the 1760's. Pavel Ponomarev the rector of the academy in 1782 (later archbishop, of Tver' and then Iaroslavl'), translated the Memoires of Tillemont 73, but the work met with the censor's disapproval. Ieronim Chernov, prefect at the academy in 1788, published his translation of Bingham. Mefodii Smirnov rector from 1791 to 1795 (later archbishop of Tver'), prefaced his theology lectures with an historical introduction.  His Liber historicus de rebus in primitiva sive trium primorum et quarti ineuntis seculorum ecclesia christiana, the first survey of church history in Russia, appeared in 1805. The book's style and content wholly belong to the eighteenth century. Petr Alekseev (1727-1801), archpriest of the Archangel cathedral, a member of the Russian Academy, and a man of very advanced views, taught for many years at Moscow University. His chief work, the Ecclesiastical Dictionary [Tserkovnyi slovar'], which provided explanations for church articles and terms, went through three editions. 74 He began to publish the Orthodox Confession [Pravoslavnoe ispovedanie] and had printed the entire first part and thirty questions of the second part when the printing was halted "because of bold remarks, which have been appended." His own Catechism [Katikhizis] was also subsequently detained.

Mention should also be made of Veniamin Rumovskii, 75 who became widely known as the author of New Table of Commandments [Novaia skrizhal'] , which first appeared in Moscow in 1804. He also translated Jacobus Goar's Euchologion. 76 Veniamin died in 1811 as archbishop of Nizhegorod. Irinei Klement'evskii 77 (who died as archbishop of Pskov in 1818) was known for his commentaries and translations from the Greek of the church fathers.

Very early in the century a new dimension-pietism-was added to the older Protestant scholasticism. Simon Todorskii (1699-1754) must once again be invoked in this connection. As he says himself, after leaving the Kiev Academy, "I traveled across the sea to the Academy of Halle in Magdeburg." Halle at that time formed the chief and very stormy center of pietism (Christian Wolff was expelled in 1723). At Halle, Todorskii studied oriental languages, especially Biblical languages. Such intense interest in the Bible is highly characteristic of pietism, which rather unexpectedly fuses philosophy and morality. 78 At one time Todorskii served as a teacher in the pietists' famous Orphan Asylum in Halle. 79 While at Halle, Todorskii translated Johann Arndt's On True Christianity [Wahres Christentum] .80 The book was published in Halle in 1735. He also translated Anastasius the Preacher's Guide to the Knowledge of Christ's Passion and the anonymous Teaching on the Foundation of the Christian Life. 81 These books were forbidden in Russia and removed from circulation in 1743, so that henceforth no such books would be translated into Russian.

Todorskii did not return home directly from Halle. "Having left there, I spent a year and a half among the Jesuits in various places." He taught for a time somewhere in Hungary. He acted as a teacher for Orthodox Greeks and then returned to Kiev in 1739.

Pietism and sentimentalism became quite widespread during the second half of the century. Both became fused with mystical freemasonry. The impact of such dreamy moralism became quite noticeable in the ecclesiastical schools. Probably it was most visible in Moscow in Platon's day. Even "Wolffianism" became sentimental and Wolff's theology justifiably came to be known as the "dogmatics for the sentimental man."

The structure and organization of the church schools experienced no substantive alteration during the entire century, although the spirit of the age changed several times. A small commission for "founding of the most useful schools in the dioceses" had been formed at the outset of Catherine's reign. Gavriil, then bishop of Tver', 82 Innokentii Nechaev, bishop of Pskov, 83 and Platon Levshin, then still a hieromonk, constituted its membership. The commission discovered no reason to modify the Latin type of school and proposed only the introduction of a more complete uniformity and greater coherence in the school system (and curriculum). The successive steps of instruction were to be dismantled; four seminaries (Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Kazan' and Iaroslavl') given an expanded program of study, and Moscow Academy was to be elevated to the rank of an "ecclesiastical university" with a universal curriculum. The commission clearly posed the question of the necessity for improving the social status and condition of the clergy. 84 A new spirit pervades the entire proposal: social development is less accented, while discipline is moderated and manners softened. The proposal aimed "to inculcate a noble sense of integrity in the students, which like a mainspring, would govern their actions." Modern languages, too, were to be added. A characteristic feature of the proposal would have entrusted all the ecclesiastical schools to the ultimate authority of two protectors, one secular and one clerical, in order to give greater independence to the schools. It became quite clear that genuine reform of the ecclesiastical schools was impossible without "betterment" and support for the clergy. The commission on church properties (Teplov played a guiding role in that commission) 85 had actually pointed out this fact in 1762. The commission's proposals in 1766 had no practical result. However that year a group of young seminarians was sent abroad to study at Gottingen, Leyden, or Oxford. With the return in 1773 of those sent to Gottingen, the question again arose about creating a theological faculty in Moscow under the supervision of the Synod where the returning specialists could be used in teaching. In 1777 a detailed plan was drawn up for such a faculty, but once more nothing resulted. When Moscow University was established in 1755, a department of theology had been rejected: "In addition to the philosophical sciences and jurisprudence, theology should be taught in every university however, the concern for theology, properly speaking, belongs to the Holy Synod." 86

Only one student who had studied in Gottingen was appointed to a position in the ecclesiastical schools. This was Damaskin Semenov Rudnev (1737-I795), later bishop of Nizhnii Novgorod and a member of the Russian Academy. While in Gottingen as the supervisor for the younger students, he had studied philosophy and history rather than theology and translated Nestor's chronicle 87 into German. However, he did attend theology lectures and in 1772 published Feofan Prokopovich's treatise On the Procession of the Holy Spirit with additions and commentaries. On his return, he took monastic vows and became a professor and rector of the Moscow Academy. Even by the standards of Catherine's age, he was a "liberal" hierarch, educated in the philosophy of Wolff and natural law. It is said that Metropolitan Gavriil "indicated to him that he should stop all that German nonsense buzzing in his head and more seduously apply himself to fulfilling his monastic vows." Of those students who studied in Leyden, one, Veniamin Bagrianskii, 88 later became bishop of Irkutsk. He died in 1814.

During roughly those same years, a proposal was made to reform the Kiev Academy. One plan suggested transforming the academy into a university by expelling the monks and subordinating the school to the secular authorities in society (the suggestion came from Razumovskii, 89 Rumiantsev, 90 and at the desire of the Kiev and Starodub nobility in the Commission of 1766-1767). Another plan, that of Glebov, the governor-general of Kiev, advocated the creation of new faculties (1766). The Academy remained unchanged. However, within a short time instruction improved in secular subjects and modern languages "which are necessary for social life." (French had been taught since 1753.) Characteristically, during Metropolitan Samuil Mislavskii's 91 administration, teacher candidates were sent to study at the University of Vilna or in the Protestant convent in Slutsk (however, they went to Moscow University).

The 1798 reform of the ecclesiastical schools also left their foundations intact. The seminaries in St. Petersburg and Kazan' received the designation of "Academy" together with an extension and elaboration of instruction. New seminaries were opened; the curricula were somewhat revised.

Metropolitan Platon Levshin (1737-1811) was the most important contributor to church education in the eighteenth century: the "Peter Mogila of the Moscow Academy," in S. K. Smirnov's 92 apt phrasing. Platon was a typical representative of that ornate, dreamy, and troubled age, whose every contradiction and confusion condensed and reverberated within his personality. "Plus philosophe que pretre," was Joseph II's 93 judgment of him. Platon attracted Catherine for that very reason. In any case, as a sufficiently "enlightened" man, he discoursed on "superstitions" according to the spirit of the age. Nevertheless, Platon remained a man of piety and prayer and a great lover of church singing and the liturgy. Impetuous, yet determined, both direct and dreamy, easily aroused and persistent, Platon always acted openly and-forthrightly with himself and with others. He could not possibly have lasted long at court, nor could he have preserved any influence there.

Platon advanced because of his abilities as a preacher, another trait in keeping with the style of that rhetorical age. He could compel even courtiers to shudder and weep. Yet it is his sermons which vividly disclose the utter sincerity and intensity of his own warm piety. Behind his mannered eloquence, one detects a flexible will and deep conviction. While a teacher of rhetoric at the Trinity Seminary, Platon took monastic vows, and did so from inner conviction and inclination ", because of a special love for enlightenment," as he himself put it. Platon regarded monasticism from a quite peculiar standpoint. For him celibacy was its sole purpose. "As concerns monasticism, he reasoned that it could not impose any greater obligations upon a Christian than those which the Gospel and the baptismal vows had already imposed." 94 Love of solitude - less for prayer than for intellectual pursuits and friendships - provided a strong attraction. Platon consciously chose the path of the church. He declined entry to Moscow University, just as he refused offers to other secular positions. He did not wish to be lost in the empty vanity of worldly life. Traces of a personal Rousseauism can be seen in his efforts to leave Moscow for the Holy Trinity Monastery, where he could build his own intimate asylum: Bethany. 95

Platon was a great and ardent advocate of education and enlightenment. He had his own conception of the clergy. He wished to create a new, educated and cultured clergy via the humanistic school. He wished to improve the clerical rank and elevate it to the social heights. He chose to do so at a time when others were trying to reduce and disolve the clergy in the "third estate of men" and even in an impersonal serfdom. Hence Platon's anxious desire to adapt the instruction and education in the ecclesiastical schools to the tastes and views of "enlightened" society. He was able to do a great deal in particular for the seminary at the Holy Trinity Monastery. Zaikonospasskii Academy enjoyed a renaissance under Platon. He founded Bethany Seminary in 1797 on the model of Trinity Seminary. However, Bethany opened only in 1800.

Education of the mind and heart "so that they might excel in good deeds" constituted Platon's ideal: a sentimental novitiate and inversion of the church's spirit. Under his influence a new type of churchman-the erudite and lover of enlightenment-came into being. Neither a thinker nor a scholar, Platon was a zealot or "lover" of enlightenment-a very characteristic eighteenth century category;

Although a catechist rather than a theologian, Platon's "catechisms" and conversations (or Elementary Instruction in Christian Law) which he delivered in Moscow during his early career (1757 and 1758) signify a turning point in the history of theology. His lessons for the Grand Duke Paul 96 entitled Orthodox Teaching or a Brief Christian Theology [Pravoslavnoe uchenie ili sokrashchen khristianskoe bogosiovie, 1765] marks the first attempt at a theological system in Russian. "Ease of exposition is the best feature about this work," was Filaret of Chernigov's comment, yet his faint praise is not quite just. Platon was less an orator than a teacher; he pondered over education more than he studied oratory. "I never troubled long over an eloquent style." His determination to persuade educate men provided his expressiveness and clarity, "for the face of truth is singularly beautiful without any false cosmetics." His polemic with the Old Ritualists is quite instructive in this connection, for tolerance and deference did not preserve him from superficial simplification. His project for the so-called "single faith" [edinoverie] 97 can scarcely be termed a success. In any case, Platon's "catechisms" actually were incomplete. Platon tried to bring theology in contact with life. He sought to do so in conformity with the spirit of the time by converting theology into moral instruction, into a kind of emotional-moralistic humanism. "The various systems of theology now taught in the schools have a scholastic air and the odor of human subtleties." All of this belongs to an age which preferred to speak of "turning the mind toward the good" rather than toward "faith." Platon sought a lively and living theology, which could be found only in Scripture. When commenting upon Scripture, when "searching out the literal sense," above all one avoid any bending or force in order not to abuse Scripture by seeking a hidden meaning "where none exists." Texts should be juxtaposed in order that Scriptures might be allowed to explain themselves. "At the same time, use the best commentators." Platon understood this to mean the church fathers. The influence of Chrysostom and Augustine are easily detected in his writing. He hastened to speak more intimately about dogma, and his doctrinal "theology" can scarcely be distinguished from the prevailing vague and moralistically emotional Lutheranism of the time. The sacramental meaning of the church is inadequately presented throughout his theology, while moral appositions (the scholastic usus) are overdeveloped. The church is defined very imprecisely as "an assembly of men who believe in Jesus Christ"  (elsewhere Platon adds, "and who live according to his law"). Such  imprecision is quite characteristic.

Platon was wholly a part of modern Russia and its western experience. For all his piety, he had too little sense of the church. Yet this limitation does not detract from or overshadow the true importance of his other achievements. The fact that Platon gave attention to the study of Russian church history and encouraged others to do so as well is of great importance. 98 Moreover, he published the first outline of that history (but only in 1805). Much later this sympathetic return to history produced a more profound ecclesiastical self-awareness. Platon's historical limitation is visibly expressed in his attitude toward the Russian language. He himself not only preached in Russian but published his "theology" in Russian. Yet his book on theology had to be translated into Latin for school use. Such was the case, for example, at the Tula Seminary.

Platon attempted to improve the instruction in Russian for the lowest grades. Russian grammar and rhetoric on the basis of Lomonosov's 99 writings replaced Latin. However, he feared that elementary instruction in Russian grammar and composition might impede progress in Latin subjects. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the greatest emancipation which could be achieved in theology lectures at Trinity Seminary was the interpretation of texts from Holy Scripture according to the Slavic Bible without translation from Latin. (Znamenskii) Mefodii Smirnov was the first to do so, and then only in the  1790's.

Rare experiments had been attempted earlier. At the time Platon became archbishop of Tver' in 1770, he discovered theology being taught in Russian. Makarii Petrovichluo introduced this innovation in 1764. His lectures were published posthumously as Orthodox Teaching of the Eastern Church, Containing Everything which a Christian seeking salvation needs to know and do (St. Petersburg, 1783).101  Makarii translated scholastic disputations into Russian, trying to refashion them as conversations with people holding different views and remold them on the patristic model ("whenever reading of the holy fathers is relevant"). Makarii's successor at the Tver' Seminary, Arsenii Vereshchagin l02 followed his example. Platon's appointment altered everything and restored the Latin routine.

Much later (1805), when discussing a new reform of the church schools, Platon strenuously objected to Russian as the language of instruction. He feared a decline in scholarship and especially an erosion of scholarly prestige.

Our clergy are regarded by foreigners as nearly ignorant for we can speak neither French nor German. But we maintain our honor by replying that we can speak and copy Latin. If we study Latin as we do Greek, we lose our 1ast honor, for we will not be able to speak or write any language. I beg you to retain it.

Platon's statement very clearly demonstrates how greatly his outlook had been restricted by scholastic tradition and how little he sensed the church's needs.

At the same time, the weakest feature of the eighteenth century ecclesiastical school derived precisely from its Latin character. Somewhat later Evgenii Bolkhovitinov, 103 another man of the Enlightenment, justly noted that "our present curriculum, prior to the course philosophy, is not one of general education, but merely a course Latin literature." Education conveyed in the Russian language was regarded with a strange lack of confidence during the eighteenth century. It seemed to be an impossible dream, if not actually a dangerous one. The bold hope expressed in the foundation charter (16 March 1731) of the Kharkov Collegium remained unfulfilled. That hope was "to teach the Orthodox children of every class and calling, not only poetics and rhetoric, but also philosophy and theology in the Slavonic, Greek and Latin languages, while at the same time endeavoring to introduce these subjects in native Russian." Latin prevailed.

In 1760, when the metropolitan of Kiev, Arsenii Mogilianskii, 104 ordered that the Orthodox Confession be read in Russian, his directive was considered a fruitless concession to weakness and ignorance. Basic theological lectures continued to be delivered in Latin, "preserving the pure Latin style and guarding it from the vulgar common dialect." Archimandrite Iuvenalii's 105 System of Christian Theology (Sistema khristianskago bogosloviia] , 3 parts, (Moscow, 1806), published in Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was not intended for school use. The western example, with a certain time lag to be sure, inspired this tenacious school Latinism. As a result the Russian language atrophied.

The educated Russian theological language, a sample of which can be seen in the theses presented at school disputations at the Moscow Academy, had so little development that it occupied an incomparably lower position than even the language of ancient Russian translators of the holy fathers and of the original theological works of ancient Rus'. (Znamenskii)

Things reached such a point that students were unable to write easily in Russian, but first had to express their thought in Latin and then translate it. The students even copied in Latin or wrote with a substantial admixture of Latin words the explanations given by the teacher in Russian.

Whatever argument one used, whatever fundamentum one put to his opugnae, each argument sovendus by the defendant and his teacher.

"From such (an environment] came priests who knew Latin and pagan writers adequately, but who knew poorly the authors of the Bible or the writers of the church" (Filaret of Moscow). Such a situation was not the worst feature: still worse was the inorganic character of an entire school system in which theology could not be enlivened by the direct assistance and experience of church life.

The scope and significance of the scholarly and even educational achievements of the eighteenth century should not be  underestimated. In any case, the cultural-theological experiment was quite  important. An elaborate school network spread throughout Russia. But Russian theology . . . all of this "school" theology, in the strict sense, was rootless. It fell and grew in foreign soil . . . A superstructure erected in a desert, . . and in place of roots came stilts. Theology on stilts, such is the legacy of the eighteenth century. 

RUSSIAN FREEMASONRY

 

Freemasonry proved to be a major event in the history of Russian society - that society born and elaborated in the upheaval of the Petrine era. Freemasons were men who had lost the "eastern" path and who had become lost on western ones. Quite naturally they discovered this new road of freemasonry by starting from a western crossroads. The first generation raised in Peter's reforms received its education in the principles of a utilitarian state service. The new educated class arose from among the "converts," that is, among those who accepted the Reform. At that time such acceptance or acknowledgment defined one's membership in the new "class: ' The new men became accustomed and schooled to interpret their existence only in terms of state utility and the general welfare. The "Table of Ranks" replaced the Creed [Simvol very] and all it implied. 106 The consciousness of these new men became extroverted to the point of rupture. The soul became lost, disconcerted, and dissolved in the feverish onslaught of foreign impressions and experiences. In the whirl of construction during Peter's reign there had been no time to have second thoughts or recovery. By the time the atmosphere became somewhat freer, the soul had already been ravished and exhausted. Moral receptivity became addled; religious needs choked and suffocated. The very next generation began speaking with alarm on the corruption of morals in Russia. 107 The subject was hardly exhausted. This was an ge of absorbing adventures and every sort of gratification. The history of the Russian soul has not yet been written for the eighteen century. Only fragmentary episodes are known. But a general weariness, sickness, and anguish clearly echo and reverberate in such episodes. The best representatives of Catherine's age testify to the searing ordeal, which compelled them to set forth in search of meaning an truth during an age of freethinking and debauchery. They had to contend with passing through the coldest indifference and the most excruciating despair. For many, Voltarianism became a genuine disease both morally and spiritually.

A religious awakening - a revival from a religious faint - occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century. Not surprisingly, such an awakening often bordered on hysterics. "A paroxysm of  conscientious thought," as Kliuchevskii described this freemasonic awakening. Yet freemasonry was more than a simple paroxysm. Russian freemasonry's entire historical significance lies in the fact that it was anascetic effort and attempt at spiritual concentration. The Russian soul recovered itself through freemasonry from the alien customs and dissipations in St. Petersburg.

Freemasonry did not signify a passing episode, but rather a developmental stage in the history of modern Russian society. Toward the end of the 1770's freemasonry swept through nearly the entire educated class: In any case, the system of Masonic lodges, with all its branches, extended throughout that class.

Russian freemasonry had a history rich in disputes, divisions, and fluctuations. The first lodges were, in essence, circles of Deists who professed a rational morality and natural religion, while seeking to achieve moral self-knowledge .l08 No distinctions or divisions existed between "freemasons" and "Voltarians." The mystical current in  freemasonry emerged somewhat later. 109 Yet the circle of Moscow Rosicrucians became the most important and influential among the Russian freemason centers of the time.

Freemasonry is a peculiar secular and secret Order with a very strict inner and external discipline. And it was precisely its inner discipline or asceticism (not just healthy spiritual hygiene) which proved to be most important for the general economy of Masonic labors in squaring the "rough stone" of the human heart, as the expression went. A new type of man was reared in such asceticism; a new human type which is encountered in the subsequent epoch among the "Romantics." The "occult sources" of Romanticism are by now incontestable.

Russian society received a sentimental education: an awakening of the heart. The future Russian intelligent first detected in the masonic movement his shatteredness and duality of existence. He became tormented by a thirst for wholeness and began to seek it. The later generation of the 1830's and 1840's repeated such searching, such Sturm und Drang. This was particularly true for the Slavophiles. Psychologically, Slavophilism is an offshoot of the freemasonry of Catherine's reign (as it certainly did not derive from any rustic country customs).

Masonic asceticism embraces quite varied motifs, including a rationalistic indifference of the Stoic variety, as well as ennui with life's vanities, docetic fastidiousness, at times an "outright love for death" ("joy of the grave"), and a genuinely temperate heart. Freemasonry elaborated a complex method of self scrutiny and self-restraint. "To die on the cross of self-abnegation and perish in the fire of purification," as I.V. Lopukhin 110 deigned the goal of the "true freemason." One must struggle with oneself and with dissipation; concentrate one's feelings and thought; sever passionate desires; "in- struct the heart"; and "coerce the will." For the root and seat of evil is found precisely within oneself and in one's will. "Apply your- self to nothing so much as to be in spirit, soul and body, utterly with-out `I'." And in the struggle with yourself, you must once more avoid all self-will and egoism. Do not seek or choose a cross for yourself, but bear one if and when it is given to you. Do not try to arrange for your salvation as much as hope for it, joyously humbling yourself before the will of God.

Freemasonry preached a strict and responsible life; moral self direction; moral nobility; restraint; dispassion;  self-knowledge and self-possession; "philanthropy" and the quiet life "amidst this  world without allowing one's heart to touch its vanities." Yet freemasonry not only demanded personal self-perfection but also an active  love -the "primary expression, foundation, and purpose of the kingdom of  Jesus within the soul." The philanthropical work of Russian  freemasons of that time is quite well known.

Mystical freemasonry constituted an inner reaction to the spirit of the Enlightenment. All the pathos of freemasonry's Theoretical Degree 111 was directed against the "inventions of blind reason" and "the sophistries of that Voltarian gang." The accent shifted to intuition, the counterpoint to eighteenth century rationalism.

The age of scepticism was also the age of pietism. Fenelon 112 was no less popular than Voltaire. The "philosophy of faith and feeling" is no less characteristic of the age - the age of sentimentalism - than the Encyclopedie. Sentimentalism is organically linked to freemasonry and not only designated a literary tendency or movement, but initially signified a mystical trend: a religio-psychological quest. The sources of  sentimentalism must be sought in the writings of  Spanish, Dutch and French mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sentimentalism educated the soul in reverie and feeling, in a certain constant pensiveness, and in "holy melancholy" (cf. the spiritual path of the  young Karamzin 113 as well as the later development of Zhukovskii).114  This was not always accomplished by the concentration of the soul. The habit of too ceaselessly and excessively examining oneself often resulted in quietism of the will. Men of that period frequently fell ill from "reflection," and this "sentimental education" most powerfully influenced precisely the formation of 'the "superfluous man." "Holy melancholy" invariably contains an aftertaste of scepticism.

In those days men became accustomed to living in an imaginary element, in a world of images and reflections. They may have penetrated the mysteries or they may have been having bad dreams.  Not accidentally, the epoch witnessed on all sides an awakening of a creative fantasy-a powerfully great poetic plasticity and  modelling. The "Beautiful Soul" [Prekrasnaia dusha] became paradoxically impressionable, starting violently and trembling at the slightest  noise in life. Apocalyptical presentiments had been gaining strength since the end of the seventeenth century. The so-called "awakening" [Erweckung] typified the age, especially among the broad mass of the population. The theoretical appeal to the heart provides additional testimony about this awakening. The "awakening of Grace" [Durchbruch der Gnade], as the pietists expressed it, above all meant a personal ordeal: a  gift of experience.

"Dispassion" is wholly compatible with such a vision. Contemporary mysticism possessed a restrained will, but not a temperate heart or imagination. A new generation grew up with this outlook.  Scarcely by accident did the Rosicrucian A.M. Kutuzov 115 translate Edward Young's Complaint, or Night Thoughts. 116 Young's book did not merely serve as a confession of a sentimental man, but as a guide for this newly awakened and sensitive generation. "I twice read Young's Nights as the good news, not as a poem," recalled one of that generation. The qualification should be made that such a melancholic  "philosophy of sighs and tears" signified only a transfigured humanism. "O be a man, and thou shalt be a god! And half self-made. . " Man alone has been summoned to labor, not in the world but within himself, in "seraphical dreams." "Mankind was not created for broad knowledge or for profound understanding but for wonder and reverent  emotions." The call was to inner concentration. "Our worldly deeds have been curbed - one must not conquer things but thoughts - guard your thoughts as best you can, for Heaven attends to them." Such an attitude served as a barrier to freethinking. I.G. Schwartz 117 reportedly devoted a very large portion of his lectures to criticizing "freethinking and godless books," of such writers as Helvetius, Spinoza, and Rousseau 118 and vanquishing "those rising obscurantists." As A.F. Labzinlly recalls, "a single word from Schwartz struck corrupt and godless books from many hands and put the Holy Bible in their place."

The turn to mysticism produced an abundant literature (printed and in manuscript), most of it translated, as can be seen in the activities of the Typographical Company, opened in Moscow in 1784, as well as in the productions from secret presses. Western mystics were best represented, with Jacob Boehme, 120 Claude de Saint-Martin  121, and John Mason l22 the most widely read. S.I. Gamaleia 123 translated all of Boehme's writings (the translation remained unpublished). Valentin Wiegel, Johann Gichtel and John Pordage 124 also appeared in translation. A great many "Hermetic" writers were translated, including Welling, Kirchberger, Triridarium Chymicum, the Chemical Psalter by Penn, Chrizomander, and Robert Fludd. 125 Moreover, there was a wide assortment of modern and ancient writers such as Macarius of Egypt, St. Augustine's selected works, the Areopagitica, and even Gregory Palamas, The Imitation of Christ, Johann Arndt's On True Christianity, L. Scupoli, Angelus Silesius, Bunyan, Molinos, Poiret, Guyon, and Duzetanovo's Mystery of the Cross. 126 A great deal of reading was done in the lodges according to a strictly prescribed order and under the supervision and guidance of the  masters. 'Those outside the lodges read with equally great avidity. The publications of the Moscow freemasons sold well. Thus, the newborn Russian intelligentsia all at once acquired a complete system of mystical enthusiasms and embraced the western ystical-utopian tradition and the rhythm of post-Reformation mysticism. The intelligentsia, studied and grew accustomed to quietist mystics, pietists, and (to some extent) the church fathers. (Late in life Elagin 127 developed a complete system of patristic readings, apparently as a counterweight to Schwartz.)

Freemasonry did not limit itself to a culture of the heart. Freemasonry had its own metaphysics and dogmatics. Its metaphysics made freemasonry an anticipation and premonition of Romanticism and Romantic Naturphilosophie. The experience of the Moscow Rosicrucians (and later of freemasonry' during Alexander I's 128 reign) prepared the soil for the development of Russian Schellingianism l29 (especially in Prince V.F. Odoevskii) 130 which germinated from those same magical roots. Two motifs are important in this magical mysticism, this "divine alchemy." The first is the vital feeling for world harmony or universal unity, the wisdom of the world and the mystical apprehension of nature. "We always have before our eyes the open book of nature. Divine wisdom shines forth from it with fiery words." The second motif is a vivid anthropocentric self awareness: man as the "extract' of all beings."

Naturphilosophie was not a chance episode or deformity of freemasonry's worldview; it was one of freemasonry's essential themes, representing an awakened religio-cosmic awareness - "nature is the house of God, where God himself dwells." 131 Naturphilosophie also represented an awakened poetic and metaphysical sense for nature (for example, the renewed sense of nature in eighteenth century "sentimental" analysis). Yet, ultimately mystical freemasonry gravitated toward disembodiment. Symbolic interpretation makes the world so attenuated that it is nearly reduced to a shadow. In essence, the dogmatics of freemasonry signified a revival of a Platonized gnosticism: a revival which had begun during the Renaissance. The fall of man the "spark of light" imprisoned in darkness - prevides freemasonry's basic conception. This acute sense of impurity, not so much of sin, is highly characteristic of the movement. Impurity can rather better be removed through abstinence than through penitence. The entire world appears corrupt and diseased. "What is this world? A mirror of corruption and vanity." The thirst for healing (and for cosmic healing) aroused by the "search for the key to Nature's mysteries," derived from this view of nature.

None of the freemasons of Catherine's reign was an original writer or thinker. Schwartz, Novikov, Kheraskov, Lopukhin, Karneev, and Gamaleia l32 were all imitators, translators, and epigoni. Such qualities, however, do not diminish their influence. During the 1770's Moscow University stood entirely under the banner of the freemasons, and its "devout-poetic" mood was preserved in the university pension for the nobility established later.

G.S. Skovoroda (1722-1794) 133 provides the only original mutation in this mystical strain. He spent little time in the masonic lodges, yet he was close to masonic circles. In any case, he belongs to the same mystical type. He sympathized even more deeply with German mysticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, preferring Valentin Wiegel to Jacob Boehme. Hellenistic motifs are also powerfully present in him.

In his Life of Skovoroda, Kovalinskii 134 enumerates Skovoroda's favorite authors: Plutarch Philo the Jew, Cicero, Horace, Lucian, Clement of Alexandria Origen, Nil, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maxim theConfessor "and similar writers among the moderns." Skovoroda's patristic reflections fused with the motifs of the Platonist renaissance. Latin poets exercised a strong influence over him, as did some modern ones, for example, Muretus, 135 whom he often simply translated, thereby allowing the influence of the schools to be seen. However his book on poetics composed at the Pereiaslavl' Seminary is a highly unusual work. In any case, Skovoroda's Latin was stronger than his Greek. As Kovalinskii notes: "He spoke Latin and German flawlessly and quite fluently, and he had a sufficient understanding of Greek." Skovoroda's Latin style was graceful and simple, but generally speaking he felt less at home in Greek. Curiously, when using Plutarch in the parallel Greek and Latin edition, he read only the Latin translation. Skovoroda did not acquire his Hellenism immediately and directly. His philological inspiration must not be exaggerated. He always used the "Elizabeth Bible," 136 while simply borrowing all his mystical philology from Philo.

How Skovoroda developed his outlook is difficult to determine. Little is known about the places he stayed or the people he met when he was abroad. Probably he had already acquired his Stoic, Platonic, and pietist interests in Kiev. His wanderings and lack of native roots (he had "the heart of a citizen of the world"), which lent him the quality of a near apparition, constituted a peculiarly characteristic feature of Skovoroda's make-up. His personality vividly displays an ascetical pathos, a concentration of thought, an extinction of emotions (which are insatiable), an escape from the "emptiness" of this  world into the "caverns of the heart." Skovoroda accepted and interpreted the world according to the categories of Platonic symbolism. "At all times and in all places he was like the shadow of the apple tree." Shadow and sign were his favorite images.

Basic to Skovoroda's view was his counterposition of two worlds: the visible, sensible world and the invisible, ideal world. One  is temporary, the other eternal. He always had the Bible in his hands. ("The Bible was the most important thing," as Kovalinskii notes.) But for him the Bible formed a book of philosophical parables, symbols, and emblems: a peculiar hieroglyphics of existence. "A world of symbols, that is to say, the Bible," as Skovoroda himself said. He sharply reacted against any historical understanding of the Bible by "those Christian historians, ritual sophists, and theologians of the letter." He sought a "spiritual" understanding and saw the Bible as a guide to spiritual  self-knowledge. Curiously, Skovoroda totally rejected monasticism. "In monasticism," writes Kovalinskii, "he saw the sinister web of compressed passions unable to escape themselves, while pitifully and fatally suffocating life."

In an important sense, Skovoroda's wandering led him away from the church and away from church history. (Even Ern 137 admitted that Skovoroda was a "potential sectarian.") His return to Nature is a variety of pietist Rousseauism. He trusted nature: "the entire economy throughout nature is perfect."

Freemasonry provided the nascent Russian intelligentsia with many new and acute impressions. This development gained complete expression only with the following generation at the turn of the century. Yet the experience of freemasonry was a western experience, and in the final analysis such asceticism outside the church served only to arouse dreaminess and imagination. The soul developed an unhealthy inquisitiveness and mystical curiosity.

The second half of the century also marked an increasing dreaminess and mysticism among the people. All of the basic Russian sects- the Khlysty, 138 Skoptsy, 139 Dukhobors, 140 and Molokans 141 developed during those years. In the Alexandrine age, these two currents, the mysticism of the lower and the higher classes in many ways converged, thereby revealing their inner affinity. They shared precisely that "anguish of the spirit" which was by turns dreamy or ecstatic. It should be noted that during Catherine's reign substantial settlements, or colonies, of various German sectarians had been created in Russia and included the Herrnhutters, the Mennonites, and Moravian Brethren. Their influence on the general development of contemporary spiritual life still has not been sufficiently investigated and studied, although that influence became perfectly obvious during Alexander's reign. The majority of these sectarians brought with them this  apocalyptical dreaminess, or often outright adventism, and the disposition toward allegory and a "spiritual" interpretation of God's Word.

Oddly enough, the colony of Herrnhutters in Sarpeta had been approved by a special commission which included Dimitri Sechenov,  l42 the metropolitan of Novgorod, who had investigated the dogmatic teachings of the "Evangelical Brethren." The Synod also stated that in its dogmatics and discipline the brotherhood more or less conformed to the organization of the early Christian communities. 143 The Synod found it inconvenient to openly permit the colonists to do missionary work among the natives, as they persistently requested. Permission to do so was granted informally. However, such missionary work did not develop.

The freemasons of Catherine's reign maintained an ambivalent relationship with the church. In any event, the formal piety of freemasonry was not openly disruptive. Many freemasons fulfilled all church "obligations" and rituals. Others emphatically insisted on the complete immutability and sacredness of the rites and orders "particularly of the Greek religion." However the Orthodox service, with its wealth and plasticity of images and symbols, greatly attracted them. Freemasons highly valued Orthodoxy's tradition of symbols whose roots zeach back deeply into classical antiquity. But every symbol was for them only a transparent sign or guidepost. One must ascend to that which is being signified, that is, from the visible to the invisible, from "historical" Christianity to spiritual or "true" Christianity, from the outer church to the "inner" church. The freemasons considered their Order to be the "inner" church, containing its own rites and "sacraments." This is once again the Alexandrian dream of an esoteric circle of chosen ones who are dedicated to preserving sacred traditions: a truth revealed only to a few chosen for extraordinary illumination.

Members of the clergy sometimes joined masonic lodges, although they did so very infrequently. In 1782, when the Moscow masons opened their "translation seminary" (that is, they formed a special group of students to whom they provided stipends), they chose the candidates for it from among provincial seminaries by consultation with the local hierarchs. During the investigation of 1786, Metropolitan Platon found Novikov an exemplary Christian. However, the Moscow metropolitan's standards were not very strict.

THE REAWAKENING OF RUSSIAN MONASTICISM

The end of the eighteenth century did not resemble its beginning. The century had begun with an effort to realize the Reformation in the Russian church. During Catherine's reign "reforms" were also drafted but in the spirit of the Enlightenment. 144 Yet the century ended with a monastic revival and with an unmistakable intensification and increase of spiritual life. Deserted and devastated monastic centers such as Valaamo, Konovitsa, and others were reinstated and took on a new life Curiously enough, Metropolitan Gavriil Petrov 145 zealously promoted this monastic restoration. This great and important bishop of Catherne's reign (to whom the Empress dedicated her translation of Marmon tel's Belisaire 146) strictly observed the fasts, devoted himself to prayer and pursued an ascetical life not just in theory but in practice. His close supervision secured the publication of the Slavonic-Russian edition of the Philokalia 147 translated by the elder [starets] Paisii Velichkovskii and his disciples. Thus the church replied to the shallowness of an Enlightened Age with a renewed spiritual concentration.

The image of St. Tikhon Zadonskii (1724-1782) 148 stands out in bold relief against the background of the eighteenth century. His personality contains many unusual and unexpected traits. In spiritual temperament Tikhon entirely belonged to the new post-Petrine epoch. He studied and then taught in the Latin schools (in Novgorod and Tver'). In addition to the church fathers, he read and loved modern western writers, and particularly enjoyed "reading and rereading Arndt." That his chief work, On True Christianity [Ob istinnom khristianstve] bears the same title as Arndt's book is scarcely an accident. As Evgenii Bolkhovitinov long ago pointed out, another of Tikhon's books, A Spiritual Treasury Gathered from the World [Sokrovishche dukhovnoe ot mira sobiraemoe], is very similar in content to that of a Latin pamphlet by Joseph Hall. 149 Tikhon's language is suffused by the new age. Frequent Latinisms occur in turns of phrase which, however, increase his range and strengthen his expressiveness. He had a great gift for words-he was artistic and simple at the same time. His writing is always surprisingly limpid. This limpidity is his most unexpected quality. His grace and lucidity, his freedom -and not merely freedom from the world but also in the world - is the most striking quality in St. Tikhon's personality. He has the easy grace of a pilgrim or traveler neither deflected nor restrained by this world. "Every living being on earth is a wayfarer." However, this conquering grace was achieved through painful trial and ascetic effort. The dark waves of deep weariness and despair are quite clearly visible in Tikhon's limpid spirit as they rush over him. "Constitutionally he was a hypochondriac and somewhat choleric," writes Tikhon's "cellsman" (monk servant). His peculiar subjective despair, his special temptation to melancholy as a form of uncustomary disclosure of the soul, is wholly unique in Russian asceticism and more readily suggestive of the Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. 150 At times Tikhon would fall into a helpless torpor, confinement, and immobility, when everything around him was dark, empty, and unresponsive. Sometimes he could not compel himself to leave his cell; at other times he seemingly tried to escape physically from despair by moving about. Tikhon's whole spirit had been overwhelmed in this ordeal, yet that trial left no traces or scars. The original luminosity of his soul was only purified in his personal progress.

His was not merely a personal asceticism, for St. Tikhon's temptations were not just a stage in his personal progress. He continued to be a pastor and a teacher in his monastic retreat. Through his sensitivity and suffering he remained in the world. He wrote for this world and bore witness of the Savior before a perishing world, which does not seek salvation: an apostolic response to the senselessness of a free-thinking age. Tikhon's encounter was the first encounter with the new Russian atheism (for example, the well-known episode of the Voltarian landowner who struck Tikhon on the cheek). 151

Dostoevskii cleverly detected this phenomenon when he sought to counterpose Tikhon to Russian nihilism, thereby disclosing the problematics of faith and atheism. Tikhon had still another characteristic trait. He wrote (or more often dictated) with inspiration, under the influence of the Holy Spirit. His "cellsman" recounts this practice.

As I heard it from my own lips, but also as I observed myself, whenever I took dictation from him, the words poured from his mouth so rapidly that I scarcely succeeded in writing them down. And when the Holy Spirit became less active in him and he became lost in thought or began thinking of extraneous things, he would send me away to my cell; while he, kneeling, or at times prostrating himself in the form of a cross, would pray with tears that God should send him the All-Activating One. Summoning me once again, he would begin to speak so torrentially that at times I failed to follow him with my pen.

St. Tikhon constantly read the Scriptures and at one time contemplated making a translation of the New Testament from Greek "into the modern style." He considered useful a new translation of the Psalter from Hebrew. His favorites among the church fathers were Macarius of Egypt, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Augustine.

Tikhon's writings contain all the borrowed ideas about redemptive "satisfaction," the distinction between form and substance in the sacraments, and so on. 152 Such is his tribute to the schools and to the age. Far more important is the fact that several western features are expressed in his experience. Above all this means his unremitting concentration on the memory and contemplation of Christ's sufferings. He saw Christ "covered with wounds, lacerated, tortured, and bloody," and he urged the contemplation of His suffering. "He had a great love for the Savior's sufferings, and not only as he beheld them in his mind, for he had portrayed in picture nearly all of His holy passions." (The pictures were painted on canvass.) Tikhon preserved a peculiar insistence and a certain impressionism when speaking of the Humiliation and the Passion of Christ. Moreover, a renovated Byzantine contemplative life is powerfully present in his experience, in his radiant visions, illuminations by the light of Tabor, pathos of the Transfiguration, and premonitions of Resurrection spring.

The resurrection of the dead is a constantly recurring thought for Tikhon and is embodied in the image of spring. "Spring is the image and sign of the resurrection of the dead." This will be the eternal spring of the God-created world. "Let faith guide your mind from this sensible spring to that sublime and longed for spring which the most gracious God has promised in His Holy Scripture, when the bodies of the faithful who have died since the beginning of the world, germinating from the earth like seeds by the power of God, shall arise and assume a new and exquisite form, shall be clothed in the garment of immortality, shall receive the crown of blessedness from the hand of the Lord." This will be no idyll of apokatastasis. On the contrary, nature stained by sin will be condemned even more for its aridity and tarnish and will acquire a still more niggardly appearance. Eternity is not the same for all: there is an eternity of bliss and an eternity of weeping. Tikhon had these visions of Tabor frequently, sometimes daily. The heavens would be torn asunder and would burn with unendurable radiance. Occasionally he even saw this light in his cell and his heart would rejoice in such contemplations.

St. Tikhon combined an intense concentration of the spirit with an exceptional capacity for tenderness and love. He spoke of love of thy neighbor, of social justice and charity no less resolutely than did St. John Chrysostom. St. Tikhon was an important writer. Grace and plasticity of images adorn his books. His On True Christianity in particular has historical significance. The book is less a dogmatic system than a book of mystical ethics or ascetics, yet it marks the first attempt at a living theology; the first attempt at a theology based on experience, in contrast and as a counterweight to scholastic erudition, which lacks any such experience.

Tikhon Zadonskii and the elder Paisii Velichkovskii (1722- 1794) 153 had little in common. As spiritual types, they little resemble one another. However they shared a common labor. The elder Paisii, was not an independent thinker, and he was rather more a translator than even a writer. Yet he occupies his own prominent place in the history of Russian thought. There is something symbolic in the fact that as a young man he left the Kiev Academy where he was studying and wandered first to the Moldavian sketes and then to Mount Athos. In Kiev he had firmly refused to study and had ceased to do so, for he did not wish to study the pagan mythology which alone was taught in the Academy: "where I often heard of Greek gods and goddesses and pious tales, and heartily despised such teaching." Obviously he had in mind the mere reading of classical authors. At the Academy, Paisii got no farther than syntax, and "I had studied only the grammatical teachings of the Latin language." Sil'vestr Kuliabka, 154 served as rector at that time. According to tradition, Paisii reprimanded him for the fact that the church fathers were so little read at the Academy.

Paisii left the Latin school for the Greek monastery. However, he did not retreat from or reject knowledge. His actions mark a return to the living sources of patristic theology and thinking about God. Above all, Paisii was a founder of monasteries - both on Athos and in Moldavia. He restored the best "rules" of Byzantine monasticism. He seemed to be returning to the fifteenth century. Not accidentally, the elder Paisii was very close to St. Nil of the Sora, 155 whose interrupted work Paisii revived and continued (his literary dependence on St. Nil is fully obvious). This work signified the return of the Russian, spirit to the Byzantine fathers. While still on Mount Athos, Paisii began gathering and verifying Slavic translations of ascetical writings. This turned out to be an arduous task, due to the lack of skill of old translators and to the carelessness of copyists. Moreover, even collecting Greek manuscripts proved extremely difficult. Paisii did not find the books he needed in the great monasteries or sketes but in the small and isolated skete of St. Basil built not long before by newly arrived monks from Caesarea in Cappadocia. There he was told that "since these books are written in the purest Hellenic Greek, which now few Greeks other than scholars can read, and which the majority cannot understand, such books have been almost completely forgotten."

After his resettlement in Moldavia, the elder Paisii's translation project became more systematic, especially in the Niamets monastery. Paisii clearly understood all the difficulties of translation and the thorough knowledge of languages it required. At first he relied on Moldavian translators. He formed a large circle of scribes and tranlators, and he sent his students to learn Greek even in Bucharest. He engaged in this work with great enthusiasm.

How he wrote occasioned wonder: his body was so weak from sores: sores covered his right side; however, until he went to rest on his deathbed, he surrounded himself with books: there, side by side, stood the Greek and Slavic Bibles, Greek and Slavic Grammars, and the book from which he was making a translation by candlelight; and like a little child he sat bent over writing all night, forgetting his bodily weakness, severe illnesses and difficulty.

Paisii was an exacting translator and he was afraid to circulate his translations widely "if they were lame or imperfect." His disciples also made translations from Latin.

Under Paisii's guidance, Niamets monastery became a great literary center and a source of theological-ascetical enlightenment. This literary activity was organically linked with spiritual and "intellectual construction." The biographer of the elder Paisii notes that "his mind was always joined with love for God; his tears serve as witness." The message of spiritual concentration and wholeness possessed particular significance for that age of spiritual dualism and cleavage. Publication of the Slavonic-Russian edition of the Philokalia constituted a major event not only in the history of Russian monasticism but generally in the history of Russian culture. It was both an accomplishment and a catalyst.

Feofan Prokopovich and Paisii Velichkovskii make an interesting comparison. Feofan lived entirely on expectations. He stood for what was modern, for the future, and for progress. Paisii lived in the past, in traditions, and in Tradition. Yet he proved to be the prophet and the harbinger of things to come. The return to sources revealed new roads and meant the acquisition of new horizons

[...] This personal conviction and sense of being a prophet who has been  called or sent, the perception of an extraordinary mission or task, and a certain ecstatic egocentricity all characterize this type of fanatic. Fotii might be termed a man possessed rather than a hypocrite. In any case, the voice of the church's history and ancient traditions can scarcely be detected in Fotii's violent appeals and outbursts. He was too ignorant to do so, for he knew very little about patristic or even ascetical writings. He almost never refers to them. "I do not possess the [writings of the] Holy Fathers, I have and read only the Holy Bible." In this regard, Fotii did not depart from the custom of that "Biblical" age. Neither a rigorous defender nor guardian of the church's customs and traditions, Fotii loved to do everything to suit himself, which, resulted in quarrels with the church authorities. Usually he argues on the basis of personal revelations and inspirations; on the basis of visions apparitions, and dreams. In short, Fotii was not so much superstitious as fanatical.

Fotii studied at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy "under the sharp eye of Archimandrite Filaret." But he did not graduate because of an illness, which took the form of a paroxysm induced by fears and spiritual exhaustion. Fotii became confused and paralyzed by the mysticism then prevalent in society. Many at the academy read too deeply in the poisonous books of the liar and apostate Jung-Stilling.

Newly published writings, such as Stilling, Eckartshausen, and similar novelistic and freethinking books could be read at the academy. . .Quarrels broke out over the Thousand Year Reign of Christ on earth, eternal damnation, and other religious questions; some loved to deviate from the Holy Scriptures, others found mysteries everywhere. The academy library would not lend the works of the Holy Fathers, for no one gave permission or provided the example. German and other foreign commentators on the Holy Scriptures, who caused more harm than they did good, were recommended and passed around.

Fotii became utterly confused in such an environment. He also seems to have learned a good deal during the little more than a year he spent at the academy, although there is little likelihood that he learned and became trained "to discover mysteries everywhere." Nor did the academy infect him with a fashionable mania for interpreting the Apocalypse and divining the times through apocalyptical texts used as signs. Where Fotii's actual or imaginary enemies adduced the Kingdom of a Thousand Years from such texts, Fotii discerned the Antichrist. "The wood is already stacked and the fire is being kindled."

After leaving the academy, Fotii became a teacher at the Aleksandr Nevskii schools, where he was under the supervision of Rector Innokentii. 111 In 1817, Fotii accepted tonsure and was quickly appointed a teacher of religion in the second military academy. 112 While his field of vision expanded, Fotii continued to gather polemical materials, reading, re-reading, and reviewing newly printed seditious books, "especially those either manifestly or secretly revolutionary and pernicious." His assortment and inventory of such books was rather diverse and disjointed and included books on English materialism, French pornography, freemasonry and magic, German philosophy, the sorcery of Boehme, Stilling, and similarly "satanic books," "revolutionary and evil" books, "wretched Masonic" books, the works of that "Masonic heretic" Fenelon and that "foul French woman " Guyon, and other works such as those "setting forth the teachings of the Methodists and the quietists, that is, of that Jacobinism and philosophy which hides behind the mask of Christianity." Fotii always remained mistrustful of the "newly educated" clergy: "not a single collaborator was found suitable; each was prepared to put the truth up for sale."

The Russian Bible made its appearance against this background. At first Fotii attacked actual Masons. As he put it, "At the risk of my life, I acted to counter Messenger of Zion [Sionskii Vestnik], Labzin, the Masonic lodges and heresies, trying to halt the spread of their schisms." Fotii was correct about many things, but he described all such defects with an hysterical intensity which could be more irritating than convincing. He possessed a peculiarly ecstatic suspiciousness which disfigured his accurate observations through the addition of imaginary and imperceivable traits. Metropolitan Mikhail appointed Innokentii to calm Fotii. But Innokentii only further aroused him with his own bitter remarks about the snares of the devil. Fotii later wrote a Life [Zhitie] of Innokentii after his own likeness or in keeping with his imagined ideal. In reality, Innokentii was more subtle and profound, although he lacked sufficient self control and patience.

Fotii soon came to be too obstreperous for the capital and was dispatched to Novgorod as abbot of the Derevianits Monastery, then Skovoroda Monastery, and finally the Iur'ev Monastery, where he served as archimandrite. While at the Iur'ev Monastery, Fotii formed a close friendship with Countess A.A. Orlova, 113 which proved to be the decisive event in his life. Through "Countess Anna," Fotii unexpectedly began his friendship with Prince Golitsyn during those same years. Their correspondence which has been preserved,  possesses a warm and sincere character. 114 In his "autobiography," Fotii recalls his long and extensive conversations with Golitsyn at Countess Orlova's home. These talks sometimes lasted nine hours without interruption. Fotii emphasizes that Golitsyn passionately came to love him and was prepared to fulfill his every wish. Judging by Golitsyn's actual letters, Fotii did not exaggerate. He succeeded for a time in reconciling Golitsyn with Metropolitan Seraphim. Golitsyn saw in Fotii another St. John Chrysostom and a "youthful starets" [elder] . At the time, Fotii was barely thirty. Fotii did not conceal his own warm feelings: "You and I - the two of us - are like one body and soul, one mind and heart; we are one because Christ is in our midst."

The "uprising" broke out in 1824. As Filaret recalls, "The uprising against the Ministry of Religious Affairs and against the Bible Society and the translation of the Holy Scriptures had been organized by people guided by personal interests, who not only spread farfetched and exaggerated suspicions, but even produced fabrications and slanders, hoping to attract other, well-intentioned people to their cause." Arakcheev's115 role in this intrigue needs no elaboration. For him the intrigue was the denouement and the means for removing from authority and influence a powerful rival with personal ties to the Tsar.

The appearance of Gossner's book On the Gospel of Matthew [O Evangelii ot Matfeia] in Russian translation served as the occasion and the pretext for decisive action. The translation could only have been an excuse, for the book was indistinguishable from the multitude of such edifying and pietistic works then being published. Several times Fotii wrote frenzied letters to the Tsar, warning him of danger. He did so with the knowledge and conviction that he had been consecrated and sent to testify in defense of the beleaguered church and fatherland. An angel of the Lord had been sent to him on Palm Sunday. The angel, appearing before him during a dream, held in his hand a book with large letters inscribed on its cover: "this book has been composed for revolution and at this moment its intention is revolution." The book, it turned out, was A Summons to men to follow the inner inclination of the Spirit of Christ. 116 Fotii defines the basic idea of this cunning and impious pamphlet as "an appeal to apostasy from the faith of Christ and a summons to alter the civil order in all of its parts."

The only argument which might possibly undermine the combined ministry in the eyes of Alexander I was "revolution." Fotii candidly says that: "Such political activities and plots had much greater influence on him [Alexander] than did the welfare of the whole Church." Religiously, Alexander was no less radical than Golitsyn. Fotii testified that "residing in this city for one and a half months, I secretly observed Gossner and learned that he was preparing revolution in those minds which he had been brought here to teach. He has been so well protected that no one dares touch him; he was summoned here because none among our Orthodox clergy could be found capable of such schemes." Fotii's letters aroused the Tsar's interest precisely because of their hysterically apocalyptical character. Consequently, he wished to meet Fotii personally. He had earlier met with Metropolitan Seraphim. After his audience with Alexander, Fotii twice visited Golitsyn and at the second meeting cursed him to his face.  

Fotii stands before the holy icons: a candle burns, the holy sacraments of Christ are before him, the Bible is open (at Jeremiah 23). The prince enters like a beast of prey (Jeremiah 5:6), extending his hand for the blessing. But Fotii gives him no blessing, speaking thus: in the book Mystery of the Cross [Tainstvo kresta], printed under thy supervision, it is written: the clergy are beasts; and I, Fotii, a member of the clergy, am a priest of God, so I do not want to bless thee, and anyway thou dost not need it. (He gave him Jeremiah 23 to read.) However, Prince Golitsyn refused to do so and fled, but Fotii shouted after Golitsyn through the door he left ajar: if thou dost not repent, thou shalt fall into Hell.

That is Fotii's version. In his Notes [Zapiski], Shishkov adds that: "Fotii shouted after him; `Anathema! Thou shalt be damned.' "  

That same day, a rescript was issued exiling Gossner from the country and ordering that the Russian translation of his book be burned at the hand of the public executioner. Furthermore, the translators and censors were to be placed under arrest. Fotii greatly feared the Tsar's wrath for his daring anathema, but he continued to send his appeals to the court, including one outlining a "plan for the destruction of Russia" as well as "directives for the immediate destruction of this plan in a quiet and felicitous manner." The question of the Bible Society was posed most forcefully. "The Bible Society must be eliminated on the pretext that since the Bible has already been printed, it is now no longer needed." The Ministry of Religious Affairs was to be abolished, and its present dignitary deprived of two other posts. Koshelev 117 should be removed, Gossner expelled, Fessler 118 banished into exile, and the Methodists driven out, or at least their leaders. Once again Fotii invoked divine inspiration: "Divine Providence does not now reveal that anything more should be done. I have proclaimed God's commandment; its fulfillment depends on Thee. Precisely twelve years have elapsed from 1812 to 1824. God conquered the visible Napoleon who invaded Russia. Through Thy person let Him conquer the spiritual Napoleon:" During the ensuing days, Fotii sent the Tsar several more of his alarming "massives." "A great, fearful, and illegal mystery is at work, which I am revealing to thee, O thou powerful one with the strength and spirit of God." The goal was achieved and on 15 May 1824, Golitsyn was dismissed, the combined ministry abolished, and the former departmental divisions reestablished. Nevertheless, Golitsyn did not fall into disfavor or lose his personal influence, even after Alexander's death.  

The aged Admiral Shishkov, "the half-dead Shishkov dug up from oblivion," was appointed minister of a separate Ministry of Education. Although Shishkov did not become Minister of Religious Affairs, inertia perpetuated the politics of the combined ministry only in reverse, for he persistently interfered with Synodal affairs. Shishkov had no very precise religious views. He was a moderate free-thinker of the eighteenth century, who limited his rationalism out of national-political considerations. Even close friends who were well disposed toward him testified that Shishkov held "views closely approximating, if they did not actually coincide with, Socinianism." 119 Fotii referred to him rather evasively: "He defended the Orthodox Church to the extent that he possessed any knowledge." Fotii knew perfectly well such "knowledge" was rather meager and related more to the church's role in a state, which had called upon it to be a pillar and a bulwark against rebellion and revolution. However, Shishko had his own firm opinions about Biblical translation. The very idea of translating the Bible seemed to him the foulest of heresies, although above all a "literary heresy," in Sverbeev's 120 clever phrase. For Shishkov denied the very existence of a Russian language. "As though it was something distinct," he would say perplexedly. "Our Slavic and Russian language is one and the same, differentiated only into higher language and common speech." This was Shishkov's basic religious-philological thesis. Literary or colloquial Russian in his view and understanding is "only the dialect of the common people" within a Slavic- Russian language. "What is the Russian language divorced from Slavic? A dream, a riddle!. . . .Is it not odd to affirm the existence of a language which does not contain a single word?" The lexicon is one and the same for both styles of dialects. "By Slavic we mean nothing else than that language which is higher than colloquial and which, consequently, can only be learned by reading; it is the lofty, learned literary language."  

In the final analysis, Shishkov distinguished between the two languages: the "language of faith" and the "language of passions " or to put it another way, the "language of the church" and the "language of the theater." Biblical translation appeared to him to be a "transposition" of the Word of God from the lofty and dignified dialect to that low-styled language of the passions and the theater. He believed that such a step was being taken in order to deliberately belittle the Bible, hence his constant fuss over "the observance of Orthodoxy in literary style." He also considered the translation hastily made; "thrown to a few students at the Academy with instructions to do it as quickly as possible." The Russian translation's departure from Church Slavic cast a shadow on a text, which had become familiar and hallowed by church usage and thereby undermined confidence in it. "The pride of some monk [Filaret?] or learned braggart says: thus it is in Hebrew. Well, who will convince me that he knows the full force of such a little known language, written so long ago?" Quite frequently Shishkov speaks as if Slavic was the original language of Holy Scripture. "How dare they alter words considered to come from the mouth of God?"

Shishkov was not alone in these religious-philological reflections. Curiously enough, for similar reasons, Speranskii also completely opposed a Russian translation of the Bible. The language of the "common people" seemed to him less expressive and precise. Would it not be better to teach everyone Slavic? Speranskii advised his daughter to use the English translation, not the Russian, when she encountered difficult passages. Many others shared this opinion. l21  

Shishkov detected a particularly sinister scheme in the publication of the Pentateuch "separately from the Prophets." Whereas in fact, the Pentateuch represented the first volume of a complete Russian Bible and had been planned for publication prior to the succeeding volumes in order to speed the work. Shishkov suspected that this separate publication had been conceived and executed in order to push the common people into the arms of the Molokane heresy or simply into Judaism. Might not someone understand the Mosaic law literally, particularly the observance of the Sabbath? . . . .Should not a qualification be added that all this can be explained figuratively and as shadows of the past? With the support of Metropolitan Seraphim, Shishkov succeeded in having the Russian Pentateuch burned at the brick factory of the Aleksandr Nevskii Monastery. Subsequently, Filaret of Kiev l22 could not recall this destruction of the Holy Scriptures without a terrible shudder.  

Shishkov saw no need to distribute the Bible among laymen and the people generally. "Will not this imaginary need, by demeaning the significance of the Holy Scriptures, result in nothing other than heresies or schisms?" Would not the dignity of the Bible be lowered by having it in the home? "What can come of this? . . . .A vast sum will be expended in order that the Gospel, heretofore regarded with solemnity might suffer the loss of its importance, be sullied, ripped apart, thrown under benches, or serve as wrapping paper for household goods, and have no more ability to act on the human mind than on the human heart." Shishkov writes still more emphatically that "this reading of the sacred books aims to destroy the true faith, disrupt the fatherland and produce strife and rebellion." He believed that the Bible Society and revolution were synonyms.  

Quite consistently, Shishkov also objected to translation of the Bible into other languages such as Tatar or Turkish, for who could vouch for the fidelity of the translation? Shishkov also feared commentaries on the Bible. Who will explain the Scriptures once they are so widely distributed and so easily accessible?  

Without qualified interpreters and preachers, what will be the effect when large numbers of Bibles and separate books of the Bible have been disseminated? Amidst such an unchecked (and one might say universal) deluge of books of the Holy Scriptures, where will room be found for the Apostolic teachings, practices, and customs of the Church? In a word, for everything which heretofore has served as a bulwark of Orthodoxy? . . . All of these things will be dragged down, crushed, and trampled under foot.

Similarly, Shishkov viewed the publication of the Catechism [Katekhizis] as a dire plot. Why print so many copies, if not to spread an impure-faith? (A total of 18,000 copies had been printed.) Once again the Russian language more than anything else frightened Shishkov. "It is unseemly in religious books to have such prayers as `I believe in One God' and the Pater Noster transposed into the common dialect." The Catechism contained scriptural texts in Russian.

The catechism composed by Filaret (a task originally entrusted to Metropolitan Mikhail) had been issued in 1823 with the approval of the Holy Synod and by imperial directive. "At the request of the Minister of Education," accompanied by the use of the Emperor's name, the Catechism was removed from sale at the end of 1824. Filaret immediately lodged a protest against its removal and openly raised the question about Orthodoxy. "If the Orthodoxy of the Catechism, so solemnly confirmed by the Holy Synod, is in doubt, then will not the Orthodoxy of the Holy Synod itself be called into question?" In reply, Metropolitan Seraphim insisted that the question of Orthodoxy had not been raised and that there was no doubt or dispute on that point. The Catechism had been suspended solely because of the language of the Biblical texts and of the "prayers." Seraphim, with some disingenuousness, went on to say. You may ask why the Russian language should not have a place in the catechism, especially in its abbreviated form intended for young children entirely unfamiliar with Slavic and therefore incapable of understanding the truths of the faith expounded for them in that language, when it, that is, Russian, has been retained in the sacred books of the New Testament and in the Psalms. To this and many other questions, which might be asked in this connection, I cannot give you any satisfactory answer. I hope that time will explain to us that which now seems clouded. In my opinion, that time will soon come . . .  

Seraphim's answer could signify that he either had not personally or actively participated in the new course of events, or that this apparent inconsistency could be quickly overcome by extending the ban to include both the Russian translation of the New Testament and the Bible Society. In any case, Seraphim simply lied when he denied that the Catechism's Orthodoxy had been questioned. Fotii emphatically and publicly pronounced it heretical, compared it with "canal water," and unfavorably contrasted the Catechism with the older Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogila. 123 The Catechism was subjected to examination, if not officially, then at least officiously. Apparently Archpriest I.S. Kochetov (1790-1854), a candidate for a higher degree, who had graduated with the first class of the reformed St. Petersburg Academy, and at that time a religion teacher at the Tsarskoe Selo lycee, had been entrusted with the review. His evaluation, quickly arrived at, did not favor the catechism. Kochetov took more interest in questions of language than of theology. As a philologist, he served as a member of the Russian Academy, beginning in 1828. Later he achieved full membership. 124  

Metropolitan Evgenii, 25 who recently had been summoned to attend the meetings of the Holy Synod, maintained a very critical attitude toward the Catechism. Filaret's successor at Tver' and Iaroslavl', Simeon Krylov-Platonov, 126 contemptuously dubbed the Catechism "a miserable pamphlet," containing unheard of teaching and "insufferable insolence." In any event, a revised edition of the Catechism was recirculated only after careful re-examination of all Biblical texts and citations, including their "presentation in Slavic rather than in the Russian dialect." Even the language of exposition was deliberately adapted or made more nearly approximate to Slavic. However, only insignificant changes in content were made at that time.  

Shishkov obtained Emperor Alexander's permission to forbid translations of the Bible as well as to close the Bible Society. He was able to supply some arguments himself, and others were suggested to him by such zealots as M. Magnitskii 127 and A.A. Pavlov l28 (who worked in the office of the Over Procurator of the Holy Synod). Fotii described Pavlov as that "brave warrior of 1824." Metropolitan Seraphim acted as one with Shishkov. However, Seraphim acted on suggestion. A timid man, he lacked "sufficient clarity of mind" to distinguish responsibly enthusiasm and suspicions amidst the cross-currents of rumors and fears. Left to himself, Seraphim would have insisted only on the dismissal of the "blind minister." All further reasons were suggested or even imposed on him. At one time Seraphim had studied in Novikov's "seminary," and he had been an active member of the Bible Society, both as archbishop of Minsk and later as metropolitan of Moscow. He often delivered speeches filled with pathos in the meetings of the Moscow Bible Society. However, his sentiments were changed when he transferred to St. Petersburg. He immediately broke with Golitsyn. Following Golitsyn's removal from office, Metropolitan Seraphim, as president of the Bible Society, began to importune Emperor Alexander about abolishing and closing down all Bible societies and transferring all their affairs, property, and translation projects to the Holy Synod.  

Such demands were not quickly realized, coming as they did only during the next reign under the fresh impact of the Decembrist revolt, l29 the responsibility for which Shishkov convincingly blamed on the "mystics." However, the rescript of 12 April 1826 closing the Bible Society contained an important qualification: "I sanction the continued sale at the established price for those who desire them the books of the Holy Scriptures which have already been printed by the Bible Society in Slavic, Russian, and in other languages spoken by inhabitants of the Empire." Even Nicholas I 130 was not fully prepared to follow Shishkov. In practice, however, the publications of the Bible Society were taken from circulation and only the committees concerned for prisons continued to supply the Russian translation of the New Testament to exiles and prisoners from their stocks.

Curiously enough, in 1828, Prince K.K. Liven, the former superintendent in Dorpat and a prominent and influential figure in the former Bible Society, replaced Shishkov as Minister of Education. Later, in 1832, he became the head of the revived German Bible Society. Prince Liven belonged to the Moravian Brethren. "Sometimes an official sent from somewhere with an important dispatch would discover him in the reception hall in front of the lectern, loudly singing the Psalms. Turning to the official, he would listen to him, but without answering, continue his liturgy" (Vigel'). Of course, Liven was a German and a Protestant; and it was the German Bible Society, which was restored. Yet as Minister of Education, he was called upon to administer to the whole empire. In any case, by that time, "the views of the government" had changed once again.

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