Ways of Russian 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.