Who is canonized in Russia and why

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Among the new saints who are now venerated by the Orthodox, not only Nicholas II and members of the royal family - there are also exotic characters: in one place the mother declares her deceased child a saint, in another the unrecognized community insists on the holiness of the “martyr Ataulf of Munich”, better known like Adolf Hitler.

Online you can find icons of Ivan the Terrible, Grigory Rasputin and Joseph the Great (Stalin). The church is against the creation of such cults, which is called upon not only to preserve the traditions coming from the first Christian communities, but to separate them from the absurd.

Finding the rules

People of the older generation probably remember how the authors of Soviet anti-religious brochures loved to retell the lives of the saints, extracting from them fantastic stories that contradict common sense.

Indeed, in the lives of the saints, there are plots that contradict historical facts and common sense. Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong with that. Who in general said that what is told in the lives should be clearly correlated with a specific time and a specific place? Lives are not a historical chronicle. They talk about holiness, not about the events of human life. It is in this that hagiography (that is, a description of holiness) differs from biography (a description of life).

To understand why there are so many different oddities in the stories about the lives of the saints, you will have to start from quite a distance.

The practice of venerating martyrs and righteous people is a tradition dating back to the first centuries of Christianity. As long as the Christian church was an amalgamation of small communities, there was little need to come up with any formal criteria by which saints could be distinguished from just good Christians. But,

when the conglomerate of small communities turned into a complex hierarchical structure, it became necessary to formulate some general rules and draw up lists of saints recognized by all communities.

Among the mandatory rules for canonization (church canonization) were such as the presence of popular veneration and recorded miracles that took place during the life of the ascetic or after his death. However, for martyrs, that is, saints who preferred death to renouncing the faith, these conditions were not obligatory.

The emergence of formal rules and procedures always opens the way for abuse and the desire, so to speak, misuse of these rules. For example, there is a case when a certain Hieron, a wealthy farmer from Cappadocia, resisted the imperial envoys, who wanted to take him to military service. In the end, the rebel was tried and sentenced to have his hand cut off.

These events had nothing to do with persecution for the faith, but in prison Hieron made a will, according to which his sister was to commemorate him as a martyr. And he bequeathed his severed hand to one of the monasteries. The inheritance of the vain farmer was not wasted, and the hagiographic literature was enriched with the curious "Martyrdom of Hieron with his retinue." True, this and similar lives still did not receive wide distribution.

Rationalization

After Ancient Rus adopted Christianity, general church norms for venerating saints came here. But there was no strictly organized procedure for canonization in Russia for a very long time. Veneration could begin spontaneously, could to some extent be inspired by the authorities. Some of the ascetics were forgotten, and the cult disappeared, but someone continued to be remembered. In the middle of the 16th century, lists of saints were approved, which were venerated throughout the country.

But in the 18th century, they suddenly began to struggle with the appearance of new saints. The fact is that Peter I firmly believed that life in Russia could be built on rational foundations. Therefore, the emperor was suspicious of stories about all kinds of miracle workers, holy fools and other characters, he considered them deceivers and charlatans.

Peter's legislation directly demanded that the bishops fight superstitions and watch out "whether anyone exhibits false miracles for filthy profits in the presence of icons, treasures, sources and so on." Everyone who was involved in governing the state knew that Peter was distrustful of miracles.

As a result, the Russian Church entered a period of a kind of rationalism, when hierarchs were most afraid of being deceived and allowing something contrary to common sense into church life. And since the behavior of the saints (be it a holy fool violating the rules of public morality or a martyr violating state laws) can in no way be called rational, canonization in Russia has practically ceased.

However, numerous petitions were sent from localities to St. Petersburg asking for the canonization of various ascetics. However, the Synod most often replied that the petition was not sufficiently substantiated. If the procedure for preparing canonization was launched, then it turned out to be so long and complicated that there was no chance of completing it. For instance,

The Synod demanded that witnesses to miracles give their testimony under oath, like witnesses speaking at court hearings.

Cases of miraculous healings were checked by doctors, whose testimony was drawn up in the same way as the testimony of forensic experts.

The emphasized rationality of the Synod was opposed by the way of life of the people. Popular faith was anything but rational. Folklore traditions were combined here with performances that came from Byzantium along with Christianity, and the church sermon was supplemented by the stories of all kinds of pilgrims. Pilgrims went to the graves of local ascetics, beggars, and holy fools.

Sometimes veneration arose after the accidental discovery of unknown remains. All this was contrary to the religious policy of the state, but nothing could be done. The country was too big. The central authorities did not have the physical opportunity to notice that pilgrims suddenly rushed to some remote village and the grave of the unknown beggar became the center of religious life.

The bishop, whose duty was to prevent local self-activity, could either turn a blind eye to this, or even unofficially support a new pious tradition. The necessary liturgical texts gradually arose: someone wrote an akathist, someone wrote a service.

There was a lot of such, so to speak, "unofficial" holiness in Russia. And in the era of Nicholas II, there was suddenly a certain turn towards its legalization. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Synod sent out a questionnaire to bishops asking which saints were venerated in their dioceses. Based on this survey, a book was prepared with the long title "Faithful Months of All Russian Saints Revered by Molebens and Solemn Liturgies both Church-wide and locally, compiled according to reports to the Most Reverend Synod of all dioceses in 1901-1902."

This was a completely unprecedented experience for Russia. Contrary to all national traditions, the authorities did not prescribe to the silent subjects who should pray and who should not, but decided to figure out what was happening and legitimize the existing practices.

Rehabilitation of irrationality

The revolution mixed the cards and destroyed the opposition between popular and official Orthodoxy. This was due to the assertions of the Bolsheviks that their state was built on a rational basis and on a scientific basis. For our topic, it is not so important to what extent the Bolshevik utopia can be considered rational. The very fact of betting on rationality is essential. At the same time, everything connected with church life and - more broadly - with idealistic philosophy was declared reactionary obscurantism. The reaction to the declarative rationalism of the Bolsheviks was that educated Orthodox Christians became much more tolerant of the irrational.

For the first time, these changes appeared during the 1919 Bolshevik campaign for the autopsy of the relics. While state propaganda talked about the fact that instead of imperishable relics, dummies were found in tombs, believers - both peasants and bourgeoisie, and professors - passed from mouth to mouth stories that the body of the faithful prince Gleb (son Andrei Bogolyubsky) was soft and flexible and the skin on it could be grabbed with your fingers, it lagged behind like a living. And Grand Duke George's head, cut off in 1238 in a battle with the Tatars, turned out to be adhered to the body so that the cervical vertebrae were displaced and fused incorrectly.

If earlier a significant part of intelligent believers were rather cool about miracles, now everything has changed.

The persecutors were identified with rationality, and the members of the persecuted church rejected rationalism. Miracles have become an essential part of church life. The stories about them helped the persecuted communities to survive and survive.

In the 1920s, believers talked about the renewal, that is, the miraculous spontaneous restoration of old blackened icons. Information about this even got into the reports on the situation in the country, which the punitive authorities prepared for the top officials of the state.

In the summary of the GPU, dating back to 1924, one can read that the counter-revolutionary clergy “made every effort to incite religious fanaticism by falsifying all kinds of miracles, such as the apparitions of saints, miraculous icons, wells, the massive renewal of icons that swept across the USSR, etc.. d.; the latter, that is, the renewal of icons, was directly epidemic in nature and even captured the Leningrad province, where up to 100 cases of renewal were registered in October."

The very fact that this information was included in the summary of the most important events that took place in the country testifies to the scale of the phenomenon. But this example is not unique.

“Renewal of icons and rumors of miraculous relics,” we read in a similar report for 1925, “are spreading in a wide wave; over the past month, more than 1000 cases were registered in the Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Bryansk, Orenburg, Ural, Ulyanovsk provinces and in the Far East”.

I am quite deliberately citing here not the stories of believers, but the testimonies of the punitive authorities, who saw in all these miracles only deception. It is difficult to suspect GPU officers of protecting miracles, which means that it is impossible to doubt their testimonies.

During the Soviet years, at least three generations of people grew up who were not taught the basics of the Orthodox faith. Their ideas about what an ecclesiastical doctrine was based on some kind of semi-folklore tradition. And there is nothing surprising in the fact that Orthodoxy was associated with them not so much with the Gospel narrative as with miracles, wanderers, holy fools and found icons. The half-forgotten devotees, who were partly remembered in distant villages, now aroused not rejection, but great interest. The massive inclusion of new names in the church calendar was a matter of time.

In the late 1970s, the Moscow Patriarchate began publishing a new edition of the Minea, books containing services for each day of the church year. The 24 voluminous volumes included a huge number of services to the saints, which were not previously mentioned in the liturgical books. What previously existed in a semi-underground regime has now become a general church norm.

New Martyrs and Confessors

With the beginning of perestroika, it became possible to begin the canonization of the new martyrs killed during the Soviet era.

In 1989, the Moscow Patriarchate canonized Patriarch Tikhon, and five years later priests John Kochurov (killed by the Bolsheviks in October 1917) and Alexander Hotovitsky (executed in 1937) were canonized.

Then it seemed that the canonization of the victims of communist persecutions opened a new stage in church history. But very soon it became clear that most believers were not interested in the history of persecution and repression.

I remember my shock when, about two years after the canonization of Alexander Khotovitsky, at the request of my Finnish colleagues, I went to that Moscow church, of which Father Alexander was the rector in the last years of his life. I wanted to find out if there were any old parishioners left here who could tell something about him. I came in off-duty hours and turned to the man behind the candle box with the question of whether there were people left here who could remember their recently canonized abbot.

"Alexander Hotovitsky … - My interlocutor thought. - I have been working here for 15 years, but this certainly has not happened." That is, the staff member of the temple had no idea that half a century ago the rector of this temple was a saint who had just been canonized.

In subsequent years, work on the preparation of materials for the canonization was very active. And there were more than enough problems here. Where can I get reliable information about people who died for the faith? It is clear that the main source here turns out to be investigative cases. On the basis of the interrogation protocols, it can be established that the person did not renounce the faith, did not betray anyone and did not slander. But it is known that what is written in the protocols does not always accurately reflect what happened during the investigation. Testimony could be falsified, signatures could be forged, etc.

And what to do, for example, if an elderly priest from a remote Tula village did not renounce, did not betray, but signed a confession that he was a Japanese spy? Is this an obstacle to canonization?

Despite all the difficulties, they managed to collect materials and canonize about 2 thousand people who suffered during the years of Soviet power. Of course, this is a drop in the ocean, but it has now become impossible to continue this work. In 2006, a law on personal data was passed, which effectively blocked the access of researchers to investigative cases. As a result, the preparation of materials for new canonizations ceased.

According to mothers

The Church must always draw the line between holiness and occult practices, and also monitor the reliability of the information on the basis of which canonization occurs. Therefore, in all eras, there were rather strange local cults that were not recognized by the church authorities.

For example, in our time, pilgrims from all over the country go to the village of Chebarkul (Chelyabinsk region), where 11-year-old Vyacheslav Krasheninnikov, who died of leukemia, is buried. The boy's mother considers her son a saint and works with inspiration to create his cult. According to the mother, several books were written on the miracles and predictions of Vyacheslav. The most popular, of course, are predictions about the end of the world.

They look something like this: “Fallen angels (grays, Atlanteans) are engaged on Earth with the maintenance of the program installed in the core of the planet for the collection of human souls, and the Antichrist represents their interests among people, connecting each person to it by means of a seal (biochip).

Fallen angels are destroying people, the Antichrist helps them, and the world servicing government runs around running errands."

Pilgrims tell about healings and bring earth and marble chips from the grave of the youth Vyacheslav. At the same time, of course, there is no talk of the official canonization of Vyacheslav Krasheninnikov.

Metropolitan Yuvenaly, chairman of the Commission for Canonization, spoke about this cult very sharply: “Descriptions of strange and absurd“miracles”and“prophecies”, overflowing with content harmful to the soul, almost magical rituals at the place of burial of this child, non-canonical icons and akathists - all this forms the basis activities of the followers of the Chebarkul false saint”.

However, the official church position did not in any way affect the veneration of the youth Vyacheslav, and pilgrimages to him continue.

Another "unrecognized saint" is the warrior Eugene. We also owe our mother the beginning of the veneration of Yevgeny Rodionov, who was killed in Chechnya in May 1996. Private Rodionov and his partner Andrei Trusov were captured when they tried to inspect the car in which the weapon was being transported. The initial version of the disappearance of the soldiers was desertion, but later it became clear that they had been kidnapped.

Rodionov's mother went in search of her son. After overcoming a lot of difficulties and paying the militants, she learned the details of her son's death and found his burial place. According to the mother, they arranged a meeting with the killer of Yevgeny. The killer said that the young man was offered to remove the cross and change his faith, but he refused, for which he was killed.

According to ancient rules, the situation when a person dies, refusing to change his faith, is an indisputable basis for canonization. But the Commission for Canonization refused to canonize Yevgeny Rodionov as a saint, since the only evidence of his feat is the story of his mother.

However, Yevgeny Rodionov's admirers are not going to give up. They make all kinds of petitions and collect signatures. For example, in 2016, at a round table meeting of the Izborsk Club, a letter was signed to Patriarch Kirill with a request to start preparing this canonization.

There are quite a few stories about such unrecognized saints (or pseudo-saints, if you will). There is nothing unusual about the emergence of these cults, and this has happened more than once throughout church history. The only new thing is the way of disseminating information.

Never before have pious legends and dubious myths generated by popular religiosity received such a huge audience as modern means of electronic communication provide.

Invasion of politics

In 2000, among other new martyrs, Nicholas II and members of his family were canonized. Members of the royal family were canonized not as martyrs (martyrs accept death for Christ, which in this case was not), but as martyrs. Passion-bearers accepted a martyrdom not from persecutors of Christians, but as a result of betrayal or conspiracy. For example, princes Boris and Gleb were canonized as martyrs.

Iconic images of the royal family can often be seen on posters and banners during various patriotic processions

The wording of the canonization act was very careful and careful. This caution is understandable. The fact is that in the Russian Church there existed and still exists a movement, the adherents of which give the murder of the last emperor a very special meaning.

According to the Tsarists (as representatives of this trend are usually called), the monarchy is the only Christian form of government and any anti-monarchist actions are not so much political as spiritual in nature. In their opinion, in 1613 the Russian people made their choice by swearing an oath to the Romanovs. The whole subsequent history of Russia is perceived by the Tsarist people as a series of betrayals and deviations from monarchist ideas.

And in the death of Nicholas II, they see not a political murder, but a mystical act of atonement: similarly

as Christ atoned for the original sin by his sacrifice, the last emperor by his death atoned for the guilt of the Russian people before the lawful, God-given tsarist power.

Therefore, in the opinion of the Tsarists, the Moscow Patriarchate was wrong in calling Nicholas II a passion-bearer: he is not a passion-bearer, but the Tsar-redeemer. The adherents of this movement are few in number, but they are very active and often end up in public space. A number of inappropriate speeches about the film "Matilda" were associated with this ideology.

The desire to protect the name of Nicholas II from anything that could compromise him naturally led to the idea that Grigory Rasputin was a righteous man, and all the dirt associated with his name is the slander of the enemies of the monarchy and the inventions of the “Jewish press”. Thus, a movement began for the canonization of "Elder Gregory".

After that, it no longer seems surprising that along with Rasputin, Ivan the Terrible was also a contender for canonization. According to the admirers of Ivan IV, he held Russia in the face of the impending chaos, for which he was slandered by the enemies of Russia.

The church authorities immediately reacted to these proposals sharply negatively. In 2001, Patriarch Alexy II publicly condemned the distribution of icons and prayers to Ivan the Terrible and Grigory Rasputin.

"Some group of pseudo-contesters of Orthodoxy and autocracy," said the patriarch, "is trying to canonize tyrants and adventurers on their own" from the back door, "to teach people of little faith to venerate them."

It must be said that Rasputin and Ivan the Terrible are not yet the most exotic contenders for the role of saints.

In 2000, one of the church groups in opposition to the Moscow Patriarchate canonized Ataulf of Munich, better known as Adolf Hitler. In some way, the interest in Hitler on the part of religious groups denying the Moscow Patriarchate is justified. As you know, Hitler's anti-communist declarations provoked the support of a part of Russian emigrants. The Russian Church Abroad also supported Hitler, hoping that he would rid Russia of communism.

The head of the German Diocese of the Russian Church Outside of Russia, Archbishop Seraphim (Lyade), in an appeal to the flock issued in connection with the German attack on the USSR, wrote: “The Christ-loving leader of the German people called on his victorious army to a new struggle against the God-fighters, to the struggle that we have long awaited, - to the consecrated struggle against the atheists, executioners and rapists who settled in the Moscow Kremlin … Indeed, a new crusade has begun in the name of saving peoples from the power of the Antichrist."

In some, sobering came quickly, in others, slowly. It is clear that after the end of the Second World War and the Nuremberg Trials, such declarations were no longer possible.

After the fall of the USSR, on the wave of rejection of communist ideology, Hitler was also remembered. The leader of one of the unrecognized church groups Ambrose (von Sievers) began to call for his canonization. In 2000, the group's official journal wrote:

“The Catacomb Church has always professed and now professes that Hitler for true Orthodox Christians is God's chosen leader-anointed not only in the political, but also in the spiritual-mystical sense, the good fruits of whose deeds are still tangible. Therefore, true Orthodox Christians, of course, give him some honor as a kind of “external righteous man” who remained outside the Church, for his attempt to free the Russian land from the Jewish-Bolshevik invasion. Some time later, even the icon of Ataulf of Munich was painted.

In marginal patriotic journalism one can find calls to canonize Stalin as well. Supporters of this canonization believe that the mass destruction of churches and priests during the years of his reign was a kind of pedagogical technique with the help of which "God-loving Joseph" brought up the Russian people, mired in sins.

And according to another version, supporters of Lenin and Trotsky, whom Joseph the Great dealt with during the Great Terror, were to blame for the anti-church campaign. There are home-grown icons of Stalin, and prayers to him.

All this marginal creativity once again demonstrates to us what monstrous results are the attempts to give political declarations the character of an ecclesiastical doctrine.