Academic Periodical

The published letter from Bishop Hermogenes (Golubev) to the senior priests and church councils is introduced for the first time into scientific use. This document not only outlines the activities of Bishop Hermogenes in the Tashkent diocese, but also gives an idea of how sobornost can be embodied in today’s church. Bishop Hermogenes introduced additional contributions to a special fund from each parish in proportion to its revenues. Thus, low-income parishes were supported by large parishes and were kept from being closed. This measure met resistance from some clergymen and church councils of large parishes. In his letter Bishop Hermogenes emphasises that the inner connection between the members of the whole Church is defined by the spirit of sobornost, whereby any parish cannot be indifferent to the Church’ shared work.

The published manuscript is an essay by Archpriest Georgy Ivakin-Trevogin (1903–1980), clergyman of the Tashkent diocese, on the need of translating liturgical texts into Russian. The author was the spiritual so’n of St Alexey Mechev, confessor of faith and member of the community of Frs. Alexey and Sergius Mechevs. In his debate with the proponents of using exclusively Church Slavonic in the Russian Orthodox Church, Ivakin-Trevogin drew on his pastoral experience and the worship tradition in the Mechevs’ community, which sought to reveal the sense of common prayer and to involve each praying person in worship. The document is published for the first time.

This is the first publication of the letters from Nikolay Nikolayevich Neplyuyev, founder of two primary agricultural schools and the Holy Cross Labour Brotherhood in Vozdvizhensk, the Chernigov Governorate, to Alexandra Alexeyevna Shteven who opened more than 50 literacy schools in the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. They both worked during the period of ‘public pedagogy’, as P. F. Kapterev put it, which began in Russia after the 1861 emancipation reform. N. N. Neplyuyev and A. A. Shteven were among the teachers who based their educational activities on Christian principles. The published letters date back to 1894–1896, a period when their educational work was in the process of formation. The publication is preceded by an introductory article on the specific features of A. A. Shteven’s and N. N. Neplyuyev’s teaching activities in the 1890s.

It is the first time when a document characterizing the situation with the sacrament of Baptism in Tashkent and Central Asian diocese in postwar years is introduced for scientific use. It is a letter from rector of the St George Church of Samarkand, Archpriest Pyotr Knyazhinsky to Bishop Guriy (Egorov) who chaired the Tashkent and Central Asian diocese in 1946–1953. The letter is written in 1948 and raises the question of the need to prepare the children and babies for baptism. Archpriest Pyotr describes difficult situations connected with child baptism which he had to deal with: mixed marriages, non-Christian parents and godparents. Such situations, as the author of the letter suggests, do not allow the priest to take responsibility for the baptism of children who cannot receive Christian education. The letter, blessed by Bishop Guriy, was published in diocesan edition of “The orders and information for Tashkent and Central Asian Diocese” and was spread to all parishes. Acute issues raised by Archpriest Pyotr were brought before the general court of the diocese clergy. The historic context of writing the letter is restored in the introductory article and the conclusion is made that the questions of education of clergy and laymen and conscious entry into the Church were among the most important questions raised in the Tashkent diocese in post-war years, when the restoration of church life here began.

The Catechetical and Mystagogic Lectures by St. Cyril of Jerusalem are one of the most important sources of 4th c. Christian catechetical tradition. These instructions became widely known and were translated into several languages as early as the 5th century; the oldest Slavonic manuscript dates from the 10th or 11th century. The first Russian translation was made in the first third of the 19th century at Yaroslavl Theological Seminary, and was shortly followed by another which appeared in 1855, in the Works by the Holy Fathers in Russian Translation series, published by the Moscow Theological Academy. These translations were repeatedly reprinted in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This publication is a new Russian translation of the Procatechesis by St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and offers an further opportunity to bring this source into its own in the context of domestic catechesis and contemporary catechetical practice. The Procatechesis, or Prologue, was pronounced during the solemn recording of the names of the catechumens in the lists of the enlightened on the eve of Lent. Before the final stage of preparation for baptism, the catechumens were told what was ahead of them and what was needful for those who wished to truly undertake the catechetical process.

This article is dedicated to the centenary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s birth. The writer’s archive contains several letters written by Archbishop of San Francisco John (Shakhovskoy), an outstanding figure of the Russian Diaspora who highly esteemed Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn even before his expulsion from the USSR in 1974. Archbishop John was familiar with his publications in the “Novy Mir” magazine. After 1974 he started correspondence with the writer, met him in person and donated some sacred objects for his family chapel in Vermont. The article reconstructs the chronology of the relationship between Archbishop John and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn according to Shakhovskoy’s reactions in the emigre press to the writer’s work. An excerpt of their correspondence from the Solzhenitsyn’s archive in Troitse-Lykovo is published for the first time.

The published letter was written by Alexandra Alexeevna Ershova (nee Shteven, 1865–1933), an Orthodox educator and social activist, in Moscow in 1930. The author of the letter raises the question of the need for the Gospel, Acts and Epistles to be read in Russian during the divine service in the church. At the end of the nineteenth century, A. A. Ershova was known in Russia as an orthodox educator, engaged in the establishment of literacy schools (primary elementary peasant schools). Between 1885 and 1895 she opened about 50 schools in Nizhny Novgorod province. Then, as the wife of a landowner from Tula, later Voronezh Governor M. D. Ershov, she continued to be interested in problems of spiritual enlightenment and education, and wrote journalistic articles. Her correspondents included Chief Procurator of the Synod K. P. Pobedonostsev, political and public figures of the early twentieth century: prince D. I. Shakhovskoy, A. I. Guchkov, P. B. Struve, writers Leo Tolstoy, V. V. Veresaev, V. G. Korolenko, educators and enlighteners S. A. Rachinsky, N. N. Neplyuev, and others. The Ershov family did not accept the October revolution of 1917 and emigrated to Ukraine. In the late 1920s Alexandra Alexeevna Ershova, along with her remaining children, moved to Moscow. She was acquainted with many Moscow priests, knew the church situation and wanted to be useful to the church, as the published letter attests.

This commented translation of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Homily on the Lord’s Prayer, the eleventh homily in the series of the sixteen Catechetical Homilies, is the first Russian translation. The translator used the French edition of facsimile copy of the manuscript Mingana Syr. 561, which contains the Syriac version of Theodore’s Catechetical Homilies, whose Greek original did not survive. The translation tends to be as literal as possible, only by necessity adapting the syntax and some lexis. It is equipped with a brief theological commentary and the parallels were made between Theodore’s exegesis of the Lord’s prayer and that of John Chrysostom and Cyril of Jerusalem, from which the former has a greater similarity with Theodore’s. This means that both Theodore and John share the common, apparently, Antiochene, tradition of the exposition of the Lord’s prayer. Since Theodore’s homily presents his ethical teaching in form of the commentary on the Lord’s prayer, the present translation is the first attempt to fulfill the lacuna existing in the Russian scholarship of Theodorian legacy and to portray Theodore not only as an exegete and a theologian, but also as a pastor of the Church.

This study directs the reader’s attention to the publication of travel notes made by a Russian Priest in the Yakutsk Region at the end of the 19th c., which are published here for the first time. The document is considered in the context of the practice of the Russian Orthodox Church on the outskirts of the Russian empire. In far-reaching stretches of the empire, the Church acted as a unifying force in terms of the overall culture of the empire. Priests themselves were the conduit for Christian principles and, as such, became the initiators of intercultural dialogue. The document under consideration is a description of the trips that one priest undertook in Yakutia and the Tungusk region. Here we find evidence of the number of parishioners, the way in which locals related to Christian rites, and their degree of accedence to Orthodox Christianity. The notes bear witness to the presence of paganism in everyday life and to the cautious relationship of parishioners to Christian norms. The publication of these travel notes inaugurates the potential for furthering developing research into the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church on the periphery of the empire in historical retrospective vis-à-vis interaction with various ethnicities and cultures.

Translation, introductory article and comments by A. G. Dunayev 
The new Russian translation of the “Confessions” of St Patrick of Ireland was made based on the publication in the series “Christian Sources” (Sources Chretiennes, n. 249). Explanatory notes were compiled using R. Hanson’s comments. The translation highlights numerous allusions to the Holy Scripture; textual quotations are additionally enclosed in inverted commas.