The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy: France and Russia, 1848–1870 9781501749537

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THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF EASTERN ORTHODOXY

A volume in the NIU Series in Orthodox Christian Studies Edited by Roy R. Robson For a list of books in the series visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF EASTERN ORTHODOXY Fran ce a n d Russia , 1848–1870

Heather L. Bailey

NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 2020 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bailey, Heather L., 1969– author. Title: The public image of Eastern Orthodoxy : France and Russia, 1848–1870 / Heather L. Bailey. Description: Ithaca : Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2020. | Series: NIU series in Orthodox Christian studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019032669 (print) | LCCN 2019032670 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501749513 (cloth) | ISBN 9781501749537 (pdf ) | ISBN 9781501749520 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov'—Public opinion—History—19th century. | Public opinion—Russia—History—19th century. | Public opinion—France—History—19th century. | Russia—Foreign public opinion, French. Classification: LCC BX491. B35 2020 (print) | LCC BX491 (ebook) | DDC 281.9/47—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032669 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032670 Jacket design: Richanna Patrick Jacket illustration: Artist unknown. Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Paris. 19th century. Pen and black and brown ink, brush and brown, gray, and blue/green wash, gouache, over graphite, 20 3/16 x 13 7/16 in. (51.2 x 34.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1966.

In loving memory of Jack and Oralee Bailey

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Notes on Terminology and Transliteration  xi

Introduction

1. Roman Catholicism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Russophobia in France, 1830–1856

1

17



2. The Archpriest as Publicist and Polemicist45



3. The “Byzantine Firework” of Paris



4. A Spectacular Success: The Paris Church, the Russian Orthodox Press, and the Public Image of Orthodoxy

116

5. The Church Chained to the Throne of the “Czar”

132

6. Guettée, Vasiliev, L’Union chrétienne, and the Public Image of Orthodoxy

153



Conclusion Notes 191 Selected Bibliography  259 Index 283

80

181

Acknow l e dgme nts

I would like to express my gratitude to the many individuals and institutions that have supported me in the process of researching and writing this work. Financial support from the College of Liberal Arts and the office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) has made this work possible. For their indispensable help with the bibliography and acquisition of materials I thank Jan Adamczyk (International and Area Studies Library), Joseph Lenkart (Manager of the Slavic Reference Service, International and Area Studies Library), and Geoffrey Ross (History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library) at the University of Illinois ­Champaign-Urbana, as well as Mary O’Brien and Carol Reese in the Interlibrary Loan Department of Brookens Library at UIS. Several individuals answered my questions through SINDBAD, the research information service of the Bibliothèque nationale de France—including Clélia Guillemot and Colette Laspalles in the Département droit, économie, politique; Ingrid Bézard and Séverine Boullay in the Département philosophie, histoire, sciences de l’homme; and Roger Musnik and Mariusz Olczykowski in the Département littérature et art. I thank the archivists at the French Archives nationales and Archives diplomatiques, as well as Véronique Bontemps at the Archives diocésaines de Nantes for their assistance in locating unpublished manuscripts. Hélène and Serge Runge, parishioners at and local experts on St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris, met and corresponded with me, supplying me with valuable information on the history of the parish. Alexandre Jevakhoff was kind enough to meet with me and answer questions about the parish library. I especially thank Tatyana Bakhmetyeva, Nadieszda Kizenko, and Roy Robson for valuable suggestions on how the manuscript could be improved in between its original and final form. Joshua Falconer, Kevin Kain, Paul Ladouceur, and Matt Miller read parts of the manuscript and responded to my queries. Theofanis G. Stavrou offered advice and encouragement at various stages of the project. Other scholars in the field and colleagues in my ix

x    A c k n o w l e d g m e n ts

department, perhaps unbeknownst to them, have helped me develop parts of the manuscript by suggesting bibliography, asking pointed questions, or proposing analytical frameworks. Two colleagues in the Department of History at UIS, David Bertaina and Peter Shapinsky, helped shape specific aspects of my analysis. There are a number of individuals who have made pertinent suggestions, asked insightful questions that helped me conceptually, or offered general encouragement for the project. I would like to thank Charles Arndt, Stephen Batalden, Joel Brady, Eugene Clay, Lucien Frary, Faith Hillis, Scott Kenworthy, Erich Lippmann, Matt Miller, Jennifer Spock, Chrissy Stroop, Paul Valliere, Paul Werth, Christine Worobec, and fellow members of the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture for their comments and questions at conferences and by correspondence. Several individuals helped me obtain otherwise elusive sources: Father Sergei Alekseev, Arkady Avdienko, Kevin Kain, and Nathan Mason. For helping me translate tricky passages or decipher cultural references, I thank Father Sergei and my colleagues at UIS Rosina Neginsky and Larry Shiner. For general encouragement, I thank Father Martin Swanson, rector of St. Basil the Great Orthodox Church in St. Louis, MO. I am indebted to Amy Farranto, Karen Laun, Sarah Noell, and Carolyn Pouncy for so skillfully guiding me and this manuscript through the publication process from submission to production. Finally, since the early stages of this project, I have been blessed by the unwavering support and patience of my husband Travis Marshall. It is hard to imagine having completed this project without his willingness to listen and his reminders that at some point, one has to “fire the engineers and build something.”

Notes on Terminology and Tra ns l iter ati on

A few words about nomenclature, translation, and transliteration are in order. First, regarding usage and spelling of the term “tsar,” because of the potential links between the spelling “czar” and anti-Russian sentiment, a subject that turned out to be beyond the scope of this study, when translating from French sources, I have retained whatever spelling (“czar,” “tzar,” or “tsar”) appears in the original. When not quoting, I use the spelling “tsar” in conformity with accepted standards of transliteration from Russian. In diplomacy, the official title of the ruler of imperial Russia was “emperor,” not “tsar.” A second point of usage concerns the descriptor “Greek” to refer to the Eastern Orthodox faith or the Russian Church in general. In the nineteenth century, westerners commonly used the descriptors “Greek” and “Russian” as synonyms when talking about the Eastern Church. For Roman Catholic publicists, the terms “Greek Church” (l’Église grecque) and “Russian Church” (l’Église russe) served a polemical purpose, highlighting the Eastern Church’s noncatholicity. They also did not refer to the Eastern Church as “Orthodox” unless they used the term in italics, as the equivalent of scare quotes, to indicate that the orthodoxy was only purported. Consequently, in this study the modifier “Greek” usually refers to a religious and not an ethnic group. Context should make the exceptions clear. It should also be noted that in their polemics with Roman Catholics, Orthodox priest-publicists referred to their church as the “Russian Church” (l’Église de Russie; l’Église russe) if talking specifically about Russia’s established church, or as the “Eastern Church” (l’Église orientale), Eastern Catholic Church (l’Église catholique orientale), or Orthodox Catholic Church (l’Église catholique orthodoxe) when talking about Orthodoxy more generally. Inclusion of the term “catholic” in the latter two emphasized Orthodoxy’s claim to being the truly catholic (i.e., universal) church in contrast to the “Roman” Church. Third, French polemical works often used the term pope (plural popes), derived from the Russian pop (plural popy) and Greek papas, meaning father, to refer to the parish (i.e., secular or white) Orthodox clergy. For French xi

xii    N ot e s

o n T e r m i n o lo gy a n d T r a n s l i t e r at i o n

Catholic polemicists, use of pope instead of prêtre (priest) was another way to distinguish between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Since the French writers were othering when not being derogatory, I have tried not to translate pope(s) when quoting French sources. It should be easy not to confuse pope in these contexts with references to the pope (i.e., the bishop of Rome). Unless otherwise stated, translations from French and Russian are my own, sometimes refined with the aid of individuals mentioned in the Acknowledgments. I have cited from English translations of French works when they exist. However, in matters with direct bearing on the argument (e.g., discussions of usage or nomenclature) I have not neglected to consult the French originals. I have followed the Library of Congress system of transliteration from Russian, except that I have Anglicized common Russian names and have not used apostrophes for the miagkii znak (soft sign) in the middle of names (hence Vasiliev instead of Vasil'ev, Muraviev instead of Murav'ev, and Kapelmans instead of Kapel'mans) except when transliterating Russian sources in the notes and bibliography. I have not distinguished between the ye (e), yo (ë), and the yat' (ѣ) or retained the tverdy znak (ъ) at the ends of words.

THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF EASTERN ORTHODOXY

Introduction A Russian church, wherever it may be, is Russia. —Prince Petr Andreevich Viazemsky, 1855

Critics of Russia have long tended to view the Russian Orthodox Church as subordinated to the state and the predominant religion in Russia as a political instrument of autocratic rulers. This model has been applied to tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet regimes.1 It surfaced in press coverage of Patriarch Kirill’s high-profile meetings with Pope Francis in February 2016 and his trips to London and Paris in October and December 2016, respectively, where he consecrated Russian Orthodox churches and met with leading political and religious authorities: Queen Elizabeth, the archbishop of Canterbury ( Justin Welby), and President François Hollande.2 Detractors see Kirill’s activities as evidence of a close alliance between President Vladimir Putin and the patriarch and as the expression of a new Russian imperialism that, based on conservative social values, seeks to confront secularism and undermine the system of universal human rights that undergirds European identity.3 While some commentators see Kirill as Putin’s partner, others see him as Putin’s puppet in this Russian propaganda campaign. Especially in light of tensions triggered by Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, military conflict in eastern Ukraine, and Putin’s Syria policy, some critics suggested that by receiving the patriarch, western political and religious leaders legitimized Putin’s policies and bolstered his power.4 In 2010 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev secured a deal that allowed the Russians to purchase a prime piece of real estate on Quai Branly in Paris, 1

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between the Invalides and the Eiffel Tower, for a large cultural complex (four buildings in all) featuring a new cathedral dedicated to the Holy Trinity.5 Built at a cost of 170 million euros (70 million for the land and 100 million for the construction), this massive cultural diplomacy project, dubbed “a Putin project,” was subsidized by the Russian state, despite the Russian Federation’s constitutional separation of church and state.6 President Putin had planned to inaugurate the cultural center in October 2016 but canceled his scheduled state visit to France due to the cooling in Franco-Russian relations. Patriarch Kirill consecrated Holy Trinity Cathedral on December 4, 2016. Seeing the affair as Russia’s attempt to reassert itself as a spiritual and military force in Europe, in opposition to secular, liberal agendas, critics of the project have christened the church “St. Vladimir’s,” referring to Putin, not the tenth-century prince known for Christianizing the Rus.7 Furthering the political overtones, Paris is the seat of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Diocese of Korsun (Chersonèse), named after the site of St. Vladimir’s baptism in the Crimean Peninsula. Officially, this diocese was created in the late 1980s—the millennial anniversary of the conversion of the Rus to Christianity—to replace the Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate in Western Europe that had transferred its loyalty to the Ecumenical Patriarchate during the Stalin era.8 “St. Vladimir’s” on the Seine was mired in controversy from the beginning. The original design (by Manuel Nuñez) was rejected as “too ostentatious” in favor of the more Parisianized design of Jean-Michel Wilmotte.9 The close proximity to French government offices raised concerns that the complex could be used as a center of espionage, leading French intelligence services to place jamming devices around the site. One of the outspoken detractors of the project in France is the historian and writer Galia Ackerman, who views the project as an intolerable manifestation of Russian political propaganda on French soil. “The Moscow patriarchate is anti-western to an unimaginable degree: they are against all the principles that are dear to us. Then why build right in the center of Paris an organization that is going to propagate ideas completely contrary to ours? This is something beyond my understanding.”10 The philosopher and journalist Michel Eltchaninoff has expressed similar sentiments: “Holy Russia has always been used as a tool of foreign influence. [The cathedral] is a seductive statement of power, imposed by a country which boasts of its Christian roots on the capital of a secular state judged (by the Russians) to be enfeebled by multiculturalism and spiritual amnesia.”11 The controversies surrounding the Moscow Patriarchate’s international activities highlight a recurring set of historical problems regarding Russian national identity, Russia’s alignment vis-à-vis the West, and the Russian

I n t r o d u c t i o n     3

Church’s relations with the state, the rest of the Orthodox ecumene, and the other Christian churches. Expressing concerns about Holy Trinity Cathedral, a French diplomat voiced the opinion that no one dealt directly with “Russia’s ulterior motives for creating what will inevitably become a symbol of Russian power in the heart of Paris.”12 Yet Holy Trinity Cathedral was not the first “symbol of Russian power in the heart of Paris,” and 2016 was not the first time that a Russian prelate consecrated an Orthodox church in the West. Less than six years after France and Russia fought a war with each other couched in the rhetoric of a religious crusade, the first freestanding Orthodox church in Paris was consecrated by a Russian bishop in 1861. St. Alexander Nevsky Church was built as part of a broader publicity campaign to enhance Russia’s international prestige and to counter widespread anti-Orthodox prejudices that portrayed Eastern Orthodoxy as a disfigured form of Christianity and the Russian Church as nothing but a political tool of despotic tsars. A century and a half later, Holy Trinity Cathedral, in conjunction with the Moscow Patriarchate’s other actions on the international front, is provoking the kind of negative press that St. Alexander Nevsky Church was built to counter. Detractors view the Russian Orthodox Church as an arm of the state, an instrument exploited by an autocratic ruler for political purposes, and a menace to values westerners hold dear. These recurring patterns of rhetoric about the Russian Church express ideological opposition to it in a manner that masks the “multivocality” that exists in Russian society, within the Russian Orthodox Church, and in European society more broadly.13 This book does not attempt to explain why simplistic, negative constructions of the Russian Orthodox Church have been so persistent; rather, it deals with Russian responses to the popularization of such ideas in the midnineteenth century. Focusing mainly on the period between the revolutions of 1848–1849 and the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), this study compares Orthodoxy’s public image as portrayed by westerners and as imagined by Russian publicists. It explores the circumstances under which westerners, concerned about the fate of the papacy, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, and Russian imperial power, constructed a reductionist view of the Russian Orthodox Church, conflating it with the state. By creating caricatures of Eastern Christianity in general and a bogeyman of the Russian Church in particular, important cross-sections of educated western European society ostracized Russia from what they considered to be the Christian and civilized ecumene, thereby reinforcing the sense of a dichotomous relationship between Russia and the West. Orthodox publicists responded by launching a public relations campaign to challenge negative stereotypes about their

4    I n t r o d u c t i o n

religion. St. Alexander Nevsky Church of Paris was the linchpin of their efforts, which produced important results. The church and educational infrastructure that accompanied it laid the groundwork for a better understanding of Orthodoxy in the West, including some reappraisal of Russian church-state relations. In Russia, the Orthodox press linked the new church and media campaign to the idea that Russia was fulfilling its providential destiny by shining the light of Orthodoxy on the West. As the embodiment of the belief that Russia had a great historical purpose inextricably tied to Orthodoxy, the Paris church both reflected and contributed to the rise of religious nationalism in Russia that followed the Crimean War. Yet the confrontation with westerners’ negative ideas about the Eastern Church also fueled calls for reform.

Two Priests and a Church On July 26, 1862, the eve of St. Vladimir’s Day, Father René-François Guettée (1816–1892) wept on being received into the Russian Orthodox Church in Paris.14 The conversion of this French Roman Catholic priest to Orthodoxy was exceptional, although it fit into a broader trend of French Catholic dissidence in the late 1850s and 1860s. During this period, an important segment of the French Church, including much of the episcopate, resisted ultramontanism (i.e., the concentration of church authority in Rome) and the growing infallibilist movement (i.e., the drive to clarify that the Holy Spirit prevented the pope from erring when he “spoke as mouthpiece of the Church”15). Guettée was one of the most outspoken critics of these tendencies. Another group of influential Catholic dissidents, the liberal Catholics, believed that Christianity and liberal principles—freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and constitutionalism—were compatible.16 Their belief was out of sync with Pope Pius IX’s vision of society, which was provocatively expressed in a papal encyclical, The Syllabus of Errors (1864), that classified liberal principles like freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and civil marriage as modern errors. While not all liberal Catholics were anti-ultramontane—some believed a strong papacy was necessary as a barrier against the high levels of state intrusiveness that characterized the Gallican Church—their acceptance of liberal principles was not palatable to Catholic conservatives, typically monarchists, who perceived this vocal minority as a dangerous enemy within the church.17 As logical as it would seem for a Catholic dissident opposed to the expansion of papal authority to turn to the Christian tradition that had always resisted papal overreach, Guettée’s decision to join the Russian Orthodox

I n t r o d u c t i o n     5

Church was extraordinary. Few Europeans considered an eastward turn an option. As one French bishop put it, no one from a Roman Catholic country in Europe would even consider becoming “a schismatic Greek” because “this Church, of which one half bows down under the knout of the tzars and the other under the scimitar of the sultans, this married clergy, this motionless dogma, this Byzantine art, say nothing to our free, progressive, and ardent nature.”18 The reluctance to look eastward was due to attitudes that linked Orthodoxy with a lack of civilization and with Caesaropapism: complete subservience of the church to the temporal ruler. Catholic polemicists often singled out two European countries for having established churches that were entirely subordinated to civil power: England and Russia.19 The legal arrangement of the former was clear enough, with the sovereign named, since the time of Henry VIII, as the head of the Anglican Church. In the 1830s a High Church Anglican dissident movement emerged at Oxford University that was critical of Erastian tendencies in the church—tendencies that appeared to jeopardize the Anglican episcopacy’s claims to apostolic succession and threatened to turn the established church into a parliamentary church in a parliamentary state. The Oxford movement produced one of England’s most notable converts to Roman Catholicism, John Henry Newman, who submitted to Rome in 1845. The Gorham Affair in 1850 was the provocation for further defections from Anglicanism to Rome. When George C. Gorham’s bishop, Henry Phillpotts, refused to institute Gorham on grounds that he did not accept the regenerative nature of baptism, Gorham appealed his case to the Privy Council. This lay body overruled the bishop on what was clearly a doctrinal matter, which many Anglicans interpreted as an unacceptable governmental intrusion in ecclesiastical affairs. The following year, Henry Edward Manning joined the Church of Rome, rising to the rank of archbishop of Westminster in 1865 and cardinal in 1875. Another Anglican defector was William Palmer (1811–1879), who, after abortive attempts to achieve intercommunion between the Anglican and Russian churches, and after seeking admission into the Greek Church but refusing to be received by baptism, turned to Rome in 1855. Palmer was one of the few to actually consider Orthodoxy, only to reject it. His case created more material for anti-Orthodox polemics. When it was publicized that the Greeks insisted on receiving converts only by baptism, which was contrary both to Orthodox doctrine and the Russian practice that recognized the validity of the sacrament among the heterodox, anti-Orthodox polemicists concluded that there was no real doctrinal unity among the Orthodox, and that the Greek and Russian confessions were not even the same religion.20

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For some in the Russian Church, Palmer’s interest in Orthodoxy raised hopes that westerners would find their way back to the Eastern Church, and in the aftermath of the affair, Russian officials made concerted efforts to attract western converts. Palmer’s conversion to Orthodoxy would have been a real coup for the Russian Church. Alexander Petrovich Tolstoy, over-­ procurator of the Holy Synod (1856–1862), could not understand how Palmer got so close to Orthodoxy only to go over to the Roman Catholics.21 “I cannot but feel how great was the loss of Palmer for the work which is occupying us.”22 The Palmer case peaked Tolstoy’s interest in attracting converts to Orthodoxy. In September 1858 the Synod passed a decree instructing clergy in foreign service to receive heterodox converts without unnecessary delays, while reminding them to avoid appearing as though they were “conducting general religious propaganda.”23 Tolstoy also wrote to Fr. Evgeny Popov, the embassy priest in London from 1842 to 1875, with a request to translate the Divine Liturgy into English and an admonition that he would be “rendering a great service to the Holy Church if beside you and with your participation there should appear in London even a small community of sons of the Orthodox Church.”24 The Synod passed another resolution in 1859 requiring even members of the lower clergy at the foreign churches to be graduates of the theological academies. This step was seen as necessary in order to have well-educated clergy abroad who could actively conduct missionary work in the future.25 If in Russia the Palmer affair suggested there was potential to cultivate converts abroad, for some western observers the affair further discredited the Eastern Church. For French Catholic dissidents who were unhappy with the concentration of power in the papacy, Orthodoxy was an untenable alternative. French Catholics from the most intransigent ultramontanes to the esteemed liberal Catholic Felix Dupanloup (1802–1878), bishop of Orléans, shared a wholly negative view of the Russian Church as a church enslaved, “an institution of State and a police matter.”26 Where could the dissident then go? The vast majority of Catholic dissidents submitted to Rome. Despite the fact that Pius IX and the French intransigent ultramontanes were convinced that the most dangerous enemies of the church were the liberal Catholics, the Roman Church found itself broad enough to encompass the bitterest of political and intellectual adversaries. Anti-infallibilists remained in their church because, as they saw it, no other church could make a legitimate claim to being catholic—that is, universal—or independent. Furthermore, in the decade preceding the First Vatican Council, Emperor Napoleon III’s support for the national unification of Italy drove French Catholics closer to Rome. By 1861 his Italian policy resulted in the papacy’s loss of most of

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its temporal domains and jeopardized the temporal power altogether. As a result, French Catholics rallied to the papacy, and a large segment of the French Church adopted an oppositional stance toward the imperial government.27 After the Vatican Council, one group of dissidents formed a small, transnational Old Catholic movement and sought unity with the Jansenist Church of Utrecht, which had been separated from Rome since the early eighteenth century but considered itself to have retained the apostolic succession. A few dissidents defected to Protestantism. A few others followed Guettée’s example and turned to the Orthodox Church. A committed Gallican, Guettée could not accommodate himself to the centralization of authority in the Roman Church. He reached the conclusion that the Gallican and Orthodox traditions almost seamlessly represented true catholicism. It was necessary, from his point of view, to sever his ties with Rome in order to remain catholic.28 Guettée regarded himself as catholic, from cradle to coffin, and not as a “convert.” Guettée’s reception into the Orthodox Church was contingent on another series of events that took place in Paris between 1857 and 1861. He did not, like Palmer, undertake a pilgrimage to Russia in pursuit of Orthodoxy. He was living in Paris when he was sought out by a Russian expat, Sergei Sushkov, while the Russians, at the initiative of Archpriest Iosif Vasilievich Vasiliev (1821–1881), were in the process of building a magnificent church on what was then Croix-du-Roule Street, subsequently renamed Daru Street.29 The new church, dedicated to St. Alexander Nevsky, was completed within six years of the end of the Crimean War.30 St. Alexander Nevsky Church, its founder Vasiliev, and Guettée were at the heart of a Russian public relations campaign in Paris, the immediate goal of which was to spread true information and dispel misinformation about the Eastern Church. This goal, in turn, was tied to a broader ecumenical project: to reunify the churches by calling western Christians back to the Orthodox Church that had preserved the primitive faith. At a moment when the papacy’s temporal power was on the wane, casting uncertainty on Rome’s claim to the leadership of the universal church, Orthodox publicists believed Russia was called to fulfill a great providential and historical mission. The efforts to transform the public image of Orthodoxy were centered in France because Russian publicists and statesmen regarded Paris as a sort of capital of Europe, and the most important Roman Catholic city after Rome. While the struggle for Orthodoxy’s international prestige was fought on multiple fronts, they believed Paris held a preeminent place. Public image refers to ideas about Orthodoxy that circulated in the public sphere (e.g., newspapers, magazines, tour guides, books and brochures

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including government or religious propaganda, travelogues, political debates, polemical treatises, or scholarly studies). Public image is not necessarily synonymous with public opinion, since the latter would encompass attitudes beyond those expressed in print.31 Although it is reasonable to suppose that there was a correlation between the narratives about Orthodoxy that were circulating in print media and public opinion, it cannot be assumed that there was direct correspondence. St. Alexander Nevsky Church in Paris exists because there was a concerted effort by Vasiliev, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, members of court circles, aristocrats, and other clerical and lay representatives of the Orthodox faith to refashion Orthodoxy’s public image and enhance Russian prestige. While the founding of the church was part of a broader effort by Orthodox publicists to educate westerners about Orthodoxy and promote Russian interests, there was neither a clear blueprint nor a clear consensus about how best to do that. Russian churches and clergy abroad were never primarily political, but clergy abroad assisted their countrymen and did what they could to p­ romote Russia’s interests.32 By the mid-nineteenth century, Russian embassy clergy formed an elite group within the white (secular, married) clergy. They were tied to the foreign service, received their salaries—several times greater than what members of the white clergy earned in Russia—from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and reported to both the Foreign Ministry and the Holy Synod.33 While embassy priests saw to the spiritual needs of their compatriots abroad, they moved with the upper crust. As members of the foreign service, they were public figures and official representatives of Russia, who had to be able to resist temptations like revolutionary thought or luxurious living, while being able to adapt to the expectations of high society in their host country.34 Thus, they were chosen from the most outstanding graduates of the theological academies. Belonging to this elite group, Vasiliev enlisted the support of Guettée and worked with like-minded individuals for the defense of Orthodoxy and of Russia. The need for the defense of Orthodoxy became especially clear in the dozen years preceding the Crimean War and during that conflict, when antiOrthodox and often Russophobic narratives circulated widely in the French press. Chief among anti-Orthodox prejudices was the widespread belief that the tsar was the supreme pontiff of the completely enslaved Russian Church. In the French imagination, this tsar-pope/enslaved church myth represented the specter that the Russian tsar was using a religion followed blindly by millions as an instrument of imperial expansion. Not coincidentally, the rise of anti-Orthodox sentiment in France coincided with the growth of ultramontanism. Roman Catholic publicists argued

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that the papacy was the center of Catholic unity and that the pope’s absolute sovereignty was necessary to guarantee the church’s independence. In nineteenth-century France, ultramontanism developed as a reaction against the subordination of the French Church to the state that had been ushered in by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), that was maintained with modifications more acceptable to Catholics by the Concordat (1801) and Organic Articles (1802), and that remained in effect in post-restoration France until church and state were separated in 1905.35 While French ultramontanism developed in response to revolution-era church-state policies, Roman Catholic apologists juxtaposed their vision of Catholicism centralized under the leadership of an independent pope against the powerful foreign bugbears of Anglican Erastianism and Russian Caesaropapism, but especially the latter. The myth of the tsar-pontiff presiding over his enslaved church became a component of Roman Catholic defenses of papal authority and of Catholic reaction against Napoleon III’s Italian policies. After the Second War of Italian Independence (1859), it served a rhetorical purpose for French Catholics concerned about the direction of Napoleon III’s Rome policy, since criticizing Russia was an indirect way to criticize Napoleon III. Given the climate of Russophobia in France, Russian Orthodox publicists and Russia’s Foreign Ministry felt a need to publicly defend Russia and its church in the West.36 In the late 1850s, Archpriest Vasiliev began to publish polemical and informational works about Orthodoxy and entered into a collaboration with Guettée to do so. Yet practically from the moment he first set foot in Paris in 1846, he concluded that the most effective way to challenge negative attitudes about Orthodoxy would be to build an impressive church. He was right. The new ­ rthodoxy— church, consecrated in 1861, led to an alternative narrative about O one that countered anti-Orthodox prejudices—in the French press. While the founding of the church was significant for the public image of Orthodoxy in the West, those results were less dramatic, especially in the short term, than the Russian press, in a spirit of providentialism and with considerable enthusiasm, suggested. This disconnect between actual circumstances in France and coverage of those events in the Russian Orthodox press demonstrates Orthodox publicists’ thirst to believe in a resurgent and revitalized Russia and Orthodoxy following the Crimean War. The Russian church in Paris was integrally linked to the development and growth of religious nationalism. When making arrangements for the church’s consecration, Vasiliev argued: The Paris church is not only the fruit of royal munificence or a government establishment. . . . It is the collective affair of pan-Russian and

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even pan-Orthodox piety. And therefore one must surround it with large-scale grandeur as an expression of the basis of our national [narodnaia] life, as a sign of the greatness and piety of our Autocrats. . . . The consecration of the Paris church will raise the honor and glory of Orthodoxy and Russia; it will secure [in the faith] many of our travelers, those who are wavering; it will produce a favorable and conciliatory effect on foreigners and the non-Orthodox.37 The church on Daru Street embodied the idea that the Eastern Church preserved the primitive faith in all its fullness, a core belief of Slavophile and Panslav ideologues. It was the result of conscious efforts to enhance Orthodoxy’s international visibility in accord with belief in Russia’s historical destiny. Since Russian publicists perceived the church as a tremendous success and interpreted it as evidence that Orthodoxy was experiencing a new dawn in the West, the Paris church was the first and most important example in what became a veritable campaign of Orthodox church-building efforts in the West. Russia’s churches abroad were established for the religious needs of the Orthodox, but they contributed to broader diplomatic and ideological goals. They have been viewed as “showcases of autocracy” that “played a key role in the transmission of Russian imperial ideology in the West,” although imperial ideology was not a fixed entity in the period covered by this study.38 The stories about the new church on Daru Street that circulated back in Russia both expressed and contributed to the development of Russian religious nationalism and lent impetus to further campaigns for the empire to heighten its international prestige by the cross and the written word.39 Thus, the St. Alexander Nevsky Church can be interpreted as a “showcase” of Slavophilism.

Chronological Scope This book focuses on the two decades preceding the Vatican Council of 1869–1870, but especially on the decade from the purchase of the land for St. Alexander Nevsky Church in late 1857 to the remarkable events surrounding Alexander II’s visit to Paris in 1867. While it would be ideal to extend a study on the public image of Orthodoxy in France to the period of FrancoRussian entente in the mid-1890s, given the limitations of space and time, two main events support an earlier endpoint for this study: Vasiliev’s return to Russia in 1867, which ended his term of foreign service and his work as priest-publicist in Paris, and the First Vatican Council.

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In the two decades following the revolutions of 1848–1849, questions about the impending fate of the papacy—its existence and the extent of its temporal and spiritual authority—loomed large throughout Europe. After being ousted from Rome by the republicans during the revolution, Pope Pius IX, restored to Rome in 1850 and guarded by French troops until 1870, took measures to enhance the authority of his office. In 1854 the Catholic Church officially defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the teaching that Mary was miraculously preserved from original sin. For the first time, a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church was decreed by the pope before being confirmed by the bishops.40 This newly defined dogma lent impetus to the Catholic dissident movement. Some objected to defining the teaching as a dogma, while others objected to the top-down manner by which the dogma was defined, ratified, and promulgated. Because a dogma is an incontrovertible truth necessary for salvation, the controversy was not so much about whether the Mother of God was conceived without sin, a long-standing tradition within Catholic thought, as about whether the matter should be defined as a dogma instead of remaining in the realm of pious opinion. The teaching was popular and widely accepted among Catholics before it was officially promulgated. Owen Chadwick notes, “The people wanted this doctrine; no one should think it forced upon the simple people by hierarchs.”41 Guettée was a consistent and steady critic of the dogma, which widened the rift between him and the Roman Church that began in 1852 when several volumes of his Gallican Histoire de l’Église de France (History of the Church of France, 1848–1857) were placed on the papal Index of Prohibited Books. His uncompromising opposition to the dogma after its formal adoption ensured him the continued wrath of his enemies. There was a logical and steady progression from the Catholic Church’s adoption of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception to the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council, since both dogmas concentrated church authority in the papacy. Catholic teaching holds the church to be infallible, and faithful Catholics already agreed “that solemn papal utterances spoke for the Church.”42 However, the idea of formalizing this understanding of the authoritative nature of “papal utterances” by proclaiming a dogma of papal infallibility was extremely controversial. There were debates about how expansive the definition of papal infallibility ought to be. Would the person of the pope be separated from his teaching? There were concerns that a definition of papal infallibility, especially a broad one, would diminish the authority of tradition, the episcopacy, and ecumenical councils. At one point Pius IX even claimed: “I am the tradition.”43 Some

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foresaw that a dogma of papal infallibility would adversely affect relations between the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian confessions. Besides the theological issues, there were political considerations, such as concern about the impact of such a dogma on Catholic minorities in predominantly Protestant states. There were questions about whether the controversial Syllabus of Errors would henceforth be defined as infallible teaching of the church. Leading up to the Vatican Council, there were worries that if papal infallibility was on the agenda, European states might intervene to prevent the council from taking place; indeed, some anti-infallibilist bishops lobbied for such intervention.44 While most French bishops, including the anti-­ultramontane group, accepted the idea of papal infallibility, they did not believe its official promulgation was opportune.45 Nonetheless, on July 18, 1870, a narrow definition of papal infallibility was approved: “When the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.”46 In the end, almost all of the bishops who had opposed defining the dogma (and who had left the Vatican Council rather than vote) reconciled themselves to it and submitted.47 Although there were dissenters who never accepted the dogma, Vatican I largely ended an internal Catholic controversy about papal authority, making 1870 a bookend in the history of French Roman Catholic dissidence. Another reason for framing this study in the context of the Vatican Council concerns the implications of the dogma of papal infallibility for Christian unity. The dogma drove another wedge between the Roman Catholic Church and the other confessions, especially those that emphasized the authority of the ecumenical councils and the episcopacy. Whenever and wherever divisions have rocked the church, there have also been attempts to restore unity and communion. Ecumenism can refer either to efforts to resolve doctrinal disputes and to restore the visible unity of the church or to the willingness of Christians to cooperate across confessional lines to accomplish common goals. The nineteenth century gave rise to organizations devoted to such purposes. For example, missionary zeal among Protestants led to the formation of the influential, interdenominational British and Foreign Bible Society established in 1804, which disseminated its translations of the Bible in many languages, including Russian.48 The society’s work in Russia, which began in

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1812, depended on the support of highly placed individuals in St. Petersburg. Due to suspicions that the society was jeopardizing Orthodox tradition, the society was closed and its translation of the Bible was banned between 1826 and 1856. Under Alexander II, however, the society’s Petersburg agency played an important role in disseminating the official “synodal” translations of scripture.49 Regarding relations between Anglicans and Orthodox Christians in the nineteenth century, the Anglo-Catholic movement at Oxford University in the 1830s and 1840s laid the groundwork for Anglo-Orthodox dialogues. When he was exploring Orthodoxy, Palmer established relationships with important Russian figures from the over-procurator of the Holy Synod, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Protasov (1798–1855), to the Slavophile and lay theologian Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–60), raising Russian awareness of and interest in Anglicanism.50 Another Anglo-Catholic, John Mason Neale, began writing his History of the Holy Eastern Church in the early 1840s. He soon turned to the Russian embassy priest in London, Fr. Evgeny Popov, for assistance. Blaming the 1054 schism on Roman innovations like the filioque and deeply sympathetic to Orthodoxy, Neale’s History and work on Eastern Orthodox liturgies earned high praise and gifts from Emperor Alexander II and Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov).51 Neale was one of the founding members of the ecumenical Eastern Church Association, created in 1863, with Popov as one of its standing committee members. Greater unity among Christians seemed especially urgent in the 1850s and 1860s. There were several different motivations behind the aspirations for Christian unity that emerged from Roman Catholic and Orthodox quarters during these years. First, among conservatives across Europe, the revolutionary conflagrations of 1848–1849 fueled interest in uniting the churches as a bulwark against the revolutionary threat. Roman Catholic publicists thought any such unification could only take place under papal auspices, while the Orthodox apologists thought otherwise. Ecumenically minded Christians of this stripe were ready to embrace their fellow Christians, just as long as the opposing camp was ready to accept the blame for schism and to renounce its errors. Second, for some Roman Catholics, ecumenical activity was motivated by the belief that Russia was an expansionist power and a menace to European civilization. Thus, some Catholics were eagerly pursuing efforts to bring the Orthodox Christians of southeastern Europe and Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire into union with Rome as a strategy to check Russian influence. Third, all of Europe was living in the shadow of the Roman question: the fate of Rome, the papacy, and the temporal power were hanging in the balance. The possibility that the papacy’s temporal power

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was on the verge of collapse exhilarated Orthodox thinkers like Vasiliev and Guettée, because such an outcome could undermine papal claims to ecclesiastical supremacy. With the temporal power of the papacy potentially facing elimination, with a burgeoning Catholic dissident movement, with High Church Anglicans concerned about Erastianism, the decades preceding the Vatican Council were ripe for reevaluation of issues that had divided European Christians for centuries, like the role of the bishop of Rome or apostolic succession in the Anglican Church. Vasiliev and Guettée both promoted a better understanding of the Orthodox Church as a prerequisite for the reconciliation of the Christian churches. Expecting the papacy to collapse, they thought a new heyday for Orthodoxy was on the horizon. Events of 1870 squashed much of that optimism regarding a successful resolution to the problem of authority in the Christian Church and the end of the East-West schism.52 What the papacy lost that year in material terms—its remaining temporal possessions except the Vatican—was compensated a hundred-fold in spiritual authority. The definition of the dogma of infallibility represented a decisive victory for Pius IX and ultramontanism, reinforcing the East-West schism. Furthermore, and crucially, even among non-ultramontane, liberal Catholics, the arguments in favor of the papacy as the independent center of unity in the Church had rested in part on antiOrthodox narratives that equated Roman Catholicism with civilization and Orthodoxy with the worst excesses of Caesaropapism—total enslavement and fruitlessness. After 1870 Orthodox publicists could still hope to sway Anglicans and Old Catholics to turn to Orthodoxy, but the main question of church authority that had fueled the polemics of the 1850s and early 1860s had been settled—unfavorably for East-West reunion.

Overview Chapter 1 discusses the development of anti-Orthodox and anti-Russian sentiment in France after 1830 within the context of, first, the schools of thought that divided French Catholics in the nineteenth century and, second, the geopolitical tensions between France and Russia. The second chapter turns to the early efforts of the two priest-publicists, Vasiliev and Guettée, to challenge anti-Orthodox prejudices. After recounting the circumstances that led these two priests to found the first Orthodox periodical in the West in 1859, L’Union chrétienne (Christian unity), the chapter discusses the most significant polemical works of Vasiliev: his letters to two French bishops and the French historian François Guizot. Vasiliev’s recognition that polemical works could go only so far prompted him toward his most significant and

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impressive achievement: the founding of St. Alexander Nevsky Church in Paris, the subject of the third chapter. Besides recounting why and how the church came into existence, chapter 3 examines the church’s reception in France. The church and the media that accompanied it started to reshape Orthodoxy’s public image. Orthodox publicists gained some control over the narratives about Orthodoxy and accurate information about the Eastern Church was widely disseminated in newspaper articles and tour guides. Yet discussions of the church simultaneously blurred and sharpened the distinctions between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and between notions of Russian-ness and French-ness. Chapter 4 shifts the focus from the French milieu to the Russian Orthodox press, which represented the new church as a spectacular success. For Orthodox publicists, the Paris church signified that the light of Orthodoxy was dawning in the West and represented a critical step in Russia’s providential task of reuniting Christendom. Even though Orthodox publicists had great expectations that the new church represented a harbinger for overcoming the schism that divided West and East, like French discourses about the Paris church, the Russian accounts reinforced the dichotomy between the Orthodox Christian and the heterodox other. While the establishment of the Russian church in Paris contributed to the widespread dissemination of an alternative narrative that challenged the tsar-pope myth by affirming that the Orthodox Church recognized no head but Christ, anti-Orthodox sentiments did not disappear. Chapter 5 demonstrates that with the fate of Rome and the papacy unresolved in the 1860s, the tsar-pope/enslaved church myth remained an integral part of Catholic narratives defending the pope’s temporal as well as spiritual authority. Furthermore, there was some backlash against the heightened visibility and closer proximity of Russian Orthodoxy among Roman Catholics in the French capital. The last chapter compares how Guettée, Vasiliev, and their periodical L’Union chrétienne were understood by their contemporaries in France and Russia. While Russian civil and ecclesiastical authorities saw Guettée as a trophy and an outspoken defender of Orthodoxy in the West, his reputation and personality were such that it was problematic to cast him in that role.53 Guettée’s and Vasiliev’s Russian contemporaries had an exaggerated sense of how significant and impactful Guettée’s conversion and the priest-publicists’ polemical activities, including L’Union chrétienne, really were. Nonetheless, events in Paris reverberated in Russia, where they contributed to reformist tendencies: namely, reconsideration of church-state relations, educational reforms, and calls for freedom of conscience. Overall, the negative publicity

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in the West and the Russian campaign to change the public image of Orthodoxy had some positive results in Russia. The study concludes with reflections on the significance of the Russian Orthodox publicity campaign in Paris. The Orthodox publicists found sympathy in some quarters and successfully initiated a reappraisal of Russian church-state relations in the West. Meanwhile, in Russia, the sense of historical destiny spurred further efforts to enhance Orthodoxy’s global visibility and prestige.

Ch a p ter   1

Roman Catholicism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Russophobia in France, 1830–1856 “A thousand times better the Turk or the Tartar, than the Greek or the Russian!” —L’Univers, August 23, 1846

Russia’s place in the European schema has been a question at the forefront of the minds of European rulers, statesmen, clergy, intellectuals, political radicals, and revolutionaries at least since the era of Peter I. Reflection on the question has often produced a presupposition, practically inherent in the question itself, of some kind of dichotomous relationship between Russia and the West.1 Because of the Slavophile-­ Westerner debate among nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals, it is tempting to think of the Russia vis-à-vis the West dichotomy as a construction of Russian intellectuals. Yet the dichotomous construction has been as much or more created and perpetuated in western European—especially British, French, and German—discourses. The debate between the Slavophiles and the Westerners was part of a broader European debate, a broader attempt to define civilization.2 In the nineteenth century, the religious divide between the Orthodox world and the historically Roman Catholic ecumene (including England and Protestant states) was, for many westerners, an obstacle to a conceptualization of Europe as a family of Christian nations, a Christian commonwealth, or even a collection of nations with a common heritage derived from classical Greek and Roman culture, on one hand, and Christianity, on the other. Across Europe, core civilizational values were contested in the nineteenth century. In the West, the century was marked by a protracted culture war, 17

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or a transnational struggle between Catholicism and liberalism.3 Simultaneously, Russian educated society debated about how Russian history and culture fit into this fray of civilizational values, but western Europeans had their own ideas about that subject. So the Slavophile-Westerner debate, much of which was carried out in the western press, both reflected and shaped western attitudes about Russia. With the Slavophile-Westerner controversy being a European debate about the nature of civilization, and not merely a controversy in Russian educated society, the first version of Westernism was the idea that Russia needed Roman Catholicism.4 In 1843 Marquis Astolphe de Custine (1790–1857) broadcast to the world that the Russian emperor had recently had a nobleman (Peter Chaadaev) declared insane for the crime of setting “Russia in a blaze” by suggesting that the “Sclavonian race” needed Catholicism.5 As the Chaadaev case indicates, western European ideas about Russia—even sometimes the most negative critiques—were formed in dialogue with Russian intellectuals who shaped those debates, sometimes intentionally and sometimes inadvertently. In France, the Revolution left deep rifts concerning the core values that undergirded French society. In the realm of religion the Revolution produced two central problems: it generated controversies regarding churchstate relations and opened questions about the compatibility or lack thereof between Christianity and liberalism. These problems did not just pit liberals or anticlericals against Roman Catholics (and vice versa), but were sources of intra-Catholic strife. Prior to the Revolution, Gallicanism meant mainly that authority in the church resided in the episcopacy as a whole, and that the French state, not the pope, had the right to appoint the bishops. The Gallican Articles of 1682 defined state prerogatives in administering religious affairs and limited papal authority in France. During the Revolution, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the Concordat, and Organic Articles were Gallican arrangements that limited papal prerogatives and required the loyalty of Catholic clergy to the French state. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the high clergy in France were largely Gallican and royalist in orientation.6 This close connection between church and state was problematic because it associated the church with royal or imperial power and implicated the church in the suppression of democratic liberties. Furthermore, state interference in religious affairs that restricted the prerogatives of the church and/or papacy alienated pious Catholics from the state. To halt what they viewed as state attempts to subordinate the church, a few democratically minded Catholics—Félicité de Lamennais (1782–1854), Charles Forbes René de Montalembert (1810–1870), and Jean-Baptiste-Henri

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Dominique Lacordaire (1802–1861)—became convinced that it was necessary to separate church and state. The liberal version of ultramontanism was born. Understanding that the church would be persecuted so long as it was associated with an oppressive state, liberal ultramontanes believed that the independence of the church could only be restored by severing ties between church and state in France while simultaneously bolstering the papacy as the locus of church authority.7 Since Napoleon had enhanced the bishops’ authority over the priests in their dioceses, and the episcopacy predominantly favored Gallicanism, ultramontanism was attractive to members of the lower clergy who associated the episcopacy with arbitrary power and preferred the idea of papal paternalism.8 The rifts between French Catholics widened and intensified in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1848–1849, which not only produced regime change in France, leading within a few years’ time to the Second Empire, but nearly toppled the pope’s temporal power. Italian republicans seized Rome and drove Pope Pius IX into exile, until foreign military intervention restored him to his throne. In France, fear of socialism in the wake of the June Days— during which the Gallican and liberal archbishop of Paris, Denis-August Affre, died on the barricades while trying to restore peace—and President Louis-Napoleon’s assistance to Pope Pius IX brought the Catholic clergy into an alliance with Louis-Napoleon (Napoleon III after December 2, 1852). Gallicanism and ultramontanism were compatible with republicanism, but during the Second Empire, the anti-Gallican, royalist, and antidemocratic variety of ultramontanism first represented by Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) found vigorous expression in the daily of the reactionary layman Louis Veuillot (1813–1883).9 Popular among the lower clergy, L’Univers, the mouthpiece of intransigent ultramontanism, waged war against liberal Catholics and Gallicans.10 Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour, archbishop of Paris from 1848 to 1857, tried unsuccessfully to suppress Veuillot’s paper, but Pius IX supported the layman. The Gallican Sibour lamented: “The Ultramontane school [of Lamennais and Lacordaire] was once a school of liberty. It has been turned into a school of slavery with two main objects: the idolatry of temporal power and the idolatry of spiritual power.”11 Sibour’s comment reflected the bitter conflict between the intransigent ultramontanes and the liberal Catholics, a group “who valued political liberty,” believed in “the broad principles” of 1789, and opposed Veuillot.12 There were Gallicans and nonintransigent ultramontanes among the liberal Catholics, who believed ultra-Catholicism (i.e., Jesuitism or intransigent ultramontanism) fueled church-state conflict. Believing that the Jesuitical form of Christianity defied “human liberty,” some representatives of the liberal school

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distanced themselves from Jesuits, who vowed special obedience to the pope and were typically ultramontane.13 To contend with the threat of republican anticlericalism, French Catholic reformers tried to convince the enemies of the church that Jesuitism, not Christianity or Catholicism per se, posed a threat to liberty and they encouraged politicians to support G ­ allicanism.14 While anti-ultramontane Catholics supported specific state prerogatives as checks against papal interference in French ecclesiastical ­affairs, Napoleon III’s foreign policy drove them closer to the ultramontanes.15 As divisive as the debates about the compatibility of liberalism and Catholicism and the extent of papal authority were—Pope Pius IX considered the liberal Catholics “the most pernicious enemies of the church”16—in the decades leading up to the Vatican Council (the 1850s and 1860s), French Catholics mostly tended to agree, when the very existence of the papacy was called into question, that it was necessary to preserve the temporal as well as spiritual authority of the papacy to ensure that the papacy preserved its independence. There was another issue on which there was almost universal agreement among them. The Catholic Church was the fount of civilization, and those who had not been reared in its den were neither properly Christianized nor civilized. Those who belonged to the schismatic “Greek” or “Russian” or “Greco-Russian” church fell into this category and provided an important other against which Frenchness could be defined.

French Anti-Orthodox Russophobia from the Polish Revolution to the Crimean War The idea that Russia was a menace to European—that is, Christian— civilization became ubiquitous in France in the first half of the nineteenth century, following a centuries-long tendency among western European writers to contrast Russia with Europe. Nineteenth-century narratives about Russia have kinship ties with early modern European “despot-slave” narratives that portrayed Russia as a despotic state wherein tyrants lorded over a society of slaves; but early modern narratives were not characterized by the antiRussian hostility that permeated nineteenth-century accounts.17 The general scorn European observers expressed for what they perceived as uncivilized, slavish people led by ignorant, drunken priests performing countless formal, exterior, and superstitious rituals contributed to anti-Russian sentiment. Disdain for Orthodox piety and a climate of Russophobia contributed to the policy decisions in France and Britain that led to the Crimean War.18 French Russophobia emerged in the campaign of 1812. The preparations for the military campaign included a propaganda program that publicized

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an influential and fraudulent document purporting to be the “Testament” of Peter I, bequeathed to his successors, and indicating his plan for the conquest of Europe.19 The “Testament” appeared in Des progrès de la puissance russe (The advances of Russian power, 1812), published anonymously, but the work of Charles Louis Lesur (1770–1849).20 One of Russia’s supposed aims was to establish a “sacerdotal supremacy” over all the “disunited Greeks or schismatics” (Orthodox Christians) of Hungary, Turkey, and Poland. “Under this pretext and by this method, Turkey would be subjugated and Poland . . . would be pulled under the [Russian] yoke.”21 Thus Lesur highlighted the link between the “Greek religion” and Russian imperial ambitions. Lesur’s work perpetuated anti-Orthodox stereotypes but lacked certain themes that later came to characterize specifically Roman Catholic publications, namely emphasis on the “Greek religion” as schismatic and on Caesaropapism as the essence of despotism. Regarding Peter I’s abolition of the patriarchate, Lesur claimed that while the Russian patriarchate existed, it balanced the power of the “tzar,” but after its elimination the emperor became président of the Holy Synod.22 Lesur described Russia as a country with a distorted version of Christianity, a land not properly civilized but on the rise. Drawing on a large corpus of western writing about Russia, Lesur presented Russian religious praxis but not necessarily the Orthodox faith per se in a purely negative light, portraying the Russian religion as an even more idolatrous version of “the Greek religion, already so fraught with superstitions.”23 The Russian people worshipped St. Nicholas rather more than God. The lower clergy were entirely ignorant, largely illiterate, and morally debauched to an extreme degree, but the upper clergy had pure morals.24 While religion had not benefited Russian society as much as it had other societies, Lesur stated that this was not due to “the difference of dogmas of the Greek church, but to the crude superstitions that degrade it, and to the stupid ignorance, to the disgraceful vices of which its lower clergy is generally accused.”25 A footnote listed the differences between the Greek and Latin religions, noting that “the Greek religion does not differ essentially from the Latin religion.”26 Although Russophobia surfaced with publication of the “Testament” during the Napoleonic era, it was in the 1830s and 1840s that Russia came to be regarded as Europe’s greatest threat.27 One major trigger of rising Russophobia was the Polish question, an insoluble problem connected to the Eastern question and Panslavism. Statesmen and much of the public in Britain and France looked favorably on the idea that a resurrected, sovereign Poland could potentially check Russian power by assuming the cultural and religious leadership of the Slavic world. They reasoned that Roman Catholic Slavs in

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the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires might readily look to a liberated Poland to provide such leadership.28 For those who saw Russia as the natural leader of the Slavs, however, the Polish or so-called “fatal question” was not distinct from the Eastern question because Poland’s national aspirations stood in the way of developing a program for Slavic unity that would be palatable to Russians and other non-Polish Slavs. Strong anti-Russian feelings emerged in France after Russia thwarted the attempts of revolutionaries in Congress Poland to establish Polish independence from Russia in 1830–1831 and after Nicholas I abrogated the kingdom’s constitution, granted by Alexander I in 1815.29 Subsequently, Polish refugees in Paris found a public ready and willing to sympathize with the plight of martyred Poland, whether from liberal, Catholic, or liberal Catholic points of view. Montalembert and Lamennais paid tribute to the martyred nation, the former by translating Adam Mickiewicz’s Livre de pèlerins polonais (Book of Polish pilgrims, 1833) into French and the latter by writing a “Hymn to Poland.”30 The arrival of the first Russian political émigrés—Alexander Herzen and Mikhail Bakunin—in Paris in 1840 also contributed to the spread of anti-Russian publicity.31 Early Panslavism, in its diverse forms, perpetuated Russophobia. Partly in response to Russian expansion and the rise of German nationalism, AustroSlavs and Poles proposed different models for Slavic unity or for the creation of a Slavic federation, to be led by Austria or a restored Poland. Some versions were liberal and democratic, and depending on the political bent of the author, Panslavism could have an anti-German, anti-Russian, or antitsarist slant. Both the Polish and the Russian political émigrés promoted anti-­ Russian or anti-tsarist forms of Panslavism. Until the 1860s, actual Panslav movements were formulated mainly by western Slavs and were generally suspicious of Russia.32 Polish propagandists attracted the sympathy of French and Italian liberals, who feared that if the West did not guide the process of Slavic unity, Russia would.33 An important figure in the emergence of early Panslavism was Adam Gurowski (1805–1866), who, after plotting against the life of Nicholas I in 1829 and while participating in the Polish uprising of 1830–1831, published a work in Paris denouncing Nicholas as a “new Attila.”34 But soon after, Gurowski reversed course. He concluded that Providence had resolved the extended struggle between Poland and Russia—the struggle to determine which nation would unite and lead the Slavic race—in Russia’s favor. His writings on this subject in the mid-1830s were among the first formulations of Russian Panslav ideology.35 Gurowski deserted the Polish national cause, received an amnesty from Nicholas I, returned to Russia, and entered the civil service.36

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While he never lost his faith that Russia’s destiny was to head a Slavic federation that would be responsible for civilizing Asia, he became a harsh critic of Nicholas I. Leaving Russia forever in 1844, and emigrating to the United States after the revolutions of 1848, Gurowski abandoned a “pro-tsarist variety of Panslavism for a democratic one.”37 His Panslav works, with their proRussian orientation, appeared during a period of rapidly rising anti-Russian sentiment. While Panslavism was in its formative stages, another driver of Roman Catholic Russophobia was the mass conversion of 1.5 million Ruthenian (Belorussian) Uniates in the borderland regions of the Russian Empire in 1839, condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in an allocution of November 1839, and publicized by French Catholics beginning in 1842 and 1843.38 This literature developed specifically Catholic themes and promoted a set of axioms about the Russian Church. While western writers had long written about Russia as a society of slaves ruled by despots, Catholic writers drew a causal link between Russian despotism and schism from Rome. Further, they defined despotism as the concentration of all spiritual and temporal authority in the hands of the sovereign, rendering the Russian Church as nothing but an instrument of tsarist authority. The tsar was the great persecutor of Catholics, making Russia and its enslaved church the implacable enemies of ­Catholicism—that is, of Christianity and civilization. Two particularly important and influential works on this topic were Marie Joseph de Horrer’s Persécution et souffrances de l’Église catholique en Russie (Persecution and sufferings of the Catholic Church in Russia, 1842) and Augustin Theiner’s work on the same subject, translated into French as Vicissitudes de l’Église catholique des deux rites en Pologne et en Russie (The recent state of the Catholic Church of two rites in Poland and Russia, 1843).39 Then, in 1843, Custine’s La Russie en 1839 (Russia), was published. This book was enormously popular and influential, shaping European opinion about Russia for decades.40 “The key to its success was its articulation of the fears and prejudices about Russia widely held in Europe at that time.”41 Custine read Horrer, and Horrer reviewed Custine’s travelogue in Correspondant.42 Horrer had served as a councilor of state in Russia, so he had spent an extended period of time there and knew Russian. Custine, by contrast, wrote a travelogue based on a journey of a few months and limited exposure to regions outside St. Petersburg and Moscow. While the former statesman focused on religious issues, the marquis wove his observations on Russian religion into his voluminous commentary on diverse themes. Horrer’s purpose was to address a lack of knowledge about the Russian Church in Europe, which was necessary to defend the Catholic Church, “so

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cruelly oppressed in Russia.”43 He wanted to break what he saw as an inexplicable silence in Europe about the conversion of the Uniates—he put the number at 2.5 million, though historians put the number at around 1.5 ­million—a dreadful manifestation of schismatic Russia’s hatred for the Catholic Church.44 According to Horrer, Russia represented “the most intolerable and the most absurd of all tyrannies: that of the union in the same hands of the spiritual and the political power”; hence its church and its clergy were nothing but slaves of the temporal power.45 Horrer followed a line of thought articulated by de Maistre that there was a law of schismatic churches: “it is impossible to adduce an instance of a separated church that is not subject to the absolute dominion of the civil power.”46 In Horrer’s formulation, any church separated from Rome “becomes at the very instant, and in contradiction to the divine institution, a national Church, that is, an institution of the State,” subject to the temporal ruler.47 In Russia, “more Asiatic than European,” schism was tied to despotism, and despotism was “radically opposed to what is an integral part of the great European family” because it is “incompatible with the true spirit of Christianity.” Despotism was linked to the concentration of temporal and spiritual authority in the sovereign’s hands, giving the emperor a “QUASI DIVINE omnipotence” that is “incompatible” with Christianity, and that can only result in the “enslavement” (asservissement) of the nation and the “slavery” (esclavage) of individuals.48 Similarly, Custine wrote of Russia’s Asiatic character, its despotism, its population “drunk with slavery,” and its at best superficially Christianized society.49 The marquis identified a paradox in Russia. Outwardly, the people were “the most believing among all the Christian nations,” but the clergy had absolutely no influence on the population. They were capable only of garnering signs of the cross and genuflections.50 The Russian clergy simply constituted one of the military regiments of the “czar”; while dressed differently than the regular troops, they carried out the emperor’s commands. Whether talking about the Russian clergy or the people more broadly, Custine emphasized their slavish obedience. “God, the king of heaven; the Czar, the king of the earth: here is the theory; the orders, even the caprices of the master, sanctioned by the obedience of the slave: here is the practice.”51 Near the beginning of his travelogue, Custine recounted a conversation with a Russian prince (Prince K) who had pro-Catholic leanings “like all who possess any piety of feeling and independence of mind in Russia.”52 This prince told him that Peter I united the crown and the tiara in Russia, thus creating “a monstrous union unknown before among the nations of modern Europe.”53 Custine argued that only the Catholic Church retained its independence. Elsewhere, churches become mere instruments of the political

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power. In Russia, the church was condemned to be “a slave” that can only “give birth to slavery.”54 Russia’s church was defunct, incapable of civilizing the nation. The Greek Church could be called a “persecuting” but not an “apostolical” church or “civiliser.” It was a dead institution: “This political and national church has neither moral nor spiritual life: where independence is wanting, there can be nothing else that is good. Schism, in separating the priest from his independent head, immediately throws him into the hands of his temporal prince; and thus revolt is punished by slavery. . . . The Greek priest imparts neither life nor death—he is himself a dead body.”55 The Russian priests could only be “despised by the people, in spite of, or rather because of, the protection of the prince. People who understand their liberty will never obey, from the bottom of their hearts, a dependent clergy.”56 There are instances when Custine described being moved, charmed, or enchanted by Orthodox services. During these moments, he would remember to turn his thoughts back to despotism or Siberia—that is, to Russia’s system of penal exile—and then he would quickly snap out of his reveries.57 Like Horrer, Custine reported on the mass conversions of the Uniates, believing in the need for the “sun of publicity” to shine on Russia’s persecution of Catholics and other injustices.58 Even before Horrer and Custine, in 1841 Theiner produced two lengthy volumes on Russia’s persecution of Uniates and Polish Catholics, although the French translation appeared only in 1843. In his foreword to the French translation of Vicissitudes de l’Église catholique, the liberal Catholic Montalembert, a member of the House of Peers, warned his compatriots who looked to Russia “for the religious and social regeneration of the modern world” about the cruelties Russia was inflicting on the Poles.59 He had in mind ultra-Catholics and Legitimists who regarded the July Monarchy with suspicion and Russia as a bulwark against revolution. Montalembert presented Theiner as the “preliminary and necessary companion” to Horrer, mentioning that both works “will make thoroughly known this Russia, the object of the adulation of some, of the ignorance of others, of the instinctive terror of all, and that we do not hesitate to proclaim the supreme enemy of everything that is left to us to save in Christian society.”60 A theme for both Theiner and Montalembert was Russia’s lawlessness, as the empire trampled on the treaties of 1768, 1773, and 1815 by interfering with the free exercise of the Catholic religion in Poland. Nicholas I’s aim was to extirpate the Polish nationality by imposing a foreign language on the Poles and forcibly attaching them to the “Muscovite Church.”61 A second work by Theiner—a bible of anti-Orthodox Russophobia—­developed the themes of the Russian Church’s enslavement to the state, inefficacy of its clergy, and Russia’s persecution of Catholics further: Die Staatskirche Russlands

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im Jahre 1839 (The state church of Russia in 1839). This work, first published in 1844, appeared in French translation in 1846, and like Horrer and Custine, was often cited subsequently on matters pertaining to Russia.62 Theiner’s works and their translation demonstrate that the anti-Orthodox discourses were a broader European phenomenon.63 Bishop Jean-Félix-Onésime Luquet (1810–1858), who translated Die Staatskirche Russlands into French, adopted the telling title (from the Italian translation): L’Église schismatique russe (The schismatic Russian church). This title shifted the emphasis onto the schismatic status of the Russian Church vis-à-vis Rome while Theiner’s equally suggestive German title emphasized the position of the church in relation to the state—that is, the church’s complete subordination to the state. For Theiner, as for Horrer and Custine, the schismatic and subjugated status of the Russian Church were two sides of the same coin.64 Bishop Luquet (of Hesebon in Arabia) introduced L’Église schismatique russe with a letter addressed to the Russian bishops. He echoed many of Theiner’s points, highlighting the shameful and “deplorable state” into which the Russian Church and its bishops—instruments of Russian political power—had fallen as a result of separating from Rome.65 In a lengthy discussion of “the fertility of the Roman Church compared to the sterility of the Russian Church,” echoing Theiner, Luquet brought up the persecution of religious minorities within the Russian Empire, namely the forced conversions of the Uniates (in Poland and Ruthenia) and the commemorative medal issued by Nicholas I that read: “Separated by violence in 1596, reunited by love in 1839.” This reunification was, by Russian accounts, accomplished spontaneously, by “gentle persuasion” and patience. Luquet told the Russian bishops that they should understand better than anyone the “falsity” of what is proclaimed on the medal. “You know, as we do, that the defection of the Ruthenians was voluntarily accomplished under the Muscovite inspiration, as Christianity succumbed under the blows of the Diocletians of ancient Rome.”66 Because of Russia’s reputation for persecuting Catholics, Luquet followed L’Univers in declaring “a thousand times better the Turk or the Tartar than the Greek or the Russian.”67 While England was schismatic, separated from Catholics “by heresy and by schism,” it was nonetheless “tolerant and just,” so “we love it in this respect.” But as for Russia: “And you, we fear you; you, we reject you; you, we regard you as the enemies of our faith.”68 For Theiner, the source of all Russia’s problems was the schism and the obstinate refusal to recognize the papacy as the center of unity in the church. Consequently, as a divine chastisement, the church and the bishops existed in a state of miserable oppression, enslaved to and merely the instruments of the temporal power.69 The history of the Russian Church was the

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eight-hundred-year history of enslavement of the church to secular authority and of a great deal of vileness and complicity on the part of churchmen in that process. While both Horrer and Custine saw the Petrine reforms as the turning point that consolidated temporal and spiritual authority in the emperor’s hands, Theiner had a significantly different approach.70 For him, the abolition of the patriarchate and the adoption of the Ecclesiastical Regulation (1721) was just one important episode in a process of state subordination of the church that was well underway prior to Peter’s reign, and had not let up since. Nineteenth-century Russian autocracy was characterized by the special relations between a triumvirate of ministers—foreign affairs, interior affairs, and the over-procurator of the Holy Synod (specifically Protasov)— and the emperor. These ministers “elevate the sovereign on a pedestal as an idol” and raise themselves up as “demi-gods.” The Russian church and government were united in the quest for “temporal domination.”71 Theiner’s argument, spanning several hundred pages, can easily be condensed. Because of its separation from Rome and its consequent enslavement, the Russian Church’s past was ignominious, and its future would not be glorious. Nowhere in Christendom, nowhere on earth had there ever existed such a base, shameful, and fruitless institution as the Russian Church. One finds in Russia “no sign of Christian civilization” but only “pagan barbarism” and cruelty.72 In its material and intellectual poverty the Russian Church was comparable to none. Once rich, it had been pillaged by its princes so that “there is not in the world a church as poor, as miserable as the Russian Church.”73 On the subject of ecclesiastical education, Theiner wrote: “There is no Christian nation, however small it may be, whose sacred literature does not prevail over that of the immense people of holy Russia.”74 Theiner provided a much fuller discussion of the Russian clergy than either Horrer or Custine. Besides the subordination of the church to the state, he identified another source of malady in the Russian Church: marriage of the white clergy, which turned the clergy into a “caste.”75 He noted a whole tradition of Russian hierarchs and tsars bemoaning the ignorance and immorality of the clergy.76 Theiner also highlighted the material poverty of the secular clergy and the monastics. While the Russian Church recognized the dignity of celibacy, its monasteries were deprived of the “flower of Christian youth” and were more like “infirmaries of invalids.”77 The Russian clergy was the most oppressed and miserable in the world. There was “not in Christendom a race of men more miserable on earth” than the monastics, except for the white clergy. “There is not a race of men more oppressed; there is not a race of men plunged into similar contempt. We confess that even among the Turks, among the idolaters of China and of India, never

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has the dervish, Buddhist monk [bonze], or fakir been so abused [outragé], so barbarically treated as in the East the clergy of Russia is, by its very-Orthodox government.”78 As if these were not problems enough, Theiner found more to criticize. The Russian Church was afflicted by sectarianism and heresy.79 While Custine had talked about the lack of preaching in Russia, Theiner enhanced this idea into a broader discussion of the Russian Church’s lack of any kind of missionary efficacy. “It is to the Russian Church that should be attributed the shame, for Christian Europe, of finding still in the nineteenth century so many pagans within its bosom.”80 In Theiner’s parlance, the Catholic Church was the mother and guiding force of civilization. Hence separation from Rome meant separation from civilization itself. He ended by calling the Russian Church to return to its mother. Another work that spread anti-Orthodox Russophobia was an English work by the mercenary Charles Frederick Henningsen that was written and translated into French in the mid-1840s and subsequently cited in other French-language works.81 Also significant, the critical notes to the French edition of Henningsen were supplied by Cyprien Robert, who served on the editorial board of Revue des deux mondes (Review of two worlds) and was Adam Mickiewicz’s successor as chair of Slavic Language and Literature at the Collège de France from 1845 to 1857.82 In his French translation, he presented Henningsen’s work as founded on a deeper knowledge of Russia than Custine’s travelogue and thus able to supply a more satisfying and informative portrayal.83 Yet his own views are revealing. Like many of his friends and colleagues, Robert supported the idea of a federation of western Slavs to counter Russia.84 He also coined the term tsarism to refer to the Russian system of “total” or “Asiatic autocracy” and “total absence of liberty, which reduces all the subjects to the role of blind machines.”85 Henningsen perpetuated the notion that the tsar was the pope of the Russian Church, while also debunking the idea that Russia should be known for its policies of religious toleration.86 While Russia had been frequently cited as a model of religious toleration, Henningsen explained that every Russian had to belong to a faith and unbelief was not tolerated. Furthermore, tolerance in Russia depended on the emperor’s autocratic power and was pursued as a politically expedient policy rather than as a matter of principle. The Russian emperor “is at all times the supreme head of the whole Russian church. He is to its communicants what the Pope of Rome is to the Roman-catholic world, and being as absolute a spiritual as he is a temporal arbiter, can, without difficulty, accord exactly the degree of toleration which

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he judges expedient for his temporal interests.”87 In a vein similar to Horrer, Custine, and Theiner, Henningsen called attention to the forced conversion of three million Uniates (twice the number cited by historians and half a million higher than Horrer’s figure) as marking a reversal in the religious policy of the Russian emperors and the start of a religious persecution unknown in Europe since the time of the Reconquista and Spanish Inquisition.88 After discussing the persecution of the Uniates, Henningsen suggested that the persecution waged against the Jews under Nicholas was even worse than the persecution of Catholics.89 He emphasized, however, that the policies of religious persecution stemmed from the emperor and not from the church, and he noted that the differences between the “Greeks” and Roman Catholics were insignificant, adding the observation that “it is a remarkable characteristic of the fanaticism of the human mind, that the more trifling the distinction of creed which arouses its hostility, the more bitter is the feeling excited.”90 Reducing the differences between these two confessions to trifles, Henningsen attempted to accurately describe Orthodox teaching, although he was under the mistaken impression that the Greek Church accepted the doctrine of predestination.91 Yet Henningsen’s characterization of the Russian religion spread common stereotypes.92 Developing the theme that Russia was the great persecutor of Catholics, Polish propagandists and the French press spewed more anti-Russian venom with reports in May 1846 that a group of eastern rite Catholic nuns of Minsk who had refused since 1839 to submit to the Russian Church had been consequently subjected to imprisonment, hard labor, beatings, and torture. One of these “nuns,” Mother Makrena Mieczyslawska, supposedly after escaping from captivity, turned up in Paris before going to Rome where she obtained an audience with Pope Gregory XVI.93 By 1846, the standard tropes of anti-Orthodox Russophobia had been established in French-language works: the church entirely lacked fruitfulness and missionary zeal; Russia had a clerical caste, and the white clergy was intellectually, morally, and economically impoverished; the tsar was the “supreme head” of the church; the church and the clergy were enslaved to the state and were political instruments of Russian imperial power; and the tsar, who wielded all spiritual and temporal authority, was the tyrannical oppressor of Roman Catholics. As the relentless persecutor of Catholics, exhibited most terribly by the forcible conversion of the Uniates during the 1830s, and as an expansionist power, Russia was more to be feared than Turkey. Such ideas informed attitudes about French interests in the Ottoman Empire. Reviving and modifying a slogan attributed to Luther in his struggles against Roman Catholicism, L’Univers’s correspondent in Constantinople

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argued in 1846 that support for an Ottoman Empire that tolerated its religious confessions would best serve the cause of France, Catholics within the empire, and Catholic missions. If the Russian schismatics extended their autocratic influence in the Ottoman Empire, it would be the end of Catholic missions. Hence he asserted: “Ah! this time, as Catholics, we are not afraid to say or to openly repeat: ‘A thousand times better the Turk or the Tartar, than the Greek or the Russian’!”94 French Catholic Russophobia contributed to the controversy over the Holy Lands in the 1850s, and Catholic concerns in the Near East help explain the alliance between the French Church and Louis-Napoleon in the first decade of his rule. While French writers took for granted the superiority of Catholic civilization and cared little about what Russians thought of them, educated Russians cared very much about how westerners perceived their nation and their faith, and were eager to help shape that consciousness. Orthodox publicists were as convinced as the Roman Catholics that they guarded the full deposit of the Christian faith, but they were more likely than their French counterparts to accept the idea of a Christian ecumene that encompassed the eastern and western churches. At mid-century, the Slavophile, Panslav, and former diplomat Fyodor Tiutchev, perceived by the French public as a spokesperson of official Russia, provoked a debate about Orthodoxy in the French press.95 This debate, aptly characterized as “a true dialogue of the deaf,” fueled Russophobia on one side and disillusionment on the other.96 At stake in the debate was the issue of whether Russia safeguarded or constituted a threat to legitimacy, order, and Christian society. The idea of Russia as a threat to Christian society was founded on the belief that in Russia, religion was just another political tool of despots bent on expansion. Because westerners tended to have reductionist views of the Russian Orthodox Church as an instrument of a menacing state, nothing very positive could come out of the polemic, which instead contributed to the crystallization of opposing ideas about what constituted, threatened, and could save Christian civilization. While the participants in the debate were interested in greater religious unity, each participant was sure about whose side Divine Providence was on. It was this certainty that, for some, gave the Crimean War, when it came, the character of a religious crusade, as Figes, who takes religious causes of the war seriously, notes.97 For western European commentators, Orthodoxy was linked to Russia and the specter of Russian Panslavism. Thanks to Tiutchev, by 1849 the French press was talking about “Muscovite Panslavism” as a program of Russian aggrandizement and the Greek Church as the tsar-pope’s means for achieving this end.98 Victor de Mars explained in Revue des deux mondes that

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Russia’s power was not in its military but in its moral influence. Panslavism was a moral force that could, under the banner of Orthodoxy, unite the Slavs around Russia creating a formidable power. For Russian Panslavs, “the Oriental Church, the Oriental spirit, are the true national traditions of the Slavic peoples. The first attempts of their civilization, their future, their entire moral life, would be in the Christianity of the East, of which Russia is the sanctuary, and the czar the pontiff.”99 Europe had to push back to prevent such a union. A Roman Catholic writer expressed the opinion that the Greek Church was too degraded to present any real threat to Catholicism; but Panslavism, “the Greek Church, made into the property of the czars, their instrument and their servant” was a cloak for a Russian “crusade, undertaken against the cause more identical than ever of the Church, civilization, and the independence of peoples.”100 Bothered by anti-Russian sentiment, Tiutchev had advised Nicholas I that Russia needed to pursue an active propaganda campaign in the western press to defend its interests.101 In this spirit, he wrote three political articles, all linked to his conception of a larger project to engage in fruitful dialogue with the West as a step toward mutual cooperation and the preservation of peace, threatened by the anti-Christian revolutionary spirit.102 In one article, written a few months into the revolutionary agitation of 1848, Tiutchev wrote that “for a long time, only two forces have existed in Europe—Revolution and Russia. . . . No transactions, no treaties, are possible between them; the existence of one is the death of the other.”103 Besides establishing that only Russia correctly apprehended and remained uninfected by the anti-Christian character of the revolutionary spirit, this article contained a warning that, if Germans abandoned the alliance with Austria and Russia to pursue a dream of national unification, six to seven million Slavs might react against “usurpations of the Roman Church” and “German domination” by rediscovering the Church of the East and their natural fraternity with Russia.104 But Tiutchev’s most widely discussed political article was “La Papauté et la question romaine au point de vue de Saint-Petersbourg” (“The papacy and the Roman question from the point of view of St. Petersburg”), published anonymously in Revue des deux mondes ( January–March 1850) as the work of a Russian diplomat. He had served in the Russian foreign service in Vienna and Turin and was back in Russia working as a censor in the Foreign Affairs Ministry by the time this article, penned in October 1849, appeared.105 One wonders how this Slavophile poet, swept away by his ecumenical vision of Russia fulfilling a great historical mission by reunifying Christendom, expected to strike western readers who had read authors like Horrer, Custine, Theiner, and Henningsen. Although he was responding to what

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he perceived as relentless hatred of Russia in the West, he exacerbated the situation. The importance of Tiutchev’s early Russian Panslavism and his contributions to Russophobia have not received sufficient attention. Tiutchev’s articles must be understood against the backdrop of certain key developments of the 1840s. While Catholic publicists were expressing indignation about the mass conversion of Uniates, Nicholas I visited Pope Gregory XVI (r. 1831–1846) in Rome in December 1845, hoping to improve relations.106 The pope, who had condemned Russian repression of Catholics in allocutions of 1839 and 1842, outlined his concerns to the Russian emperor. Nicholas I did not budge on the main issues, but on his return to Russia, he established a Committee for Catholic Affairs.107 Further diplomatic exchanges between Russia and the papacy led to the conclusion of a concordat between Petersburg and Pius IX (r. 1846–1878) on August 3, 1847.108 Then, in January 1848 Pius IX issued an encyclical letter In suprema Patri apostoli sede (On the supreme throne of Peter the apostle), calling for reunion of the eastern and western churches under papal auspices. This call, in turn, received a response from the eastern patriarchs addressed not to Pius IX in particular, but to “All the Bishops Everywhere,” repudiating the papacy in its nineteenth-century form as heretical and Pius IX’s encyclical as an attempt to lead Orthodox Christians into apostasy.109 Above all, Tiutchev’s political articles were a response to the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848–1849, resulting, until the French and Austrians intervened militarily, in Pope Pius IX’s forced exile from Rome until April 1850 (about six months after Tiutchev wrote “La Papauté”). Given Russia’s role in crushing the republican revolution in Hungary and the international crisis provoked when the Porte gave asylum to Hungarian and Polish freedom fighters, Tiutchev’s articles appeared at a moment when anti-Russian feeling was extremely high.110 In “La Papauté” Tiutchev argued that the papacy was doomed, because the conditions for the return of the pope’s temporal power would necessarily result in the secularization of his realm and hence the secularization of the Catholic Church. After all, it was an army of the Second French Republic, itself the fruit of revolution, that recaptured Rome (in July 1849) from Garibaldi’s control.111 The church could not accept the conditions of the modern state, namely “neutrality” toward religion; so-called neutrality was really a cloak for anti-religion.112 Tiutchev conceptualized “Catholicism, Protestantism, secular humanism, atheism, and revolution” as “stages of a single process of the degradation of western European civilization,” the root cause of which was egoism.113 Papal usurpations represented a Roman egoism, which helped produce the individual egoism of the Protestant reformers.

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From individual egoism, it was a natural progression to revolution, and the multiplication of the individual ego in the principle of popular sovereignty. Jesuitism, intricately tied to the papal question, represented the egoism of the order.114 The end result of this progression of egoism and the advance of the modern state would be secularization. But God had provided the pope with a solution to the problem: reunion with the church that preserved the full deposit of truth. The Orthodox Church had not “ceased to recognize that the Christian principle had never perished in the Church of Rome” and was “stronger in it than the error and passions of men.”115 Expressing his certainty that the church, which was “one in principle” and “one in eternity” would “triumph over division in temporality,” Tiutchev indicated that this divine plan had even been foreshadowed in Nicholas I’s visit to Rome. “Perhaps the general emotion that met him on his appearance in the church of St. Peter—the appearance of the Orthodox emperor returned to Rome after several centuries of absence!—and of the electrical movement that shivered through the crowd, when it saw him go to pray at the tombs of the apostles, will still be remembered. This emotion was justifiable. The prostrated emperor was not alone; all Russia was prostrated with him: we hope that it [Russia] will not have prayed in vain before the holy relics!”116 Tiutchev confirmed the apprehensions of those hostile to Orthodoxy by unabashedly portraying the Orthodox emperor of Russia, widely detested by 1850, as the emperor who could save Christendom, restore the temporal unity of the Christian churches, and by implication restore the universal Christian empire.117 His French readers probably experienced a spine-tingling chill on seeing Tiutchev’s interpretation of the meaning of the Russian emperor’s return to Rome “after several centuries of absence.” Besides, Tiutchev’s article was published with the inclusion of anonymous prefatory remarks by PierreSébastien Laurentie (1793–1876), editor of the legitimist (pro-Bourbon) L’Union, who drew attention to the political overtones of the article. Laurentie stated that people who understood that the “Greek Church” had its “principal seat in Moscow” instead of Constantinople, and therefore had “a share in the power of Russia, rather than a share in the weakness of Greece,” would “see their apprehensions justified in a very curious manner” and “find that they had more reason than they thought to fear this new rivalry to Catholicism and to the papacy that events are creating.”118 Laurentie emphasized that as a repercussion of Russian power, the Greek Church had a “new ambition,” to reunite the Christian churches. This ambition was “great,” “worthy of a church” that “claims to have the depot of religious and moral truth,” and “entirely spiritual,” but the ambition had the “particular character of

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the Greek Church, by which I mean the tendency [penchant, also meaning weakness] to rely on the temporal power, and to serve it even more than to be served by it, as the Catholic Church willingly does.”119 The ambition of the Greek Church was “nothing less than to change the axis of the religious world,” but it had this ambition “only because the axis of the political world also seems to be moving.”120 Although Laurentie was a Russophile who would have welcomed the reunification of the Christian churches as a barrier against revolution, he nonetheless explained that by alluding to the Orthodox emperor’s return to Rome “after so many centuries of absence,” Tiutchev meant to portray Nicholas as the “new Charlemagne,” who could bring “great material force” to Rome’s aid but did not seek in Rome “a spiritual or moral consecration of his power.”121 Instead he “comes to consecrate the papacy. The old Charlemagne was at once the servant and the protector of the papacy. He gave much; he received still more.” It was the pope who made the old Charlemagne the emperor of the West. In contrast, the Orthodox emperor, the new Charlemagne, “comes [to Rome] finally, this is the expression of the pride and the ambition of the Greek church, or rather of the emperor, whom the church makes at once a Caesar and a St. Peter; he comes to end the schism, in pardoning the papacy, and in protecting it.”122 Tiutchev’s article proved that for a part of Russian educated society, “the true pope was the czar.”123 From the pen of this Russian “diplomat” came the proof positive, for western readers, of Russia’s imperial dream: the Caesar-pope of Russia was prepared to save Christendom by reuniting the churches under his protection. Tiutchev unapologetically saw Russia as Europe’s only hope in the face of revolution, and there was a certain logic in the idea that Russia represented order and stability in 1849 and 1850 as it had in 1814 and 1815. Russia had just saved Austria by crushing the republican revolution in Hungary. The exiled Napoleon had predicted that within fifty years Europe would be either republican or Cossack. Tiutchev declared that Europe faced a critical dichotomous choice: anti-Christian revolution or Russia, the only hope of Christian society.124 His proposed plan of salvation was one that all Europe, including French Catholics, could gladly do without. His faith that Nicholas I—widely associated with despotism, religious persecution, and subjugation—could reunite the churches and save the Roman Church from secularization would make his readers shudder with horror, not shiver with spiritual exaltation. If Tiutchev believed the role of the temporal power was to protect the church and the deposit of faith, not to rule over it or tyrannize it, any nuances existing in his conception would be absolutely lost on those who viewed the tsar

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as a despot and menace to Christian civilization and the Russian Church and clergy as his enslaved political instruments. Tiutchev’s article “brought down a storm on his head,” and he abandoned further attempts to engage in dialogue with the West.125 In the aftermath of republican revolutions and their suppression, leftists viewed Nicholas I as an anti-Enlightenment force of reaction and could admit that at least the papacy rested on an electoral process, while Russia had “absolute monarchy tempered by strangulation.”126 Tiutchev and others in St. Petersburg appeared to think that given the revolutionary threat to the papacy, Russia had an opportune moment to tap into legitimist sentiment and present itself as the savior of Christendom.127 This anticipation may explain what Vasiliev meant when he wrote to Over-procurator Protasov’s secretary that Tiutchev’s article “did not make the impression that one might have expected.”128 Any hopes that Tiutchev’s explanation of Russia’s spiritual ambition would be well received failed to apprehend to what extent the depictions of Catholic writers had refashioned Russia into the enemy of Christian civilization and to what degree their ideas about legitimacy had changed. Vasiliev explained that by signing his article “a Russian diplomat,” Tiutchev gave the work a “sham official meaning” in which the French newspapers found a pretext to discuss and heap abuse on the Russian Church for the “ecclesiastical supremacy of our Sovereign,” the alleged slavery of the clergy, and the church’s supposed sterility.129 For a judgment one could take seriously, however, Vasiliev mentioned Laurentie, “a writer with excellent control of the pen,” who nonetheless believed the Eastern Church was guilty of government intrusion in ecclesiastical affairs and believed East and West could be reunited only by the “unconditional joining of the Orthodox Church to the Latin.”130 Tiutchev’s articles cemented the notion of the Russian emperor as an Orthodox pontiff with grand imperial designs. The alleged pontificate of the tsar over the Eastern Church was a recurring theme in the debates provoked by “La Papauté,” which continued throughout the 1850s and were tied to the disputes over the holy sites.131 For the participants, these were not academic arguments. The survival of Christian society was at stake. One side saw the papacy as the bulwark against the dual threats of revolution and Russian Caesaropapist imperialism, while the other side saw the papacy as the progenitor of the revolutionary principle. Russian Caesaropapism and the Roman question were inextricably connected. Roman Catholic publicists tended to think that the program Tiutchev outlined was really an entirely political agenda masquerading under religious pretexts. Given his sympathies for Russia, Laurentie conceded that Tiutchev’s article reflected an “entirely spiritual ambition.”132 Yet he fully concurred

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with the general view that the Russian Church and its clergy were subordinated to the temporal authority, which impeded Russia’s ability to safeguard Christian society. In his 1852 response to Tiutchev, Laurentie explained that the term Orthodox Church “is the Russian name of the Church whose pontiff is the Emperor.”133 He argued that it was in Russia’s national interest to be reunited with the Roman Church. Only then could Europe have an effective Holy Alliance that could defend Christian society from the threat of revolution. Precisely because all authority in Russia was concentrated in the hands of the emperor, Laurentie considered Russia especially vulnerable to the revolutionary threat, since revolutionaries aspired to undermine the authority of throne and altar. In response to Laurentie, in 1853 Aleksei Khomiakov anonymously published a brochure maintaining that the Eastern Church recognized only one head, Christ, and that it recognized no other spiritual or temporal head.134 The same year, Andrei Nikolaevich Muraviev (1806–1874), a high official in the Holy Synod, printed a brochure explaining the separation of the churches from the Orthodox point of view.135 It was published anonymously, although Alexander Popovitsky (1825–1904) was identified as the translator. Popovitsky added a short introduction explaining the ecumenical intentions of the work. Concern for “the religious future of our old world” and the desire for reunification of the churches had prompted western publicists to produce “sincere works.”136 Yet the reunion of the “two great Churches” could not take place without first a frank, moderate, and charitable explanation of how the churches came to be separated. Muraviev’s work, Popovitsky explained, “notes one by one all the abuses that were introduced in each Church [meaning abuses introduced in the Roman Church] over time,” in the areas of “dogmas and rites” and “external conditions.” Additionally, the work “authoritatively refutes some baseless accusations” and “erroneous opinions about eastern Orthodoxy,” since due to a lack of “precise information” even “the most sound and most sincere minds of Roman Catholicism [e.g., Laurentie] are not exempt” from these errors.”137 Popovitsky added, “The bases of the constitution of our Church are like unexplored steppes for the majority of theologians of the Catholic West.”138 The phrasing of Muraviev’s subtitle, “The Word of Catholic Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism,” expressed credal and polemical intentionality. French Roman Catholic polemicists would not use the designations of either “catholic” or “orthodox” to describe the Eastern Church.139 In response to Roman Catholic labeling of the Eastern Church as “Photian,” “schismatic,” “Greek,” “Russian,” or as “so-called orthodox,” Orthodox polemicists asserted the Eastern Church’s claim to catholicity (i.e., the claim to being the

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“one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church”). Muraviev’s nomenclature was also tied to his discussion of the conflict in the Holy Lands. He believed the Roman Catholics were encouraging the defiance of the Muslims and causing the quarrel because “under the pretext of their exclusive catholicity” they “monopolized the eastern provinces.”140 On both sides of the divide, the Eastern Church’s catholicity or lack thereof was tied to the legitimacy of claims about control of the holy sites. For Roman Catholic polemicists, the tsar’s alleged headship over the Russian Church implied that Orthodoxy was a political instrument more than a spiritual force, meaning that Russia’s designs in the Near East must also be more political than religious. By 1853, it was anathema for a French Catholic to openly question the tsar-pope myth. When a short-lived newspaper, La Presse religieuse (The religious press, 1852–1853), founded by the French historian and archaeologist Jean-Hippolyte Michon (1806–1881), published an article by Vladimir de la Fite de Pelleport (1818–1870) arguing that the tsar was not the head of the Russian Church, Michon was criticized by La Voix de la verité (The voice of the truth), the predecessor of the ultramontane Le Monde (The world). Father Michon was a Catholic dissident and reformer, opposed to papal infallibility and mandatory clerical celibacy. Vasiliev reported to the Synod in October 1852 that Michon was being castigated by the ultramontane press for a work proposing a solution to the problem of access to the holy sites because, “after impartially investigating the matter,” Michon settled the question in favor of the Eastern Church.141 Michon wanted a peaceful solution to the issue of access to the holy sites. He called for a concordat among Christian nations that would put Christians rather than Turks in charge of monitoring access to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and he disdained “acerbic language” and the “venomous pen” used to villainize Christians “not in communion with Rome” who nonetheless had an uncontested “right . . . to go pray in the church of the Holy Sepulcher where they venerate as we the same tomb and the same Calvary.”142 Vasiliev became acquainted with Michon in June 1852, and reported to the over-procurator that Michon’s paper was dedicated to moderate and peaceful debate among the Christian churches. Short of money, Michon asked Vasiliev for assistance, which was provided in turn by Nikolai Dmitrievich Kiselev (1800–1869), Russian envoy and plenipotentiary ambassador in France from 1844 to 1854.143 Especially since the appearance of Custine’s travelogue, Russian publicists had actively sought out avenues to defend Russia’s interests in the western press.144 Vasiliev had no expectation that Michon would become Orthodox but expressed satisfaction that he was not an “enemy” and that there was

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one newspaper where “we can sometimes place true information about the Holy Eastern Church.”145 By Vasiliev’s account, Pelleport was one of the sons of a captured French marquis (Louis-Joseph de La Fite de Pelleport) who decided to remain in Russia at the end of the Napoleonic wars. Although the marquis was Roman Catholic, he christened his sons in the Orthodox Church. The younger son (Vladimir) had returned to France, lived in Paris, and was involved in literary pursuits. Sometimes stepping into the role of a Russian publicist, Pelleport (a.k.a. Petr Artamov) had a “lively and bold pen” and “zeal for Orthodoxy.”146 Herzen and Nikolai Ogarev commented that he wrote Orthodox theological treatises “like a true seminarist.”147 The immediate provocation for Pelleport’s article on whether the tsar was the head of the Russian Church was the assertion in one of the Paris papers that the Eastern Church was full of liturgical pomp but was subject to “servitude worse than anarchy itself. What are its patriarchs and bishops besides instruments of the empire? and its popes, what are they besides valets?”148 Michon introduced the article to his readers thus. “We have often wondered what we must think of the generally accredited opinion that the emperor of Russia is the head of the religion, the Pope of the Russian Church, as is vulgarly said.”149 Pelleport explained that as widely and authoritatively accepted as the idea of the tsar’s headship over the church was, it was a “completely erroneous opinion.” He defended the Holy Synod as canonical and insisted that Peter I, whom he considered a genius, had in no way set himself up as head of the church by eliminating the patriarchate or ever “had the absurd idea that was attributed to him later of wanting to absorb the Church and the State in his person alone.”150 Peter knew his own “incompetence in spiritual and religious affairs” and deferred to his bishops in such matters. Pelleport also refuted the idea that the creation of the Synod placed the administration of the church under the iron fist of the tsar. The civil power had its delegate, the over-procurator (procureur géneral), who communicated between the Holy Synod and the emperor but had no authority in spiritual affairs.151 In a second installment, Pelleport stated that he could not say whether the Holy Synod “can be regarded as flawed” from the standpoint of canon or civil law, a curious retreat from what he stated in the first installment. Instead of dealing with canonicity, he focused on the idea that the creation of the Synod was forward thinking, that it was “a masterpiece of thought” because in Russia it represented “the first and only counterweight [contrepoids] opposed to the civil power, a counterweight even more strong and more rational, as it is purely spiritual.”152 This argument was a refutation of western polemicists

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who saw the abolition of the patriarchate as the elimination of the sole check on tsarist authority. The Synod was a “permanent local council” that inherited the “powers, rights and spiritual attributes” of the patriarchate and continued its work of preserving the dogmas of the church as outlined in the seven ecumenical councils. Pelleport explained that the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire referred to the emperor as the protector and defender of the “predominant religion” of the Russian land. Although Paul, who had a “peculiar will,” conceived the notion of having himself named patriarch, the Holy Synod opposed him and refused to consecrate him. As a final proof that the tsar was not the head of the church, Pelleport refuted the claim that the Uniates were forcibly joined to the Russian Church by Nicholas’s iron fist. Rather, there was a petition “signed by more than a thousand ecclesiastics” led by Iosif Semashko (1798–1868), expressing their desire for reunion with the “Church of the East (and not to that of Russia).” Nicholas deferred this petition to the Holy Synod, because it was outside his jurisdiction. He added his agreement only after the Holy Synod sanctioned the reunion.153 Father Jacques-Paul Migne (1800–1875), editor of La Voix de la verité, reproduced Pelleport’s article, noting that since La Presse religieuse was printing material about Russia that was “diametrically opposed to what the wellthinking papers write on the matter,” Pelleport’s article would be followed by an “antidote” from the pen of Louis Veuillot, a vitriolic ultramontane and editor of L’Univers, another newspaper founded by Migne. Highlighting the intolerance of French Catholic journalism of this period, Migne commented, “La Presse religieuse thus thinks contrary to other Catholic papers on a sufficiently great number of religious, political, and literary questions.” He cautioned its editors not to “get carried away,” adding, “They are placing themselves on a really slippery slope.”154 Michon interpreted these remarks as attacks on his orthodoxy and accused Migne of conflating Pelleport’s views with those of La Presse religieuse, which was unfair since Pelleport’s article had been accompanied by a disclaimer. Michon protested: “You [will] admit that this is a very simple, but hardly new way to ruin, in the opinion of Catholics, a recently founded religious paper.”155 About one month later ( July 1853), with war between Russia and Turkey approaching, La Presse religieuse printed its last issue. Such was the fate of the newspaper partially subsidized by the Russian ambassador, edited by a man who, according to Vasiliev, was not an enemy of Russia, and where true information about Orthodoxy could be published periodically. On the eve of the Crimean War, as the specter of Russian-led Panslavism— perceived as an imperial agenda under the religious guise of the Greek Church—haunted Europe, French polemicists challenged the idea that there

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was religious unity among the eastern churches.156 An aspiring diplomat, Félix Hippolyte Desprez (1819–1898) argued that there was neither doctrinal nor administrative unity among Oriental churches. The root of the EastWest schism was race, and the real dogma of the Greek Church was nationality.157 This “spirit of race . . . is the essential fact which it is necessary to penetrate before tackling the study of the church of the East, because it explains at once its theological dogmas, its popular beliefs, its hierarchy, and contains perhaps the secret of its political destinies.”158 While eastern Christians under Ottoman rule might look to Russia to accomplish their immediate political aims, they would not look favorably on an expansion of Russian influence in the region or relish Russian protection. Besides, Desprez observed that “the synodal form of ecclesial authority in Russia, the absolute submission of this authority to the lay power, has nothing that would be able to appeal to the patriarchs of the East.”159 While it was regrettable that this national principle worked “to the detriment of Rome” by preventing religious unity when the papacy had never sought anything other than a “purely religious supremacy” in these lands, it also worked to the detriment of Russian Panslavism, a “gigantic idea of conquest” that “threatens eastern Europe with a unity far more formidable than the Roman unity would be.”160 Thus, when Russia tried to convince the other eastern Europeans that Russia was full of zeal for their cause, the eastern churches “would be in the right to respond to it [Russia] that the danger for their churches is much more in St. Petersburg than in Rome.” Desprez concluded by suggesting that the national principle among eastern European populations may even demonstrate that they recognized that Russia was the “true enemy of the destinies that they dream of.”161 Desprez believed that eastern Europeans would insist on retaining their rites as a prerequisite for any potential unity with Rome, but he saw reason to hope that their devotion to the national principle would at least limit Russia’s influence over them. Some Roman Catholic propagandists promoted the reunion of Orthodox people to the papacy—with the retention of their national rites—precisely as a strategy to counter Russian influence in the Near East. Thus, there was an uptick in Roman Catholic proselytism among eastern Christians before and during the Crimean War. In 1850 Ippolit Terletsky (1808–1888) established the first eastern rite church in Paris, connected with the Oriental Society for the Union of All Christians of the East.162 This society, which had as its aim the union of the churches under papal auspices, was founded in Rome in 1847. Pius IX sanctioned it and referred to it in his 1848 letter to the eastern bishops, which

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called them back to communion with Rome with assurances that the eastern liturgies would be respected.163 In addition to the eastern rite church, Terletsky planned to have a missionary training school and a Slavic press. Vasiliev reported that Terletsky’s attempts to create an eastern rite Roman Catholic mission in Paris were not very successful, but his propaganda was fiery. He referred to the Russian Church as “corrupting and invasive,” noting that it employed “all means for the destruction of Roman Catholicism, and it will succeed at this if the sons of the Western Church do not oppose it with all their strength.”164 In his fund-raising activities, he was assisted by the renowned liberal Catholic Lacordaire, who, according to Vasiliev, gave benefit sermons in venues frequented by rich society ladies in support of Terletsky’s project. Lacordaire preached about the Russian emperor’s “terrible oppressions and bloody persecutions” of the Uniates who were “lost to the Roman Church.” Drawing a parallel between the Russian emperor and the Jacobins, Lacordaire claimed that Nicholas I “repeated the course of action of our bloody revolutionaries of 1793. Here they cried: fraternity or death. In Russia: Orthodoxy or death.”165 During the Crimean War, in mid-1854, Terletsky sought support from the French Ministries of the Interior and Public Instruction and Worship for his Institut slave catholique (Catholic Slav Institute). Terletsky explained that the Russians were the dominant ethnic group among the schismatics, whose churches constituted a threat to Catholicism and European civilization. Russia, “in which the schism is personified, so to speak, constitutes the pivot of this danger.” Spreading Roman Catholicism in the Near East would undermine Russia’s sole pretext—a common faith—for intervention and influence in the region. He also believed that loyalty to the eastern liturgy, not any doctrinal issue, was the main cause of the separation of the eastern churches from the western ones. “Churches of the East are extremely attached to their rites and usages,” he explained, to the point of confounding the rites with “the religion itself.” Hence, he thought assuring the easterners that they could maintain their liturgies was of the utmost importance in calling these churches back to union with Rome.166 While Terletsky presented his program to the French ministries, the French government actively promoted its own Russophobic propaganda when hostilities broke out between France and Russia. Copies of Peter I’s “Testament” appeared in wartime literature, and Napoleon III ordered that the “Testament” was to be posted on public buildings throughout France.167 At the behest of the French government, the French bishops issued pastoral letters to their flocks portraying Russia as a threat to Christian

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civilization. The archbishop of Paris (Sibour) characterized the Crimean conflict as a “holy war,” stating: A new barbary, conducted by refined men, threatens us. The Christianity corrupted by Photius [patriarch of Constantinople who excommunicated Pope Nicholas I in 867] has rendered the faith the slave of a powerful potentate. He makes of it today the instrument of an ambition that knows no bounds. He wants to submit everything, body and soul, to his false orthodoxy. If this colossus stood in the Bosphorus with one foot in Europe and the other in Asia, then the ruin of the nations would be accomplished. . . . To stop the procession of the northern Giant, to limit and to contain its might, this is a question of life and death for civilized peoples, for the Church of Jesus Christ and for the true orthodoxy. This is the true and great reason, the providential reason, for the expedition that has been undertaken. And this is why we call this war a holy war.168 In a similar vein, the bishop of Tulle, Monseigneur Berteaud (1798–1879), issued a pastoral letter affirming that “Rome is Orthodoxy,” that the French sword defended the “throne of the vicar of Jesus Christ” and must also force a “false and brutal orthodoxy back to its frozen deserts.” It was a war against “some men of the name Christian more dangerous to the Church than the pagans themselves.”169 During the war, anti-Orthodox polemicists continued to promote the idea that there was no doctrinal unity between the Greek and Russian churches.170 Eugène Veuillot, who served alongside his brother Louis on the editorial board of L’Univers, outlined a plan for saving the Ottoman Empire and restraining Russia. His idea was that France would play a major role in the Ottoman Empire’s revitalization, and his hope was that in a revitalized Ottoman Empire, under French patronage, the Greeks would be reconciled to Rome, since “in reality, the Greek Church and the Russian Church do not just form two distinct Churches; they form two separate Churches.”171 One last episode that occurred during the Crimean War illustrates the entrenchment of the tsar-pope/enslaved-church myth in French Catholic thought, this time with personal reference to Vasiliev. The archpriest remained in France during the conflict and obtained permission to minister to Russian prisoners of war (POWs).172 He soon found himself embroiled in a conflict with the bishop of La Rochelle (Clement Villecourt) and a Polish priest, Alexander Jelowicki, over access to the Russian prisoners on the Isle of Aix.173 In November 1854, the bishop denounced Vasiliev to Hippolyte Fortoul, the minister of public instruction and worship, as a liar and a man

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motivated by personal ambition. In recounting a conversation he had with Vasiliev, whom he referred to derogatorily as Archipope of the Greco-Russian Church, Villecourt stated: “The rest of our conversation proved to me that the Greeks have one conscience absolutely enslaved to the Sovereign will of the Czar, who has for them a sort of divinity.”174 The bishop attached a report from Jelowicki claiming that many of the prisoners were Poles who had been forced into schism and wanted to return to the Catholic Church. Jelowicki portrayed Vasiliev as an opportunist who did not care in the least for the run of the mill prisoners but only for the officers, and who wanted to prevent the Polish prisoners from accepting the consolations of a Roman Catholic minister. On receiving this confidential information about Vasiliev, Minister of War Jean-Baptiste Philibert Vaillant sided with the bishop and rescinded Vasiliev’s access to the prisoners. However, after Vasiliev was able to meet with Napoleon III, Vaillant retreated from this position in March 1855, on receiving reports from military officers about the propriety of Vasiliev’s conduct and word that the Russian prisoners were requesting access to an Orthodox priest for the Lenten and Paschal season.175 Belief that Nicholas I was the ruthless persecutor of Catholics, as well as the conviction that his claims to be the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire masked an expansionist political program laid out in Peter I’s “Testament,” triggered a wave of anti-Orthodox Russophobia in the 1840s and 1850s. French Catholic publicists were agitating for French patronage of the Porte and Catholic proselytism among the Orthodox in the Near East as necessary measures to stave off Russian power. Given the large body of anti-Orthodox literature in circulation by mid-century, emphasizing that the Russian Church was the political instrument of an Asiatic and despotic Russian Caesar-pope who threatened Christian civilization, Russia had a serious problem with its public image and westerners did not take the Eastern Church’s claims to catholicity seriously. Given the crisis that had befallen Pius IX in 1848–1849, anxieties about revolution and the fate of the papacy were at the heart of French concerns about Russian imperial designs. Tiutchev had declared that the papacy was doomed and only a return to Orthodoxy could save Christian society in western Europe. In the French Catholic mind, this declaration reinforced the belief that the papacy was necessary as a bulwark against tsarist imperialism. After the next crisis befell the papacy in 1859, anti-Orthodox narratives were often explicitly tied to discussions about the papacy’s temporal power. French Catholic apologists invoked the tsar-pope/enslaved-church myth to defend the temporal power and to critique the direction of Napoleon III’s Italian policy.

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As divided as French Catholics were, most could agree that the Russian Church represented a degenerate other. If a rogue politician broke with Rome, if the Catholic Church lost its center of unity (i.e., the papacy), or if the papacy lost its political independence, France could succumb to the same fate that had befallen Russia: its church would become a mere instrument of state. This concern became evident in the next open-print polemic about the merits of the Orthodox Church vis-à-vis the Latin Church which began in early 1861. Prior to that, however, two other noteworthy developments occurred. First, to deal with bad press, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry, which had been pursuing efforts to combat negative publicity in the West since the early 1840s, ramped up its efforts to find a media outlet to explain and promote Russia’s interests. Official and unofficial censorship hampered its ability to do so, but to the chagrin of France and Britain, it established the newspaper Le Nord (The north) in Belgium in 1855. Second, Vasiliev became acquainted with Guettée, and the first Orthodox periodical published in the West was born.

Ch a p ter   2

The Archpriest as Publicist and Polemicist I very much regret, Monseigneur, that Your Eminence did not read the letters that I had the honor to exchange with your colleague in Nantes. I do not delude myself about the literary merits of my responses; besides, it was not a matter of my personal pride. But the facts and explanations that they contain about this terra ignota that is called the Catholic Orthodox Church of the East are clear enough and positive enough to deserve being taken into consideration. This is why I permitted myself to send them to all the bishops of France, and to you in particular, Monseigneur, their venerable doyen. —Archpriest Vasiliev to Archbishop Bonald, 1862

Russian publicists—whether in official, semiofficial, or unofficial capacities—utilized the relative freedom of the press in western Europe to promote their often competing visions of Russia’s national interests. Orthodox publicists had to contend with a western press hostile to Russia, political exiles whose vision of Russian patriotism made them antagonistic to official Russia and its established church, and Russian converts to Roman Catholicism who actively propagandized throughout Europe. In fact, concerns about “seduction to heterodoxy” prompted Russian ecclesiastical and secular authorities to bolster the Paris clergy by assigning a second priest and a deacon to the Paris embassy church in 1846.1 For most of the nineteenth century, the question of Russia’s relationship to the rest of Europe was inseparable from religion, and the problem of the religious division between Roman Catholics and “schismatics” was inseparable from the relationship between spiritual and temporal authority. The religious polemics that took place in the western press did not just pit Roman Catholic against Orthodox writers but also reflected contested arenas within Orthodox thought. For example, there was not agreement among Orthodox publicists regarding the Petrine ecclesiastical reform. Andrei Muraviev used the western press to publish an anonymous French-language work, Le Raskol 45

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(The schism), about Russia’s Old Believers. Like several Roman Catholic polemicists, he believed Peter I was to blame for uniting spiritual and temporal authority in Russia, which in turn deepened the schism that occurred in the seventeenth century.2 Muraviev was a staunch defender of Orthodoxy, but not of the status quo with regard to religious affairs in Russia. Responding in part to Theiner’s criticisms of the Russian Church, he was one of the first Russian publicists to publicly assess the Petrine reform in a negative light, and he even proposed to Metropolitan Filaret the idea of convening a church council to consider matters of church administration.3 In Le Raskol, Muraviev reinforced the idea that the Russian emperor was the head of the church. He argued that the seventeenth-century schism was not rooted in doctrinal issues but was of a “totally particular political and social character,” perpetuated by persecution, especially by Peter I, whose policies toward the church provoked opposition. By trying to create a whole new society in Russia, Peter generated resistance, which became “more manifest yet the day when Peter I abolished the patriarchate, instituted the Holy Synod, took the title of protector of the Church, but in fact, reunited in his person both the religious and temporal powers.”4 Vasiliev did not write at length about the appearance of Le Raskol, but he mentioned to the over-procurator that “our enemies” could use the author’s “unfavorable judgments” about the emperor as head of the church and about the failings of the Russian clergy. He added that at least the author’s depiction of the French Church and its relations with the state would not benefit the Roman Catholic Church.5 Le Raskol was a plea for freedom of conscience, which Muraviev called the most fundamental of liberties and the generator of all the other liberties. He cloaked his call for religious tolerance in rhetoric about the opportunity Alexander II had, through his commitment to reform from above, to bring Russia into the “great family of civilized peoples” and “to accomplish in Russia the greatest, the most salutary, as the most pacific of revolutions!”6 The work attracted the attention of Laurentie, who was critical of Muraviev’s emphasis on freedom of conscience, which would produce “anarchy without limit,” not greater unity. He sensed that Muraviev was frightened by images of the Russian Church represented in works by western authors, especially August von Haxthausen, and concluded that Muraviev’s work shed “great light on the moral condition of the Russian church.”7 “Here it is known! Here it is, in its separation, gnawed [away] by its own schism.” Only true liberty, emanating from a church based on unity as a principle, only liberty based on “unity of faith” and not “unity imposed by law” could save the “church that calls itself orthodox” from anarchy.8

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It bothered Vasiliev that views expressed by lay publicists like Tiutchev and Muraviev were seized on by Catholic writers to criticize the Russian Church. Besides the fact that the French press was negatively disposed to Orthodoxy, Vasiliev was concerned about Roman Catholic proselytism of Orthodox people in Paris. He had to contend with Terletsky, who caused him “no small grief and trouble,” and monitored the activities of the Russian converts to Catholicism, who zealously promoted eastern rite Catholicism.9 In the late 1850s Vasiliev ramped up his efforts to utilize print media for the defense of Orthodoxy. With the activities of converts like Grigory Petrovich Shuvalov and Ivan Gagarin in mind, Vasiliev reported in early 1859 that antiOrthodox agitation was intensifying in Paris.10 Shuvalov was a Russian aristocrat who converted to Roman Catholicism in 1843, following in the footsteps of his mother and friends like Gagarin (converted 1842) and Augustin Golitsyn. He was ordained in 1857 and joined the Barnabite order. His work Ma conversion et ma vocation (My Conversion and Vocation) was published in Paris in 1859, followed by a second edition in 1864. The work revealed Shuvalov’s missionary zeal and was a call to Russians to convert to Catholicism as an act of true Russian patriotism. He prayed that “all my countrymen who read this may be persuaded that it is possible for them to be at once both Catholics and Russians. . . . Oh that all Russia may understand that duty to our Church is not opposed to our duty to our country, and that Truth will ever be the firmest support of fidelity and patriotism!”11 Given his nationality and his intended audience, Shuvalov’s work lacked the Russophobic rhetoric of French polemicists, though he shared many of the negative ideas about Orthodoxy that were circulating. He recalled being raised nominally Orthodox, mechanically fulfilling his yearly obligation to confess and commune, but having been taught nothing. Undermined by rationalism and heresies, the Russian clergy was in crisis. Only reunification with Rome could save the Orthodox clergy, who were in a “state of dependence” and unable to nourish souls.12 He recounted a discussion with a Greek Orthodox priest who referred to the Roman Catholic Church as a sister church. Shuvalov initially admired this attitude as charitable and tolerant, until he came to understand the falsehood of the notion that two churches, each claiming the church is one, could live side by side as sisters.13 He denied the validity of married clergy and affirmed that the Greek Church was in a “dead state.” Russia was destined to “civilize” and Christianize the lands of China and Asia, but without unity with Rome, Russia would not succeed, because “the Greek clergy, everyone knows, have never, since the schism, produced either a missionary or a Sister of Charity deserving of the

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name. There must be life in order to impart life.”14 He reinforced the narrative about the lack of esteem for the clergy that existed in Russia, since they were reduced to being low-grade civil servants, with only a temporal instead of a spiritual head. Like other Catholic polemicists, Shuvalov regarded it as inevitable that “every Church not possessing the true faith necessarily falls under the power of the head of the State.”15 The church must have infallibility, but no one would dare to believe in the infallibility of the Synod, which was only of recent creation, lacked independence, and was a “consistory” that administered the church under state authority.16 Shuvalov noted that he and Gagarin were both struck by the tendency among the Orthodox to conflate questions of rite with questions of dogma, assuring his Russian readers that there was no question of needing to sacrifice their rites.17 Russian converts to Catholicism considered the preservation of these eastern traditions—including baptism by immersion and communion in two kinds—essential for the success of the reunification process under Roman auspices. Publication of Shuvalov’s work in 1859 was directly linked to the appearance of L’Union chrétienne later that year. In March Vasiliev expressed to the over-procurator his sense that anti-Orthodox agitation was on the rise and sought input on what could be done to combat “this evil.” He mentioned that Shuvalov’s proselytizing activities were keeping him busy, since he had to counter them.18 The Jesuit Gagarin’s propagandizing activities in the 1850s were also of concern.19 Even though Shuvalov and Gagarin published many works in French, Vasiliev suggested to the over-procurator that it was the strategy of the Jesuits to publish in Russian because it was safer for them, as they expected to be answered in Russian. So long as the Jesuits and “their minions” wrote in Russian, and so long as they were answered in Russian, western Christians would not see “the weakness of the Roman Church.” Thus, the converts safeguarded the Roman Church’s “offspring,” while seducing the “offspring” of the Russian Church.20 For these reasons, Vasiliev pushed for more expansive Orthodox polemical activity in French. This path was not free from obstacles. Vasiliev prepared a French translation of an Orthodox refutation of one of Gagarin’s works, only to find out that the publisher, whom he described as one of the “boldest,” on seeing that it was a work touching on Catholicism, needed time to seek legal counsel before publishing it.21 Sushkov wrote a French-language work against the temporal power but was not able to publish it in France and resorted to the Belgian free press.22 Vasiliev and some of the other embassy priests were encouraged and aided in their efforts to educate westerners about Orthodoxy by members of or

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people close to the imperial court. Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (Nicholas I’s sister-in-law and Alexander II’s aunt) took a profound interest in Russia’s spiritual and political relations with western Europe. She was sympathetic to Catholicism and ecumenical causes but also regretted that the Orthodox Church was misunderstood in the West.23 She promoted the translation of Orthodox works, especially those highlighting the beauty of the Orthodox liturgy, into French and German. At her request, Archpriest Mikhail Raievsky, chaplain of the embassy church in Vienna—who first spearheaded efforts to build a new church there—translated the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete into French.24 Vasiliev dedicated his French translation of the Orthodox marriage rite (1860) to her.25 In August 1859 Vasiliev corresponded with the over-procurator about plans for a French-language bimonthly Orthodox paper in the West, mentioning that henceforth there would be two French-language organs available for disseminating the “truth of Russia and Orthodoxy”: Gazette du Nord (Gazette of the North) and L’Union chrétienne. Both of these papers debuted in the autumn of 1859. Gazette du Nord was a Russophile paper directed by Gabriel de Rumine (1841–1871), an engineer, photographer, and orientalist of Russian aristocratic origin who accompanied Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich on a cruise around the Mediterranean and Near East in 1858 and 1859. During its short life, from October 1859 to June 1860, the paper sought to “promote better mutual knowledge and understanding” between Russia and France, or to cultivate love of France in Russia and of Russia in France.26 Vasiliev and the second Paris embassy priest, Vasily Aleksandrovich Prilezhaev (1832– 1887), each contributed articles explaining elements of Orthodox church architecture, decoration, doctrine, and worship.27 Vasiliev published “La Russie religieuse” (Religious Russia), the first installment of which appeared in the inaugural issue of the Gazette. After explaining that some understanding of the Russian faith was crucial to knowing Russia inwardly, and not just superficially, and mentioning that he planned to focus on general characteristics and not doctrinal issues, Vasiliev asserted that Russians are Christians, and not, as a segment of the French public believed, “practically Muslims or pagans.”28 We declare first of all that the Russian religion is Christian, which certain western periodicals, and especially certain religious papers, seem to doubt. There are some who represent the unfortunate inhabitants of the North as being practically Mahometans or pagans. One of the fanatical voices of religion in France dared to assert, we do not know according to what authority, that it prefers the religion of the Tartars to

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that of the Russians. No—the Russians are not worshippers of Moloch [an ancient deity appeased by child sacrifice] or of Perun [Slavic god of thunder and lightning], nor followers of Mahomet; they are the brothers in Jesus Christ of all western Christians; and indeed, it is not possible to have a stronger bond to inspire a reciprocal love and influence.29 The other endeavor, L’Union chrétienne, had greater longevity and a fascinating genesis. It began as a collaborative project but soon evolved into a largely one-man show. Vasiliev had been reading the anti-ultramontane paper L’Observateur catholique (The Catholic observer, 1855–1867) published by the experienced Catholic journalist Guettée, a vociferous enemy of “popolatry.” Vasiliev told Over-procurator Tolstoy that he met Guettée on August 15, 1859, and had noticed from reading L’Observateur catholique that Guettée’s views were close to those of the Orthodox Church. Guettée was “so Orthodox, that between me and him there was no disagreement.”30

Guettée: An Intransigent Gallican Prior to his reception into the Russian Orthodox Church (1862), Guettée was firmly dedicated to Gallicanism and associated with democratic tendencies within the Catholic Church. He edited a republican paper for eighteen months in 1849–1850, at the invitation of his bishop. Both prior to and after joining the Russian Orthodox Church, he was a fierce critic of Jesuitism and papal infallibility. Guettée’s career straddled the complexities of French politics, the Roman Catholic disputes between Gallicanism and ultramontanism, and debates about Russia’s place in the European order. While Guettée may have shared with the liberal Catholics an appreciation for civil liberties, he found the liberal Catholics no more tolerant than Jesuits and intransigent ultramontanes, and equally hostile toward Russia. Once he joined the Russian Church and was on the payroll of the Holy Synod, Guettée defended Alexander II as a liberal and generous tsar, castigated those he perceived to be enemies of Russia, and was unsympathetic to the repression of religious minorities in Russia because he believed their activities were expressions of political opposition under religious guise. Guettée’s breach with the Roman Church began in 1852, when, after the seventh volume of his twelve-volume Histoire de l’Église de France (History of the church of France) appeared, the work was condemned for Gallicanism and Jansenism and placed on the Index. Guettée was outraged about the censorship, which he blamed on the Jesuits. There were also legal implications.

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Although according to Gallican principles papal censorship was not binding in France, a court found Guettée’s Gallicanism to be a redhibitory defect resulting in nullification of the contract between his publisher and printer, forcing Guettée to find a new publisher.31 Guettée had received letters of approval from forty-two bishops, but after his Histoire was placed on the Index, it was condemned by ten bishops at La Rochelle, in a provincial council of Bordeaux.32 Guettée moved to Paris and continued his work, but it was embarrassing for the archbishop of Paris to have this priest who had fallen out with Rome in his diocese. Guettée resisted any suggestion of submission to the Index. In January 1857 Archbishop Morlot’s vicar general informed Guettée that he would no longer be authorized to celebrate the Mass in Paris. Guettée protested that this was an uncanonical and arbitrary abuse of Morlot’s authority, since Guettée was formally under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Blois. But his appeals to the archbishop and the minister of worship, invoking the Organic Articles and the Concordat, were of no avail.33 Guettée continued to devote himself to his anti-ultramontane journalism and before long, was sought out by Vasiliev.

The Genesis of L’Union chrétienne In his Souvenirs (Memoirs, 1889), Guettée, who outlived Vasiliev (d. 1881) by thirteen years, described his acquaintance with Vasiliev and the origins of L’Union chrétienne. When Guettée’s Souvenirs was published in the Russian journal Vera i razum (Faith and reason), Sushkov published a corrective to Guettée’s version of events. In Souvenirs, Guettée took all the credit for the idea to found the first Orthodox paper in the West, portraying himself accurately enough as the fierce opponent of Roman Catholic errors and a defender of Orthodoxy. According to Guettée, while living in Paris, Sushkov fell prey to the antiOrthodox propaganda of the Russian converts to Catholicism. When Sushkov brought his questions to Vasiliev, the Orthodox priest directed him to Guettée’s L’Observateur catholique, telling him that there he would find “answers to all the accusations against the Eastern Church brought by the renegades of Orthodoxy.”34 Sushkov was so impressed with L’Observateur catholique that he sought out its editor and subsequently introduced Guettée to Vasiliev, at which point Guettée suggested founding an Orthodox paper that could be merged with L’Observateur catholique. After citing Guettée’s version of events, Sushkov offered his own account, intended to restore due credit to Vasiliev. Sushkov admitted that after going to Paris in 1857, he associated with Russian converts and other papist

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friends who tried to steer him toward Roman Catholicism. Conversations with Vasiliev and an ambitious course of study of the church fathers soon helped Sushkov identify Latin errors, bolstered him in his Orthodox faith, and gave him the confidence to get involved in religious polemics. After Sushkov published an anonymous brochure against the temporal power in the summer of 1859, Vasiliev told him that “for the unmasking of the errors of the Roman Church,” instead of “fleeting successes” like occasional brochures, what they really needed was a regular periodical that would erode Catholic errors just as continuous “drops of water are able to chisel through stone.”35 On seeing copies of L’Observateur catholique on Vasiliev’s desk, Sushkov asked Vasiliev about them. Vasiliev sent some issues home with Sushkov but kept silent so as to let Sushkov form his own opinion. Understanding that Vasiliev “attached some particular significance to this paper,” Sushkov took the issues and on reading them was amazed. Guettée “wrote in a totally Orthodox spirit and mercilessly thundered against papism.”36 The next time Sushkov and Vasiliev met, Sushkov inquired whether Vasiliev was acquainted with Guettée. Vasiliev was not but wanted to be. However, he thought it would be improper for a priest attached to the Russian embassy to go seeking out this abbé “in open rupture with the French church.”37 Sushkov and Vasiliev agreed that Sushkov would go to Guettée, tactfully suggest that the French priest could join them in founding an Orthodox paper, and arrange for a meeting between Vasiliev and Guettée in a “neutral place.” Every element of the plan unfolded smoothly. Guettée “immediately expressed his complete agreement” to the idea of collaborating on an Orthodox paper, Sushkov quizzed him to make sure his doctrine was Orthodox, and voila! The first Orthodox journal in the West was born in November 1859, and the string of events that resulted in Guettée’s entrance into the Russian Orthodox Church was underway.38 It did not take long for Guettée to become a vigorous (some might say fanatical) defender of Russia and its church; and, if a state and its church ever needed defending, it was Russia and the Orthodox Church. The paperwork for the new weekly was filed by Guettée with the French Interior Ministry in November, listing Guettée as the sole proprietor.39 Vasiliev and Sushkov each contributed 1,000 francs for the paper, and Vasiliev also sought financial support from the Holy Synod.40 Initially, Vasiliev intended to keep his participation in L’Union chrétienne under wraps. He explained to the over-procurator that the paper would be Orthodox but would not advertise itself as such.41 He sought the support of the over-procurator and State Councilor Sergei Nikolaevich Urusov for the new endeavor but quickly concluded that they were not enthusiastic about the project.42 Most

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likely the Russian authorities were concerned about how Orthodox propaganda would be perceived by Napoleon III’s government. Vasiliev was left to figure out how to fund the magazine, and the precarious financial position of L’Union chrétienne was always a burden to him.43 Vasiliev persisted with the periodical even though he did not think there was enthusiasm for it in St. Petersburg. Sensing that both secular and ecclesiastical authorities were ambivalent about L’Union chrétienne, Vasiliev explained in a letter to Urusov that the Roman Catholics looked at the paper “with malicious fear.”44 He created a story that fit his perspective. L’Univers greeted L’Union chrétienne with silence, “fearing to give by publicity strength to the enemy on the rise,” and preferring to rely on its “foster-child,” Le Croisé (The Crusader), to launch an ultramontane attack on L’Union chrétienne and its editor, Guettée.45 Since Vasiliev’s aim was to elicit support for L’Union chrétienne by suggesting that it was unnerving the Catholic press, he was silent concerning the main point of Le Croisé’s attack. The editor, Ernest Hello, was bothered by L’Union chrétienne’s discussion of the Christian “churches” and lack of clear orientation, given that the paper was obviously neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant.46 While noting that the “minions” of Le Croisé would not subscribe to L’Union chrétienne, Vasiliev claimed there were some Latin subscribers, including Gagarin, who concurred that the paper had a capable editorial board.47 With the founding of L’Union chrétienne, Guettée became integrated into the project of defending Russia and its church, activities that the French priest fully embraced even before his official reception into the Russian Church. Writing to Urusov a little more than a year after beginning his collaboration with Guettée, Vasiliev requested a reward for Guettée from the emperor.48 He sent copies of Guettée’s work against the Jesuits, noting that Guettée had requested that the emperor and the empress should each receive a copy.49 Vasiliev argued that rewarding Guettée’s efforts would be timely for a few reasons. First, it would help squelch rumors that Alexander II bore good will toward the Jesuits. Second, rewarding this fierce “adversary of the Jesuits” would serve as a strong repudiation of Jesuitical aspirations for the reunion of the churches. Third, an imperial award would help dispel the deeply rooted notion in the West that a Roman Catholic priest is automatically “in a hostile relationship toward the Russian government.” It is noteworthy that the special value that Guettée initially brought to the defense of the Russian Church was his stature as a Roman Catholic priest. Vasiliev believed a Roman Catholic priest who validated the apostolic character of Orthodoxy and was well disposed to Russia would counter the general anti-Orthodox tendency of the French clergy. Finally, Vasiliev suggested that if the emperor

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rewarded Guettée, it would encourage the abbé “to future works . . . useful to Orthodoxy and Russia.”50 L’Union chrétienne, although having only a small subscriber base and although received with ambivalence in Russia, did represent a significant development. Guettée’s involvement made it possible to register the paper in France. Vasiliev’s association with an experienced French journalist gave the Orthodox publicists access to a French-language organ where they could challenge the papal polemicists, especially the Russian Jesuits, print true information about Orthodoxy, and engage in dialogue with Catholic dissidents, Anglicans, and Protestants. The ecumenical character of the weekly paper was a reflection of that particular historical moment when the fate of the papacy hung in the balance. It represented an Orthodox counter to the Russian Jesuits’ efforts to reunite the West and East, and it recognized that Christians of all confessions (but especially those critical of papal authority) had common interests in face of the challenges of modernity. The periodical illustrates a point made by Orthodox publicists and sometimes confirmed by western observers—that the Russian Church regarded Christians of other confessions precisely as Christians, while the opposite was all too often not true of western European attitudes toward the Orthodox.

Ambivalence about L’Union chrétienne in Russian Orthodox Circles Other than the article in Le Croisé, L’Union chrétienne attracted little notice in France, except that the Russian converts to Roman Catholicism read it and engaged in polemics with Orthodox publicists. Despite the efforts of Archpriest Vasiliev and Archpriest Vasily Petrovich Polisadov (1815–1878) to promote it, the periodical’s reception in Russian Orthodox circles was mixed. The main criticisms brought against it were that, other than being antipapist, its theological tendency was too ill-defined, and instead of publishing serious theological works, it was too anecdotal. Regarding the paper’s theological tendency, the political atmosphere in France contributed to its initial ambiguity, which disappeared quickly. Vasiliev told the Synod that the paper would be Orthodox but would not advertise itself as such. He treaded cautiously, since the Catholic dissidents and Russian publicists had faced a certain amount of unofficial censorship in France. But from its inception L’Union chrétienne was ecumenical and antipapist. As described by Guettée, the periodical’s object was “The diffusion of information upon the principles of the primitive Church as those of a true Catholicity, upon which the non-Roman branches of the Church should be

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recalled to a renewal of their outward unity, and thus a resistless influence be opposed to the invasions of the Papal principle and the corruptions it has introduced into the primitive faith.”51 The ecumenical direction of the paper provoked one of the first criticisms, penned by Khomiakov, who declined an offer to be a collaborator but submitted two short pieces to the periodical. He sent his first contribution along with a letter to Guettée in which Khomiakov laid out his objections to the paper and his reasons for declining the offer to collaborate. He contended that the idea of Christian “unity” was really “a plastered discord,” not the “absolute unity” that is the “law” of the kingdom of God. The truth was in the Church, and the truth did not need “the charitable cooperation of error” in an effort for the “spiritual edification” of the people. Khomiakov noted that L’Union chrétienne risked trying to “obtain for the Church a right of citizenship and of equality among the different religions of Europe,” which the Church “can well do without.”52 Nonetheless, Khomiakov submitted a second piece in response to Gagarin’s “absurd accusation” that the Slavonic translation of the Creed replaced the phrase “catholic Church” with “synodal Church.”53 Khomiakov’s opening statement indicated that he did not entirely accept the program of L’Union chrétienne but could not “remain indifferent” to the questions it discussed nor ignore attacks against the Church.54 In 1860 Archpriest Polisadov promoted the new periodical in Strannik (Pilgrim) and responded to a critique by Parfeny Lukich Replovsky, deacon of the Russian church in Stuttgart, that appeared in another fledgling journal, Pravoslavnoe obozrenie (Orthodox review).55 Polisadov defended L’Union chrétienne against charges that there was not a need for the paper; it represented or would result in the formation of some new reformist sect; it had too indefinite a character; and it was not any more likely to succeed than all the other groups and papers that dreamed about greater unity among Christians of different confessions. This new paper was important, Polisadov explained, because previously, Russian writers in France had no way to respond to prejudices and slanders about Orthodoxy and Russia. He recounted the story of how Lacordaire— one of the foremost Catholic orators and liberal Catholics in mid-century France—used the pulpit in 1850 to insult the Russian Orthodox, calling them “Cossacks.” Polisadov’s interpretation of this insult was that Lacordaire meant to present his “ultramontane idea that all Christians of the EasternOrthodox rite do not even deserve the name Christian.”56 After hearing this speech, the Russian Baron Buhler wrote a response, but none of the French papers would publish it. Thanks to L’Union chrétienne, Polisadov stated: “It’s

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no longer so; we have in the center of European civilization a voice, which preaches to us and defends us.”57 According to Polisadov, who spent over a decade as an Orthodox priest in foreign service, the western European religious press was too sectarian; the Catholic press, in particular, lacked any spirit of brotherly love. “In general in the papers of the Latin Church there reigns a spirit of extraordinary contempt contrary to all Christian love, toward all common interests of the Christian world.” This spirit of Jesuitism and contempt for the East was exemplified by the “poisonous pen” of the Veuillot brothers, who say “it is better for Hagia Sophia to be Turkish than to belong to the schismatic Greeks.”58 The two criticisms that L’Union chrétienne reflected some new sect or was too indefinite in its orientation were closely related. Polisadov explained that Guettée was “a Catholic of the Latin rite” who is “as far . . . from papism as from Protestantism.”59 On the basis of the first forty-eight issues, Polisadov stated: “We are assured that this is, so to speak, an international ecclesiastical paper, having the aim to work for the union of the various Churches and Christian societies on the broad and definite basis of Orthodoxy.” While L’Union chrétienne demonstrated “friendliness to all Churches, to all Christian society,” the paper maintained a “preferential feeling for the Churches of the Orthodox East” and persistently follows “the principles of Orthodoxy.”60 Polisadov took pains to clarify that the paper’s amicable stance toward other Christians was by no means indifferentism (the belief that all religions or at least all confessions are equally salvific). He also pointed out that two of the three main collaborators were Russian, while many of the other contributors had Greek and Russian names. So the periodical had a decidedly Orthodox slant. Curiously, Polisadov mentioned Guettée and Sushkov as two of the three principal collaborators but never named Vasiliev as the third. He identified the third individual only by the (not so subtle) alias Ab. Yousouff (Abbé Iusuf ), “a priest of the catholic Church of the Eastern rite.” Yousouff was one of Vasiliev’s pseudonyms, since his initial intent was to keep his participation anonymous. Polisadov wrote: “The articles of Iusuf  . . . set the tone for the entire paper. We don’t know who this Iusuf is. We only know that of the three main actors involved with the compiling and publishing of L’Union chrétienne, two are Russian.”61 Polisadov would have known Yousouff ’s identity, but presumably he did not want to blow Vasiliev’s cover. Regarding the criticism that the paper’s character was too indefinite given that its main writer was a French, Latin-rite Catholic, Polisadov pointed out that Guettée could not be transformed into a cradle Orthodox Christian overnight.62 Nonetheless he contended that L’Union chrétienne had a definite

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tendency, though it was not expressed as strongly as it could be. It would be counterproductive for the paper to call itself an organ of Orthodoxy because “in Paris they take Greeks and Russians not for Orthodox Christians but for schismatics, and even worse.”63 As for whether the periodical could be successful in its aim of promoting Christian unity, Polisadov linked the mission of the new periodical with the building of the new Russian church in Paris. These two projects were completely in sync, with the common task of raising Orthodoxy’s profile, a necessary prerequisite for reuniting the churches. The paper appeared just when, as if by the waving of a magic wand, the walls of a new Russian Orthodox Church on Cross Street arose before the astonished eyes of the Parisians. . . . It is well known that up to now we have had in Paris a chapel intended for home services located in a one-story building without windows facing the street. The present director of our Paris church [Vasiliev], immediately on arrival in Paris in 1846, conceived the resolute intention of building a church in Paris as a public building, so that Parisian Catholics see the glory of God in the Orthodox rite.64 Although there were already a few other “public” Orthodox churches in the West, Polisadov contended that by virtue of location, none of them could have the kind of significance that the church in Paris, “the city called, not without foundation, the capital of the civilized world,” would have.65 The church and L’Union chrétienne allowed him to hope and pray “that our Blessed Christ God will again seize the universe through people who western scribes considered unwise and will call all to unity.”66 That was the principle behind L’Union chrétienne, which he hoped would remain closely tied to the Paris church subsequently. Polisadov’s sentiments express a Slavophile vision of Russia’s historical mission: the Latins and Protestants had lost the fullness of the faith, but new leaven would come from the East. While defending the paper for having a definite Orthodox slant, Polisadov emphasized its tolerant tone but also its clear anti-ultramontane tendency. Here he used some contrasting descriptors: the paper chose “patient love” over anathemas but “denounces ultramontanes, these true Pharisees and leaders of the blind papist population.”67 He marveled at the tolerance Yousouff showed toward the ultramontanes, whom Polisadov characterized as “evil enemies both of enlightenment and of Christian unity outside the papal principle” and “degenerates [vyrodki] of humanity.”68 To illustrate Yousouff ’s tolerant tone, Polisadov cited at length from one of his articles, which juxtaposed the tolerance of the nineteenth century with the intolerance and

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fanaticism of the Middle Ages that lived on in ultramontanes of the Veuillot stripe. The age, explained Yousouff, was ripe for unity. Fanaticism, intolerance, pious hatred (if they permit us this expression) are not characteristic either of our time or of our ways. Christians of different confessions no longer have the inclination to cast malevolent and insulting opinions at one another. . . . Latins, Greeks, Protestants, Anglicans live in good accord, mutually respecting each other, helping one another; they are busy with industrial enterprises; they join forces for the success of science and education. Consequently the present age is completely different from those ancient times when they pursued heretics, burned their works, launched religious wars.69 Yousouff argued, and Polisadov concurred, that tolerance and cooperation among Christians are not indifferentism. That is the mistake of the ultramontanes, “veterans of the Middle Ages” who interpret “brotherly, loving relations between members of different Christian churches” as mere “decline of faith” and “religious indifference.”70 Yousouff defended material ­progress—for example, the telegraph and railroads—as facilitative to the progress of spiritual unity, as “innocent in and of themselves” if used for the good of humanity and the faith, but destructive if treated as ends in themselves.71 Polisadov and Strannik threw their support behind Vasiliev and defined the significance of events in Paris for the Russian Orthodox educated public. Vasiliev’s association with Guettée gave the Russian archpriest the means and confidence to engage in public polemics. Had it not been for Guettée and L’Union chrétienne, what Polisadov trumpeted a few months later in Strannik as “the first attempt at an open, printed polemic by a representative of the Orthodox Church in a non-Orthodox land with one of the pastors of that land” most likely would not have occurred.72

The Russian Archpriest and the French Bishops During the process of Italian unification from 1859 to 1870, Napoleon III’s Italian policy drove a wedge between his government and French Catholics. Napoleon III had envisioned a loose Italian federation, not a unified kingdom; but after France backed Piedmont in a war against Austria, there were uprisings in the papal states which held plebiscites in favor of union with the new Piedmont-led Kingdom of Italy. By 1861, the papacy lost all its domains except Rome and its vicinity to the newly formed Italy, and the new kingdom had designs on Rome.

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As these events unfolded, many French Catholics were dismayed by the works of Louis-Étienne-Arthur Dubreuil-Hélion, vicomte de La Guéronnière (1816–1875), a journalist who entered the Council of State in 1853, worked in the Interior Ministry on the oversight of the press, and became one of the chief apologists for Napoleon III’s Italian policy between 1859 and 1861. La Guéronnière produced three contentious brochures justifying Napoleon III’s Italian policy and arguing that while the pope’s temporal power should be preserved, it was not necessary or desirable to preserve the territorial integrity of the papal states.73 Jean-Mamert Cayla made another proposition in his 1860 pamphlet Pape et empereur: Napoleon III should break with Rome and establish a French national church with the emperor at the head. After all, Cayla argued, the functions of pope and emperor were combined in one person in every other state in Europe—including Russia, where “Alexander II, emperor of Russia, is tzar and pontiff ”—and in the Ottoman Empire.74 With Cayla’s scheme and questions about the fate of Rome, the papacy, and the temporal power at the forefront of Catholic concerns, in January 1861 Bishop Antoine-Matthias-Alexandre Jaquemet (1803–1869) issued his Lenten Epistle, addressing the dangers of schism.75 The bishop of Nantes implored his clergy to instruct the people about the “divine constitution of the Church, about its unity, about the indispensable necessity of the pope as the center of this unity; about our sacred duties toward Caesar, but also about the boundary that Caesar cannot cross in religious questions.”76 He represented the French episcopacy and clergy as a united front, devoted to the pope and willing to lay down their lives to defend the faith and unity of the church. Despite the existence of “some groups unbelieving on the surface” in France, Jaquemet expressed the view that schism of the kind Cayla proposed would not be possible for the French. From skepticism “to schism, to apostasy, . . . there is an abyss.”77 To elucidate his point, he relayed the story of a young French soldier, known to mock everything, including God and faith, until he was captured by Muslims and ordered to renounce his faith. “ME! Renounce my religion, the faith of my mother and of my childhood! Never.” Hence the young man’s “head fell under the Musulman’s scimitar.” Jaquemet concluded that French society, even with its “lightest and least Christian” elements, would do just like this young man “on the day when it would be proposed to it to abandon its faith for a religion of new invention, of which the Head of the State would become at the same time the sovereign Pontiff.”78 Better martyrdom than a national religion that had the same person as pope and emperor. Continuing his reflection on the French nation and its institutions, the academies, the “highest councils of the crown and even the public

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administration where independence, at first sight, would seem the most vulnerable,” Jaquemet said he could not imagine “in these classes of the elite, a soul weakened [énervée] enough to be able to reply as in Russia: ‘If the Czar believes it necessary to change my creed and modify my religion, I am at his command.’ In France, these words would be against nature. Now, thanks to God, we are French, and we always will be.”79 Jaquemet used Russia’s alleged Caesaropapism to exemplify the conditions that had not characterized and must not characterize France. Since anti-Orthodox prejudices of the sort Jaquemet invoked were commonplace in the French press, it is not surprising that he used the Russian example in his epistle. However, his real concern in the winter of 1861 was Napoleon III, the French Church, and France’s Roman policy. Jaquemet used Russia and the “Czar” to stand in for the French Empire and Napoleon III. His allusion to Russia represented an indirect critique of the direction of Napoleon III’s policies vis-à-vis the papacy and the Catholic Church.80 This reading of the pastoral letter makes sense given the overall context of the letter, which simultaneously rejected the notion of a schism that would transfer authority over the church to the sovereign of the state and defended the papacy as the necessary center of unity in the Catholic Church. Jaquemet’s first biographer confirmed that Jaquemet’s intended target was Napoleon III. Jaquemet wrote to his brother that he had been “doing battle with the French government” and ended up “at war with the emperor of Russia,” who hounded him “in the official paper of St. Petersburg.”81 That the idea of Russians slavishly obedient to the tsar rolled from Jaquemet’s pen so naturally illustrates how entrenched the tsar-pope myth was in French public opinion. Had it not been so axiomatic that the Russian emperor was pontiff of the Russian Church, it would have been pointless for Jaquemet to employ this rhetorical strategy. Concerning Jaquemet’s comment that he ended up “at war with the emperor of Russia,” given Jaquemet’s preoccupation with Napoleon III’s policies, he must have been astonished when his epistle provoked a response from Vasiliev. Understandably, Jaquemet interpreted the attack as coming officially from the Russian embassy, since Vasiliev signed his letter “J. Wassilieff, archpriest, chaplain of the Russian embassy.” But the French bishop construed the rebuttal as an attack coming from the tsar himself. It never seems to have even occurred to Jaquemet that Vasiliev could have acted on his own initiative. “The Russian embassy attacked me, claiming that I misrepresented the condition of the Russian Church; the czar pursued me in the official paper of St. Petersburg.”82 Jaquemet’s interpretation that he ended up at war with the emperor of Russia can be attributed partly to his exaggerated understanding of the tsar’s personal authority in ecclesiastical affairs, partly to

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the fact that Vasiliev reproached Jaquemet for insulting the Russian emperor, and partly to the fact that Vasiliev was part of the Russian diplomatic corps. By “the official paper of St. Petersburg” Jaquemet was referring to Le Nord, the “semi-official Russian paper” that the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry founded in 1855 in Brussels, thanks to Belgium’s freedom of the press. Its creators intended for the daily paper to appear independent while it defended Russia and its interests.83 Le Nord’s publication in Brussels until 1863 allowed the paper to avoid the restrictions that Napoleon III’s government imposed on the French newspapers. Some French readers considered it “piquant and audacious,” while “its articles on foreign policy were always highly anticipated and very much discussed.”84 Le Nord was a mainstream paper, frequently cited in other French dailies. Jaquemet’s pastoral letter was reportedly published in the official paper of Rome, suggesting that it reached a broader audience than the people of Nantes and a broader audience than he anticipated.85 Furthermore, the Diocese of Nantes in the Loire-Atlantique département retained particularly high rates of religious practice throughout the nineteenth century.86 Vasiliev wrote two letters to Jaquemet: an initial response to the Lenten Epistle and, when Jaquemet replied, a rebuttal.87 He began his first letter by noting that the Lenten Epistle was brought to his attention by a Catholic with a sincere desire to know the truth, a reference to Guettée. An experienced journalist, Guettée kept close tabs on the French Catholic press.88 Due to Guettée’s involvement, copies of Vasiliev’s first letter were reportedly sent to all the French bishops.89 Vasiliev’s first letter appeared in Le Nord, and in Russia, his letters to Jaquemet were translated and published in at least four Orthodox journals.90 The Vasiliev-Jaquemet polemic was a key moment in a burgeoning public relations campaign waged by a small number of Orthodox publicists in Paris. It had much greater significance to Vasiliev’s compatriots than to anyone in France. None of the Catholic papers would print Vasiliev’s letters to Jaquemet, but some discussed the polemic and when Jaquemet responded directly to Vasiliev, they printed the bishop’s response. The letters to Jaquemet were published in Vasiliev’s name, in French and in Russian, and most Russian sources take Vasiliev’s authorship for granted. In his memoirs, however, Guettée claimed he wrote the letters and Vasiliev signed them.91 Sushkov considered this claim an insult to Vasiliev’s honor.92 He was baffled that Guettée could make such a compromising claim but chalked it up to the failing memory of an old man.93 As a founding member of L’Union chrétienne, Sushkov explained that the editorial board worked as a team to read and revise articles. He acknowledged that Guettée added some material to the letters to strengthen the arguments but considered Guettée’s

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edits to be of secondary importance.94 Vasiliev’s daughter recalled that relations between her father and Guettée cooled over Guettée’s claims that he wrote Vasiliev’s articles.95 But Vasiliev was dead before Guettée published his claim to being the author, so her memory could also have been influenced by Sushkov’s account. Most likely the letters were a collaborative effort. Sushkov understated Guettée’s contributions, and Guettée minimized Vasiliev’s. The letters contain plenty of historical examples about the Gallican Church that would have been more familiar to Guettée, as well as numerous details from Russian history that would have been more accessible to Vasiliev. Neither denying that Guettée left an imprint on the letters nor accepting his sole authorship of the letters seems tenable.96 One thing is almost certain: had the letters been published in Guettée’s name, they would have been ignored. In the discussion that follows, I treat the letters as works of Vasiliev—Guettée did until he wrote his memoirs—even though Guettée’s contributions were considerable. Vasiliev’s First Letter and the French Catholic Press

Jaquemet’s Lenten Epistle accused the Russians of a willingness to sacrifice their creed at the tsar’s whim. So Vasiliev began by arguing that the “prejudice, too common in France, about the alleged pontificate of the Russian emperor” was not surprising in the general populace but was not worthy of a bishop.97 Jaquemet’s assertion that Russians would slavishly submit to the tsar even in matters of dogma denied the Russian Church “all faith and all Christian independence.”98 Vasiliev emphasized that the Eastern Church had always been faithful to the constitution of the primitive church by recognizing the distinction between temporal and spiritual power, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, and by recognizing Christ as its only head.99 The Russian Church considered the emperor to have an “authority that comes from God, like all legitimately constituted authority”; thus, it “obeys him in everything that is of the temporal domain,” but it “does not admit to him any spiritual authority.”100 In Russia, the “mutual respect” of the emperor for the bishops in spiritual matters and of the bishops for the emperor in temporal matters “results in a perfect harmony.” Jaquemet made a serious error of time and place: “You meant to speak of France under Charlemagne, who provoked so directly the change of the Nicene Creed. There was never anything similar in Russia; never did the emperor claim to modify the creed or to regulate spiritual affairs. Thus in a single blow you have insulted a great Christian Church and the most worthy emperor, the friend of France.”101

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Vasiliev did not represent the “Eastern Catholic [Orthodox] Church” as free from incursions by secular powers, but he cited examples of individuals who had courageously stood up to temporal rulers, even to the point of suffering persecution and martyrdom. As evidence that the Russians do not blindly obey their sovereigns in matters of faith, and to counter Jesuit propaganda, Vasiliev used the example of the first False Dmitry, suggesting he came to power because of the people’s loyalty to their sovereigns but was deposed when he tried to unite them to the Roman Church.102 As proof that the Russian sovereigns deferred to the bishops in spiritual matters, he cited Peter I’s response to the Sorbonne theology professors who proposed the reunion between the Gallican and Russian churches. Peter I, commonly blamed for having usurped the spiritual power, entrusted the matter to the bishops.103 Honor demanded that Jaquemet respond, but by the time he did so (May 9, 1861), the controversy had already been taken up in Le Nord and two Catholic papers: L’Ami de la religion et le roi (The friend of religion and the king, henceforth L’Ami) and Le Monde.104 Not surprisingly, Russia’s treatment of Poles and Uniates was a recurring theme. Augustin Golitsyn briefly discussed the bishop’s epistle and Vasiliev’s response in L’Ami, about the only French paper that explicitly engaged with L’Union chrétienne, most likely only because of Golitsyn. So the VasilievJaquemet polemic was partly an interconfessional dispute between Russians. Golitsyn acknowledged that the Russian Church taught that Jesus Christ was the church’s only head; but “here below” it was represented by a Synod whose members were appointed by and swore an oath to the tsar.105 That was sufficient proof that the spiritual and temporal powers were entangled in Russia. Then he suggested that Russia should grant freedom of conscience to the Poles of Warsaw.106 If, given the freedom to do so, the Poles did not return to the Roman Catholic Church, it would show that Jaquemet was mistaken to “suspect the Russian government of interference in religious affairs.”107 Abbé Le Rebours, vicar general of Paris, sent a letter to the editor of Le Monde. In between his uncompromising refutation of Vasiliev’s argument that the Russian clergy was free and independent, and his scathing depictions of the odiousness of Nicholas I’s Polish policies, Le Rebours at least admitted a distinction between a principle of faith and actual conditions, and between the de jure and de facto relationship between the tsar and the church. He represented the Russian clergy as something short of the ignorant, money-grubbing horde found in some anti-Orthodox accounts. “You have without doubt in your clergy some distinguished, pious, and sincere men, but the group as a whole is nonetheless incorporated in a political

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system in which the Czar is the absolute master, which causes the belief that he is the spiritual head of your Church, and which takes away from it, de facto, its true independence.”108 Le Rebours concentrated on refuting Vasiliev’s claim about the independence of the Russian clergy because he saw that as the most important point in Vasiliev’s letter to Jaquemet. The independence of the Russian clergy existed only as a “principle of faith,” and not as a fact. While conceding that formally the Russian emperor did not have authority to change dogma or discipline, and after concurring that there would be opposition among the Russian clergy if a “capricious sovereign” tried to change dogma, Le Rebours immediately qualified this concession (which, at face value appears more nuanced than Jaquemet’s point of view) by pointing out that “the considerable number of dissidents called raskolniki [schismatics, i.e., Old Believers] proves that simple liturgical changes can find a very lively resistance within the tradition of primitive beliefs.”109 Le Rebours argued that there was ample proof that the emperor exerted considerable pressure on and surveillance over the clergy. “In Russia, let’s be clear, the religion is subordinated to the politics of the Czar, the clergy bows before him, and feels all too much that it is an instrument in his hands.”110 Vasiliev could cite the catechism (as he had) about the importance of obeying God rather than men ad infinitum, but it proved nothing. Besides being “subjected to the iron rod of absolutism,” Le Rebours went on about the Russian clergy’s other deficits. As civil servants they were just doing a job rather than fulfilling a sacred calling as an “envoy of Heaven.” The key to this sad state of affairs, Le Rebours explained, was the married priesthood, and the fact that the clergy had to support families. The “Russian pope . . . loses his supernatural character and remains a serf of the material needs that his position imposes on him,” unlike his Catholic counterpart who retains dignity through his “exclusive devotion to the Church.” Furthermore, Le Rebours repeated the common themes that the Russian clergy lacked missionary zeal, “vigorous preaching,” and the ability to train minds or nourish souls.111 While religious freedom theoretically existed in Russian law, Le Rebours continued, the restrictions placed on it “render it pathetic.” Those born Orthodox are free only to remain Orthodox until death. Meanwhile, by the law of mixed marriages, the “masterpiece of the tyranny of Emperor Nicholas,” children of mixed marriages must be raised in the Russian Church. Owing to “this iniquitous law, the Russian church has already conquered more than two million followers.” If the Russian clergy were free, as Vasiliev claimed, it should exert its influence to stop “this barbarous oppression of souls.” But it is not free, “and it is inevitably the accomplice of the arbitrary.”112

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Then Le Rebours turned to the reunion of the Uniates to the Russian Church during Nicholas I’s reign. Vasiliev had argued that the facts surrounding that event had “been distorted by ignorance or passion.” These conversions did not represent “a blind submission to Nicholas.” On the contrary, Vasiliev contended that nothing could separate the Uniates “from the Orthodox Catholic Church, to which they are attached from the bottom of their hearts.”113 Le Rebours conceded that nothing would separate the Uniates from “the Greek worship” so long as these victims of compulsion remained “under the iron scepter of the Czar.” He accused Vasiliev of having to rely on the ignorance of Europe in order to suggest that these conversions were not coercive. History would show, Le Rebours explained, that the reunion of the Uniates was accomplished through violence and the “odious measures” of Nicholas, the “arch enemy” of Poland, as “the result of a political system that had for its aim the denationalization of Poland.” Nicholas used “the most iniquitous measures, to annex consciences to the religion that served as an instrument of government.” Hence Le Rebours told Vasiliev to “stop presenting the Russian clergy as a model of dignity and independence and the conversion of the Uniates as the result of a natural aspiration toward the Greek worship.” If the clergy were independent, instead of being the accomplices of this policy, they should have protested these forced conversions “in the name of independence and of liberty of conscience.”114 Not surprisingly, at L’Union chrétienne, Guettée lumped Jaquemet, L’Ami, and Le Monde together as “completely mistaken” and slanderous in their arguments about the Russian Church.115 Jaquemet’s Response to Vasiliev

When Jaquemet responded directly to Vasiliev, his letter was brief. He reaffirmed his “prejudice” that the Russian Church “was in a complete state of dependence” on the emperor, a belief so widely believed in Europe “and in the entire world, among those who deal with religious questions” that it “constitutes the state of public opinion.”116 Apparently drawing directly on Golitsyn’s article in L’Ami, Jaquemet cited the oath that members of the Holy Synod swore as proof of the church’s enslavement: “I confess, I affirm by oath that this Holy Synod has for supreme judge the Emperor of all the Russias, our very mild Lord and Master.”117 As further evidence of the church’s lack of independence, Jaquemet argued that one tsar changed the constitution of the church by establishing a patriarchate, while another replaced the patriarchate with the Holy Synod. A representative of the tsar,

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a lay president (président laïque) “despotically rules” over the church “under the name of supreme procurator” (procureur suprême) of the Holy Synod.118 Since the Synod obeyed the supreme procurator, who was “in the most complete dependence on the Emperor,” it followed that the Russian Church was in a state of “dependence on the Emperor.”119 Jaquemet also believed his “prejudice” was well-justified, given the testimony of Vasiliev’s compatriots (i.e., converts to Catholicism), none of whom he mentioned by name, and of another individual who knew Russia well, de Maistre. Jaquemet’s belief that Rome was the center of unity in the church and that only reunion with Rome could restore the independence of the Russian Church was plain in his letter. He concluded with assurances that he would be thrilled to be able to tell his flock that the Russian Church had recovered its independence from the secular authorities and reunited with the Roman Catholic Church. “With what a shiver the Catholic bishops of the entire world would open their arms to the bishops of Russia!” This “new era” would result in a surge of missionary activity: the Russian episcopate and clergy would “soar to the peaceful conquest of these idolatrous nations in which your great nation is establishing its empire more deeply every year.”120 Jaquemet felt obliged to respond, but he wrote to his brother that it was a waste of time.121 Describing this episode a quarter-century later, Jaquemet’s biographer (Victor Martin) referred to the “oversensitive” people of St. Petersburg, and, as Jaquemet had done, interpreted Vasiliev’s reaction to the French bishop as coming from St. Petersburg. “The bishop of Nantes hardly thought to depose the powerful bishop of the North. So he was very surprised by complaints addressed from so far [away] against his letter to the people of Nantes. . . . Vasiliev presented . . . the situation of the orthodox Church; he tried hard to show that his Church was not in the least reduced to a contemptible vassalage.”122 Like many of their contemporaries and compatriots, Jaquemet and Martin thought of Russia in monolithic terms. They viewed Vasiliev’s letter to Jaquemet as an official communication emanating from St. Petersburg and Le Nord as the mouthpiece of the Russian government. As an embassy priest, Vasiliev’s job was to represent and defend Russia’s interests, but he defined his sphere of activity and his strategies for defending Orthodoxy. He had to try to bring the Russian government and Holy Synod around to his way of thinking and was no puppet of Petersburg. Despite Vasiliev’s best efforts, Martin’s reference to the tsar as the “bishop of the North” as late as 1889 reveals the longevity of the tendency to view the Russian emperor as the pope of the Russian Church.

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Vasiliev’s Second Letter

In less than a week’s time, Vasiliev composed a lengthy reply. The verbosity, stylistic features, French cultural and historical references, and the subtext hint at Guettée’s substantial involvement. The primary focus of the letter was to defend the Russian Church from the charge that it was in a state of “absolute dependence on the civil power” by refuting Jaquemet’s allegation that the establishment of the patriarchate and its later replacement with the Holy Synod proved that the emperor had “the power of creation or suppression of the constitution of the Church.” Jaquemet was wrong to suppose that the oath (taken by the members of the Synod), the competencies of the over-procurator, and the testimony of de Maistre proved the Russian Church’s complete dependence on the emperor.123 The secondary argument was a critique of the papal system. Vasiliev’s letter offered what he saw as important correctives to westerners’ exaggerated ideas about Russian church-state relations. The bishop of Nantes, noted Vasiliev, had mistakenly confused ecclesiastical discipline (human in origin), the outward administrative relations of the eastern churches, with the divine constitution of the church. Neither the establishment of the patriarchate nor the replacement of the patriarchate with the Holy Synod changed the divine constitution of the church.124 The establishment of the patriarchate was a gradual, deliberative, and canonical process involving the four eastern patriarchs.125 Jaquemet was also unjust to state that after the patriarchate was established, “nothing much” remained of the relationship between the Russian Church and Constantinople.126 As for the Holy Synod, Vasiliev contended that the papacy provided the motive for Peter I’s church reform, a claim consistent with the text of the Ecclesiastical Regulation. Peter believed the papacy’s temporal power was obtained by “an abuse of its spiritual authority.” This abuse, in turn, caused Peter “to conceive some fears concerning the possible usurpations of the Russian patriarchs.”127 Peter recognized that it was easier for power to be consolidated in the hands of one man than of the many. By creating the Holy Synod, Peter I never intended to place the church in a servile position in relation to the state but sought to ensure the independence of the church and the empowerment of the episcopacy. “Far from wanting to enslave the Russian Church by the establishment of the Holy Synod, Peter the Great wanted to guarantee its independence.”128 Although Peter I’s reform was motivated by anxiety about the abuse of ecclesiastical authority, replacing the patriarchate with the Holy Synod was not uncanonical. Provincial councils that met regularly were normative in the

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primitive church, Vasiliev argued. The Holy Synod merely represented Russia’s provincial council.129Additionally, the Holy Synod was not established by Peter I’s will alone but also by the will of nineteen bishops, including five metropolitans.130 Then the Synod was officially approved by the patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch, and the subsequent friendly relations of all the patriarchs with the Russian Church testified that they regarded the Synod as canonical and legitimate.131 This approval was not a formality, nor was it compelled, but was “requested sincerely and respectfully.”132 After arguing that neither the establishment of the patriarchate nor its replacement by a synodal administration proved the enslavement of the church to the temporal power, Vasiliev turned to discussion of the oath that the members of the Holy Synod must take. “I confess, I affirm by oath that this Holy Synod has for supreme judge the Emperor of all the Russias, our very mild Lord and Master.” First, Vasiliev pointed out that Jaquemet added the word “master,” revealing the bishop’s “tendency to exaggerate.”133 Since Jaquemet cited the oath as proof of the Russian Church’s enslavement to the state, Vasiliev argued that the bishop of Nantes took the oath out of context. Jaquemet emphasized only the clergy’s loyalty to the sovereign, ignoring the sovereign’s loyalty to the church and his directives for priests to rely on the scriptures, councils, and church fathers. Furthermore, Vasiliev maintained that recognizing the sovereign’s temporal authority in no way meant that the sovereign had authority over the entire economy of the church. Besides, the oath applied only to the members of the Holy Synod, but Peter I expected the Holy Synod to consult with other eastern patriarchs on spiritual matters, proving that the emperor recognized that “the circle of religious affairs” surpassed “the limits of action of the civil power in Russia.”134 By misrepresenting the oath as the expression of Russian secular power over the church, Jaquemet risked doing harm to Christianity in an age of quarrels when not everyone is a Christian. “All of the Christian Churches are interdependent; the lowering of one of them, in what is the essence of Christianity, falls on the others. One risks thus lowering the general level of the Christian faith.”135 Significantly, Vasiliev admitted that he was “far from attached to every detail, [far] from claiming that the [Ecclesiastical] Regulation is a perfect work.”136 The Regulation, however, pertained only to the outward existence and administration of the church, not its inner life. It could change, just as the rules governing the Gallican Church had changed over time.137 Vasiliev (and Guettée) pointed to several provisions from the Concordat and Organic Articles such as the oath of loyalty to the government that French clergy had to swear, the fact that papal bulls were not binding in the Gallican Church unless approved by the civil power, and the fact that a French bishop could be

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brought before the Council of State if he abused his episcopal power—a reference to Jaquemet’s colleague Monseigneur Pie, bishop of Poitiers—all as considerations that could, if taken out of context, be used to suggest that the French Church was subservient to the French state.138 In spite of such similarities between the Gallican and the Russian churches, Vasiliev expressed certainty that Jaquemet would object if he therefore concluded that the Gallican Church was “weakened, enslaved,” or ready “to sacrifice its faith and its creed to the will of the sovereign.”139 Vasiliev was right about the similarities between the Russian and Gallican churches, but he appears oblivious to the fact that Jaquemet used the Russian Church to stand in for the French Church under Napoleon III. Jaquemet wrote his Lenten Epistle to protest against any move toward nationalization of the French Church and to defend the papacy’s temporal power. Vasiliev claimed that Jaquemet—with his overstated notion of Russian civil power—also misunderstood the role of the over-procurator, portraying him as the head of the Synod (le président laïque or procureur suprême) rather than simply as a representative of the civil power. Vasiliev explained that by definition, a procurator (procureur général) cannot be a president, so Jaquemet had erected a whole edifice on a false premise. The president of the Holy Synod was Christ. The over-procurator was not even a member of the Holy Synod, but, as was customary in the ancient church and even in the Gallican Church until modern times, the imperial and royal powers sent delegates to attend church councils. “The general procurator no more presides in the Holy Synod than a cardinal presides in the Legislative Body in France.”140 Rather, the over-procurator represented the emperor, who was the “son” and “protector” of the church. Vasiliev compared the over-­procurator to the French minister of worship, observing that the latter exercised more power over the French Church than the over-procurator had over the Russian Church.141 As for one of the favorite French criticisms that purportedly demonstrated the bankruptcy of the Russian system—the appointment of a cavalry officer, Protasov, as over-procurator from 1836 to 1855—Vasiliev expressed surprise that a French bishop would find it objectionable for Protasov, a man known for his religious devotion, to be over-procurator, when French history had created the circumstances for Protestants—and for a few days in 1848, a Jew—to serve as minister of worship.142 Finally, Vasiliev turned to the matter of the witness of his compatriots— “those who have abandoned the Church of their fathers to enter into the Roman Church”—and of de Maistre.143 The former were not illustrative of Russia, he argued. Their upbringing and education were French, and they learned about Russian history and the Russian Church from French sources,

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just as Jaquemet had. They did not know Russia. “It is a certain fact that they have only the name ‘Russian’ and they are imbued with the same prejudices as you.”144 Vasiliev said he preferred de Maistre to them because de Maistre at least “appears with his entirely French face and his natural features.”145 Yet many Catholic writers distanced themselves from de Maistre, “a most exaggerated Ultramontane,” who wanted to reconstruct a medieval system in which essentially “sovereigns should be only the vassals of the pope.”146 Vasiliev saw it as problematic to invoke de Maistre, who lacked impartiality, either as an authority on French church-state relations or on Russia. Yet Vasiliev agreed to accept de Maistre’s judgment of the Russian Church if Jaquemet accepted de Maistre’s judgment of the Gallican Church. The ultramontane portrayed the Gallican Church and the French episcopacy as pawns of the civil power. So if the main criticism of the Russian Church was its subordination to the temporal authorities, the same applied, historically, to the French Church. Jaquemet should at least be consistent and either accept de Maistre’s view that the Gallican and Russian churches were both enslaved to the state, or reject both judgments. Vasiliev ended his second letter with a commentary on the cause of the separation of the eastern and western churches and the basis of true liberty. Vasiliev suggested that Jaquemet was wrong to attribute the schism between the churches primarily to the civil power. “The true cause of the separation is the subservience to error, to [self-]interest, to prejudice, to egoism, to spiritual arbitrariness, to ambition.” True liberty could be found only in the truth, not “in the absolute submission to the so-called divine authority of the Roman pontiff.”147 Vasiliev and Cardinal Archbishop Bonald

Jaquemet’s Lenten Epistle was really about French policy. The axiom that the tsar was the head of the Russian Church was not only accepted wisdom but factored into public discourse about French policy toward Italy and Rome. In March 1862, probably at the instigation of Guettée, Vasiliev confronted the primate of the Gauls, Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon, Louis-Jacques-Maurice de Bonald (1787–1870), for saying that the Russian emperor presided over the Holy Synod.148 Bonald made the comment when responding to a fellow senator, Louis-Bernard Bonjean (1804–1871), who gave a speech against the papacy’s temporal power on February 28, 1862.149 Bonjean wanted to demonstrate that one could be a sincere Catholic without necessarily supporting the temporal power and to calm sensationalist fears that any lessening of the

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temporal power would result in a corresponding decrease in the papacy’s spiritual authority.150 Bonald defended the temporal power not as a dogma of faith but as a necessary guarantor of the pope’s spiritual independence.151 Furthermore, he argued that Christ’s promise of infallibility applied only to the spiritual and not to the temporal power of the popes. He defended the papal throne from charges of abuse of power, asking what government on earth was without abuses and what monarch would retain a claim to the throne if monarchs could be deposed by foreign powers because of one or another abuse. The archbishop suggested that no one dreamed of telling the queen of England— who united in her person both the spiritual and temporal power while simultaneously oppressing Catholic Ireland—that she could not reign anymore. Why? Because “this sovereign has a powerful navy.” Similarly, the emperor of Russia presided over the Holy Synod while crushing Poland “with monstrous abuses of temporal power.” Yet no one seriously suggested that “he should relinquish the imperial crown.” After all, Russia had a strong army and an empire “that extends to the great wall of China.”152 In other words, Bonald contended that the aggregation of spiritual and temporal authority in one person was not questioned as a principle when that sovereign—the queen of England or the emperor of Russia—had considerable military might at her or his disposal and committed abuses of power (i.e., persecuted Catholics). “It is like saying that because the Pope does not have the 200,000 soldiers of whom Napoleon I spoke, it is necessary to despoil him of his States, and that if he had them, we would treat him differently.”153 Bonald viewed Russia as the embodiment of a state where the sovereign was supposedly the spiritual and temporal head and used this purported joining of powers to defend a particular stance toward Rome. Critical of a “might makes right” mentality, Bonald used the references to England and Russia to demonstrate that arguments against the temporal power of the papacy were not based either on a sound principle that opposed the joining of temporal and spiritual power in one person or on a sound principle that opposed abuses of power. The cardinal senator emphasized that the temporal power of the papacy was necessary to guarantee the free exercise of the pontiff ’s spiritual power and as a bulwark against revolution.154 Seeing what he considered a false perception about the Russian Church repeated in the French press by the cardinal archbishop of a see with honorary primacy in the French Church, Vasiliev (really Guettée?) responded. He paid little attention to the context of Bonald’s remarks, or to Bonald’s use of the allegations about Russia.155 His letter to Bonald was published in L’Union

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chrétienne and in Russia, in Strannik, but did not attract broader attention.156 Vasiliev referred Bonald to his correspondence with Jaquemet, briefly reiterating similar arguments to portray the Russian emperor as comparable to other Christian monarchs and as the church’s defender and protector “like all Christian sovereigns.”157 Bonald’s reply to Vasiliev shows to what degree the cardinal had absorbed the anti-Orthodox arguments of the Russian converts to Jesuitism and entirely ignored Vasiliev’s polemical letters to Jaquemet, which he admitted that he had not read. He repeated the usual litanies against the Holy Synod (e.g., the oath and the presence of a cavalry officer, Protasov, amid a council of bishops).158 Drawing on a favorite argument of anti-Orthodox polemicists, Bonald expressed admiration for Russian liturgical works that affirmed the primacy of St. Peter and the Roman see.159 The cardinal archbishop did not engage in any serious manner with Vasiliev or his arguments. Vasiliev responded to Bonald’s note with a second letter that mainly reiterated points made in the correspondence with Jaquemet, although it briefly addressed the Jesuitical argument that the Russian liturgical texts recognize the primacy of St. Peter. This second letter did not contribute any significant new points regarding Russian church-state relations.160

Vasiliev and Guizot Between November 1861 and February 1862 L’Union chrétienne published Vasiliev’s lengthy letter to the moderate royalist and Protestant professor of history François Guizot, in response to the latter’s L’Église et la société chrétienne en 1861 (The Church and Christian society in 1861).161 Guizot wrote this work shortly after the death of the Piedmontese statesman Count Camillo Benso di Cavour (d. June 1861), during what he perceived as an interlude in the Italian question, to address Europe’s struggle between the “Christian spirit” and the “revolutionary spirit.”162 He called on Christians to cooperate in the defense of Christian society, which was threatened by the revolutionary spirit. Guizot claimed to address all of the churches because, while he did not believe that the recovery of the visible unity of the churches was an achievable goal, he did believe that Christianity undergirded European society, meaning Christians had common interests. Guizot argued that the basic principle in Protestantism is freedom, while Catholicism rests on authority. Given these different bases, Guizot accepted the lack of visible unity among the churches as an insurmountable fact. But to protect the Christian foundations of European society, Guizot called on his Protestant compatriots to defend the Roman Church in its time of crisis, by defending not only

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the spiritual but the temporal authority of the papacy as the guarantor of the Catholic Church’s independence from the civil power. While the Gallican Church was once necessary to preserve the independence of the French state from the “theocratic pretensions” of the papacy, the ultramontanism of the nineteenth century was necessary to preserve the independence of the Catholic Church.163 Guizot acknowledged that significant differences existed “between the Catholics and the Protestants, the Lutherans and the Calvinists, the Anglicans and the dissidents.”164 Yet Eastern Orthodoxy was missing entirely from this list of the confessions that provided the Christian foundations of European society. Guizot explained why he limited his discussion to the Catholic and Protestant churches. “Among the Christian Churches that I am concerned with, I do not include the Greek Church, which I do not know well enough in order to consider its state and its future with precision.”165 While Guizot’s decision to exclude the Greek Church at the very least implied a narrow interpretation of European civilization as emanating from the historically Latin Catholic ecumene, Vasiliev began his letter by expressing his appreciation that Guizot abstained from discussing what he did not understand, adding: “You of course do not share that erroneous and insulting opinion that this branch of Christianity does not deserve attention and that its significance in the history of civilization was paltry.”166 Vasiliev countered Guizot’s nomenclature with appellations more in keeping with an Orthodox point of view. “Don’t be surprised if I express my appreciation for the silence that you wanted to keep about the Orthodox Catholic Church, that you call Greek, following the received usage in the West.” Vasiliev also used the designations “Eastern Catholic Church” and “Catholic Church of the eastern rite.”167 The main thesis of Vasiliev’s lengthy letter to Guizot was that the French historian was misguided to argue that the defense of the papacy’s temporal power served the general interests of Christian society. Furthermore, Guizot’s neglect of the Orthodox Catholic Church was unfortunate because its constitution provided the solution to the problem of church authority in the West. The Eastern Church was the mediator poised to provide the solution to the juxtaposition between authority and freedom (i.e., individual conscience) represented by the poles of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism respectively. Vasiliev took Guizot to task for calling on Christians to defend the temporal power, the Achilles’ heel of the Roman Church. The archpriest devoted considerable space to establishing that the Old and New Testaments, the canons of the ecumenical councils, and early popes all established the

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principle of separation of powers. The papacy had violated this teaching and altered the divine constitution of the church by asserting papal domination over the church, declaring “L’Église, c’est moi!” (I am the Church!). Vasiliev considered this attack on the divine constitution of the church more dangerous than an attack on dogma because an assault on the constitution was a blow against the entire organism, while an attack on a dogma struck just part of the body.168 He traced the history of how Rome had violated the primitive constitution of the church and acquired predominance over the entire church. Those it could not dominate, it broke with and labeled “schismatics.” A means of domination, the temporal power or “political kingship” was “not, as you claim, monsieur, the support of a legitimate authority but the rampart of a usurped domination.”169 Guizot called on fellow Protestants to uphold the papacy’s temporal power to bolster the bishop of Rome’s spiritual authority. Vasiliev argued that since the temporal power was illegitimate—contrary to scripture and eight centuries of Christian tradition—it should be jettisoned, not upheld. It had never benefited the Catholic Church but had only turned the church’s attention to material considerations at the expense of spiritual matters. It had not saved the papacy from foreign invaders or saved popes from being kicked out of their see. These invaders tended to be Catholic (there was no need for Vasiliev to mention Napoleon Bonaparte to the historian), not heretical powers. The temporal power had not enhanced the spiritual power of the papacy or the Roman Church, nor had it aided the civil power in Europe in general. Without mentioning de Maistre, Vasiliev had him and likeminded theologians in mind when he disputed the ultramontane idea that the papal kingship was the guarantor of all kingship, and that any erosion of the pope’s legitimate authority as king and high priest amounted to an attack on all legitimate authority. An illegitimate power could not safeguard legitimacy in general. Furthermore, being contrary to divine revelation, such an illegitimate power was detrimental to the church and to society. Founded on a spirit of domination, the temporal power did not bolster legitimate civil authority but undermined it. Papal authority had not had a beneficial impact on the civil power or the “public peace” in the West.170 On the contrary, by viewing civil authority as “subordinate, passive, and servile” vis-à-vis the papacy, the temporal power led to clashes that had only weakened the civil authorities and divided the people’s loyalty.171 In turn, the “confusion of the two powers” was at root a cause of unbelief, a cause “of this anti-Christian hatred that we come across in western Europe.” The faithful “began by fighting the abuses of the papacy” (i.e., the Protestant Reformation) and “ended by protesting against its [Christianity’s] lawful rights” (i.e., revolution).172

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The papacy had entered into a phase of senility and impotency—it should be allowed to die. Vasiliev also pointed out that Guizot’s call for the defense of the temporal power was out of step with the majority of his Protestant co-religionists, who recognized that bolstering Roman Catholicism would weaken rather than strengthen Protestantism because the Catholic Church wanted freedom only for itself and would proceed to use any freedom it had against the Protestants. Papism was the progenitor of its “antipode,” Protestantism.173 Since Protestantism in its origins opposed the spiritual authority of the papacy, it would be contradictory for Protestants to bolster papal authority. Besides, Protestantism had its own problems. It took the principle of freedom and individual conscience too far, resulting in the loss of tradition and the principle of collectivity. Its only tie to the primitive church was scripture. Too detached from the primitive church, the logical outcome of Protestantism was rationalism and skepticism.174 Catholics and Protestants both faced a crisis of authority. Vasiliev argued that the “Eastern Catholic Church,” ever faithful to the constitution of the primitive church, could bridge the gap between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, between authority and freedom. Vasiliev explained that authority in the Eastern Church is collective, and that collective authority serves as a safeguard against personal interest or a proclivity toward predominance. Since the Holy Spirit guides those who govern and those who are governed in the church, the church does not confuse authority with dominance but calls for free obedience. In the Eastern Church, authority always resided with the collectivity of the bishops as a whole—that is, with the general councils. “The general affairs of the Church were always decided and directed by the simultaneous action of the successors of the apostles, that is to say by the bishops assisted by the priests, in the presence of the Church, and with the support of the faithful.”175 Vasiliev concluded by suggesting that Christian society must be an organic whole, with proper separation between temporal and spiritual authority. The Roman Catholic Church needed to relinquish its claims to temporal authority and return to the principle of collective authority. European conflicts about church-state relations emanated from the abnormal organization of the Roman Catholic Church because the temporal authority introduced earthly aims that inevitably sparked conflict with the state. Since churchstate conflicts occurred when either the church, by having a too material structure (the Roman Catholic Church), encroached on the secular realm, or the state encroached on the rights of the church, the key to avoiding conflict between church and state is to recognize that inhabitants of Christian

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nations belong to both church and civil society and to preserve the largely separate and autonomous spheres of church and state. The first type of church-state conflict could be put to rest by a return to the scriptural basis of church authority. The latter type—state interference with the rights of the church or persecution of the church—might not be entirely avoidable and required both church and state to be vigilant, but Vasiliev contended those conflicts typically involved only secondary questions, and in the worst case, had an impact on only individual parts of the universal church at any given time. In such a scenario, which would be self-defeating for the state because it would essentially be attacking itself, the affected local church would be supported and buttressed by all the other parts of the church. This fraternal solidarity would be more effective than protests from an imaginary central authority in the church (the papacy). However, Vasiliev believed any motives the state would have for persecuting the church would disappear provided “the Church was what it ought to be.” Such conflicts occurred only if people forgot that society is an organic whole, by mistakenly identifying the church with the clergy instead of with all believing people; or similarly, by associating the state solely with the government, again cut off from the people. Rather, the believing people, the rulers and the ruled, belong to both church and state. When society was constituted along such lines, there would be no real cause for clashes between church and state.176 Vasiliev acknowledged that Guizot would consider his solution to the church-state question utopian but argued that such an arrangement existed in the primitive church and continued to exist in the church Guizot called “Greek,” but whose “true name is the Orthodox Catholic Church.”177 Thus, he recommended that Guizot study this church seriously.

The Letters to Jaquemet and Guizot Compared Of his correspondence with Jaquemet, Bonald, and Guizot, only Vasiliev’s first letter to Jaquemet received attention in France (in Le Nord and the Catholic press). The letters to Jaquemet and Guizot, which presented Vasiliev’s views on church-state relations, shared common themes but had different foci. Vasiliev’s first letter to Bishop Jaquemet emphasized that blind obedience to the temporal ruler was neither the teaching nor the historical practice of the Russian Church. It affirmed the separation of, and harmonious relations between, temporal and spiritual authority in Russia. His second letter presented an apology for the synodal system as canonical and distinguished between the divine constitution of the church and its discipline, human in origin. His primary argument was that changes to the external administrative

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structure of the Russian Church had not altered the church’s divine constitution. For evidence, he cited events in Russian and French church history. The letter to Guizot was an argument against papal authority that simultaneously described the theological basis of Orthodox church-state relations. The letter does not deal explicitly with Russia. Vasiliev described the Orthodox idea of symphonia as the principle that determined church-state relations in the primitive church and that remained the basis of church-state relations in “the Orthodox Catholic Church.” He emphasized that scripture, canons, and tradition prohibited temporal and spiritual authority from being held by one and the same person. The letter affirmed the position that civil and spiritual realms should be separate and largely autonomous spheres in a Christian society that is an organic whole. Taken together, the correspondence with Jaquemet and Guizot lays out three elements that form the divine constitution of the Eastern Church: recognition of Christ as the only head of the church, separation of powers, and collective or conciliar authority. When the letters are read together and taken at face value, it appears that Vasiliev believed Russian church-state relations conformed to the Orthodox model of symphonia and that the synodal structure of the Russian Church was canonical, even though he acknowledged that the Ecclesiastical Regulation was not necessarily perfect and could be changed. The letter to Guizot, because it discussed church-state relations on a theoretical level—that is, on the level of abstraction—allowed its reader to question to what degree the de facto reality in Russia conformed to the model Vasiliev outlined. It reminded his Russian readers, whether ecclesiastics or laypersons, about the principles that should undergird Russian churchstate relations. There are different possibilities for how to interpret Vasiliev’s polemical letters. In all likelihood, Vasiliev believed church-state relations in Russia were more complex than his western contemporaries thought and did not consider the position of the Russian sovereign vis-à-vis the church essentially different from that of other Christian sovereigns. Did he disingenuously exaggerate claims about the independence of the Holy Synod? In 1881, his compatriot Metropolitan Platon (Gorodetsky) commented that Vasiliev’s letters to Jaquemet described what the position of the Synod should be, noting that “if he had written about the realities, then he would not have found himself in Petersburg and would not have received 9,000 [rubles for heading the Holy Synod’s Education Committee].”178 A Russian church historian asserted that Vasiliev had to hope his western readers were “unfamiliar with the Russian reality” to advance the argument that the Russian Church did not attribute any spiritual authority to the Russian emperor. “The protopriest defended a

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thesis known to be false about the noninterference of the secular authority in church life.”179 This assessment is too unnuanced. Vasiliev defended the Russian Church and Synod from the charge that they were enslaved to the civil authority, to the point that the Russian sovereign could even interfere directly with the creed or church dogma. Furthermore, whether Vasiliev intended it or not, his letters can be read as a veiled critique. They established a starting position for the reevaluation of church-state relations in late imperial Russia. S. V. Rimsky suggested that because of the subordination to the state, the Holy Synod did not have an “official . . . doctrine of relations of Church to the state.”180 Vasiliev appeared to defend the status quo, while simultaneously outlining the principles on which Orthodox church-state relations should be based. The Russian bishops, the sole guides of the flock confided to their care, do not abuse their authority in order to struggle against the Emperor, of whom they are the faithful subjects; and the emperor, devoted and respectful son of the Church, honors the spiritual authority of the bishops, without ceding any of his prerogatives as head of the State. From the mutual respect of the two authorities for each other comes a perfect harmony in Russia; while everywhere that the two powers are confounded in a single sovereign, one sees only necessary disorders and permanent struggles, unless the public spirit has reached the last degree of abasement, the most absolute servitude.181 There is enough ambiguity in Vasiliev’s polemical letters to leave room for interpretation. He admitted he did not consider the Ecclesiastical Regulation perfect or immutable, but it is not clear whether he had particular imperfections in mind, or a particular vision of how church administration should change. Even if he believed he was describing actual conditions in Russia, his compatriots would not necessarily reach the same conclusion. Through his association with Guettée, Vasiliev established an Orthodox periodical, though with few subscribers, and obtained celebrity. The French Catholic papers were too lopsided to print Vasiliev’s letters and would print only their rebuttals. So while Vasiliev generated publicity abroad, his voice was suppressed and his critics controlled the narratives. The Catholic press spoke of him condescendingly. In L’Ami, Abbé André Sisson extolled Jaquemet’s apostolic “indulgence” (mansuétude) toward the archpriest.182 Using similarly condescending language, L’Ami’s correspondent in St. Petersburg ridiculed Vasiliev’s defense of the Russian Church and admired the prelate’s response: “We read here with lively interest the response of the bishop of Nantes to the

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Russian chaplain of Paris. The charity with which it is marked has impressed the most prejudiced minds, and the claim of the knowledgeable archpriest of wanting to make our legislation the model for liberty of conscience has generally caused bursts of laughter.”183 Vasiliev’s polemical works made a splash among the Russian educated public but were less successful in France. Above all, Jaquemet and Bonald were not interested in a debate. Their main concern was Napoleon III and French policy vis-à-vis Rome and the temporal power, not Russia.184 Both French bishops appeared unmoved and unconvinced by Vasiliev’s arguments. Perhaps the incidents signaled to some French Catholics that vocalizing negative opinions about the Russian Church would no longer be met with silence. But Vasiliev’s letters did nothing to silence the French Catholic press’s relentless criticism of Russia. L’Union chrétienne and L’Ami continued to discuss the issues raised by Jaquemet and Vasiliev without the direct participation of either the French bishop or the Russian archpriest.185 Orthodox publicists fared a little better with some Protestants, with whom they shared an antipapal outlook.186 Before he ever published anything in French, however, Vasiliev had recognized that a visual proof was necessary to counter negative perceptions of Orthodoxy. By the time he and Guettée founded L’Union chrétienne, Vasiliev had implemented another strategy that would bring positive publicity to the Russian Church in the French press. Thanks to Vasiliev’s foresightedness, patience, and years of hard work, even as the polemic with the bishop of Nantes unfolded, an impressive new church was changing the landscape in Paris’s eighth arrondissement.

Ch a p ter   3

The “Byzantine Firework” of Paris I have the honor to introduce you to the Russian church of Paris, because Paris, which denies itself nothing, has a Russian church. This church is lovely, pretty, entirely glistening in gold, and even, here and there, enamelled with precious stones. . . . This is a Byzantine firework, a miniature replica of the splendid Hagia Sophia, which the Turks, being the Turks that they are, have made into a mosque. —Edmond Texier, Le Siècle, September 15, 1861

On September 11, 1861, the feastday of the reigning tsar’s patron saint, Alexander Nevsky, a large crowd of Russians, the entire staff of the Russian embassy, and invited guests—including Prefect of the Seine Eugène Haussmann, Napoleon III’s representative Grand Marshal of the Palace Vaillant, First Chamberlain Count Félix Bacciochi, and Prefect of Police Symphorien Boittelle filled the new Russian church for its consecration and inaugural liturgy.1 The main church was dedicated to St. Alexander Nevsky, while the altar in the crypt was subsequently dedicated to the Holy Trinity.2 Built at a cost of 1.2 to 1.4 million francs, and standing at a height of 48 meters (about 160 feet, roughly half the height of Notre Dame), this Russian church in France (almost the first built in western Europe), in the “Byzantine-Muscovite style,” immediately became a Parisian landmark.3 Vasiliev and Prilezhaev used the term “Byzantine-Muscovite style” in the informational brochure they compiled for the inauguration of the church.4 The design of the church—the shape of a Greek cross with a large dome in the center and four smaller domes at the corners—became a standard feature of Russian sacred architecture in the nineteenth century, after an imperial decree of 1841 specified that Orthodox churches should conform to Byzantine architectural models.5 While sacred architecture expressed Orthodox theological and liturgical elements, the term “Byzantine-Muscovite style”

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(a.k.a. “Russian-Byzantine” or “Moscow-Byzantine” style) and the adoption of pre-Petrine Russian architectural models for church building simultaneously emphasized Russia’s distinctiveness vis-à-vis western Europe and its belonging “to the great European cultural tradition.”6 Use of this style in the western borderlands and abroad had the advantage of making Orthodox churches stand apart from surrounding structures, emphasizing their distinctiveness from other Christian confessions and their connection with Russia so as to enhance Russian prestige.7 Concerning the dedication of the church to St. Alexander Nevsky, the priest-publicists did not discuss the potentially significant connotations that this saint had for Russians. Besides being a patron saint of Russia and tsardom in general, and of three nineteenth-century tsars in particular, St. Alexander Nevsky symbolizes “Russian military—and especially imperial—might,” Orthodox piety, and the defense of Russia from western cultural imperialism, namely Roman Catholicism.8 The lack of public discussion about the church’s patron saint suggests that the connotations were largely imperceptible to the western public. The priest-publicists had to identify St. Alexander Nevsky for westerners, and they did so in a footnote: “Great Prince of Russia. As sovereign, as well as in his private life, he was a model of all the virtues. The surname Nevsky was given to him on account of a victory that he won over the Swedes, in 1240, on the banks of the Neva. Before his death, he took monastic vows.”9 Historians have considered the political implications of the fact that many late imperial Russian churches and monasteries in the western borderlands and abroad, including Asia, were dedicated to either St. Alexander Nevsky or St. Nicholas of Myra.10 Especially in the western borderlands this tendency was explicitly political and tied to larger propaganda goals.11 Orthodox church-building projects abroad and in the borderlands, which gained momentum only in and after the 1860s, were motivated in part by a desire to keep Orthodox Christians in the fold and to discourage conversions to other Christian confessions. When it came to Russian churches abroad, the propagandistic symbolism of St. Alexander Nevsky, well known to a key group of Roman Catholic proselytizers, the Russian Jesuits, was directed primarily at Russians (including the Russian converts to Catholicism), not westerners at large. While the church in Paris was conceived as a direct counter to Roman Catholic hegemony, the messaging tied to the choice of patron saint was more implicit than explicit and did not attract the attention of westerners. French sources most commonly referred to the church on Daru Street simply as the “Russian church” and rarely mentioned the church’s patron saint.

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Motivation and Authorization to Build Much of the impetus to build a splendid Russian church in Paris came from Vasiliev. The desire for a new church entered the archpriest’s mind as soon as he arrived in Paris in 1846, where he found a tiny and run-down house chapel and initially no support for a new church from either the rector or the embassy.12 In his early letters from Paris to the Holy Synod, Vasiliev emphasized that the existing chapel was not adequate to meet the needs of all the Orthodox living in Paris, and that the Russians in Paris were clamoring for a new church and were ready to contribute generously to the cause.13 To some extent, his efforts to establish a new church reflected a ground-up movement within the Russian community in Paris. In a letter to Over-procurator Protasov of January 1848, Vasiliev sought permission for the church project and legal authorization for a subscription that his parishioners had already launched unofficially by collecting the names and pledges of willing donors.14 By this time, Vasiliev explained that he had the support of Plenipotentiary Ambassador Nikolai Kiselev, who was ready to work with the French ministries on the project once Vasiliev had the overprocurator’s permission to proceed. Besides emphasizing his parishioners’ zeal for a new church, Vasiliev added his own rationales. He explained that his compatriots, used to large, grand churches, “are struck by astonishment and sadness” when they visit the “cramped, poor, and dilapidated” little embassy chapel. “The walls are not well-adorned, lacking icons, and are not even painted; the iconostasis is broken in a few places.”15 He added that the lack of space was especially problematic because in addition to a large number of Russians, the chapel attracted “Greeks, Moldavians, Slavs, in general all Christians of the Orthodox-Catholic Eastern confession, none of whom have their own church in Paris. And it is lamentable to see that they are not finding room in the temple of their Russian co-religionists.”16 Vasiliev also worried that the house chapel would make a negative impression on non-Orthodox Parisians who happened to visit. He mentioned that he periodically heard positive comments about the services from French visitors, but he sensed that they, seeing a temple that was not worthy of Orthodoxy, were left with a low opinion of it. If they saw a beautiful and grand temple, they would form positive impressions. “Often from curiosity, or from a more basic motive, residents of Paris come to our divine services, and on account of the poverty of our chapel, do not have respect toward Orthodoxy and make unfavorable judgments about our fatherland. It is painful to hear such opinions, although they are both false and unfounded. The authors of them, attached to appearances, would have said the opposite with a look at a splendid Orthodox temple.”17

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The outbreak of revolution in February 1848 interrupted any progress toward a new church, and it was 1852 before Vasiliev renewed his petition for authorization. He was unable to obtain the support of Nicholas I due to the unsettled political situation in France, and Ambassador Kiselev informed Vasiliev that there were “important difficulties” in the way of his plan, a reference to the conflict that soon led Russia into war with Turkey, France, and Britain.18 After his arrival in Paris, it took a full decade before Vasiliev received authorization from both governments to proceed with building a church. Vasiliev’s commitment to enhancing the public image of Orthodoxy was at the core of his work as Orthodox priest-publicist and founder of St. Alexander Nevsky Church. While he was preoccupied with western attitudes about Orthodoxy practically from the day he arrived in Paris, combatting anti-Orthodox sentiment was at the forefront of his campaign for the new church following the Crimean War. His close associate Archpriest Polisadov— who served in Geneva, Paris, and Berlin from 1847 to 1858—had firsthand knowledge of the negative attitudes about Russian Orthodoxy that were widely shared in western Europe.19 In 1856 Polisadov wrote to a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy about the “most vile and most unjust attacks on our Holy Church” that he encountered in Berlin. Notorious expressions: “the Russian church and its clergy are immersed in the most disgusting barbarism”—are the order of things. Living there [in Russia] . . ., you feel neither the strength nor the harm of such opinions about us. They make a sad impression on me, all the more so as we always keep silent and with silence encourage the worthless western press in its inventions. In my personal conversations with Germans I show them all the absurdity of their understanding about our Church, and they answer me: “That’s all very well; but why then do you leave us in ignorance about it? Write and dissuade the public.”20 Similar concerns about anti-Orthodox sentiment drove Vasiliev to push for a splendid new church. Renewing his petition to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Holy Synod in 1856, he stressed: “Written information that is distributed erroneously or maliciously in France about the Orthodox Church cannot be corrected by written refutations alone; a visual proof, which is what works best of all on the simple unprejudiced person, is necessary. A little and poor chapel—where the grandeur of the Orthodox worship that speaks so much to the feelings, the mind, and heart is not noticeable— cannot serve as such a proof.”21

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Besides arguing that a new church would counter anti-Orthodox attitudes, Vasiliev anticipated objections and addressed them preemptively in his petition for authorization. He explained that French law guaranteed the liberty of confession and that the only difference between the legally recognized and unrecognized confessions was that the clergy of the former received their salary from the state. Roman Catholics were already used to seeing other houses of worship in France, including Anglican churches and the Greek Orthodox church established in Marseilles in 1821.22 Since the Russian embassy chapel had already weathered the revolutions of 1848–1849 and the Crimean War, Vasiliev did not believe that concerns over potential political instability should stand in the way of the new church. He also added a financial argument, noting that the thousands of francs spent on renting space could be funneled into a permanent structure instead.23 With the change of leadership in St. Petersburg, Vasiliev finally got a green light at the end of 1856.24 According to one of Vasiliev’s eulogists, the archpriest had to persuade the Russian emperor that the church would benefit Orthodoxy and had to allay Alexander II’s fears that efforts to build a Russian church in Paris would be “interpreted by Napoleon III’s government in an unfavorable sense from the political point of view.”25 Vasiliev had support from the new foreign minister, Alexander Gorchakov (1798–1883), who was more inclined to pursue Russia’s national interests than his Protestant predecessor Karl Robert Nesselrode (foreign minister from 1822 to 1856 and firmly committed to the Concert of Europe) had been.26 Gorchakov may have believed that the peaceful propagation of Orthodoxy could help restore some of Russia’s lost prestige.27 Once Vasiliev had support in Petersburg, official authorization in France was obtained through the proper bureaucratic channels, beginning with a request from Russian Ambassador Pavel Dmitrievich Kiselev (1788–1872) to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ambassador Kiselev was not the first person to petition the French government to authorize an Orthodox church in Paris. The Greeks had sought a place of worship in Paris since at least 1816, although a Greek church did not materialize until 1895.28 In May 1852 Nicolo Milonas, a Greek refugee in Paris, appealed to Prince-President Louis-Napoleon for his support for a “Russo-hellenic” church or monastery near the Madeleine Church in Paris (in the eighth arrondissement).29 He argued such an establishment was necessary in the “capital of sciences, letters, and arts,” since Paris, with all its educational establishments, attracted “a prodigious number of young people professing the religion of the Greek Eastern Church.” Milonas explicitly mentioned that the idea “has excited the religious zeal of the Russians who

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are in Paris” who think such an establishment is “as urgent as [it is] indispensable.” He asked Louis-Napoleon to authorize this project, but also to forward his memo to Nicholas I and the Holy Synod to obtain their approval. The church he proposed was to be funded by a subscription that would be managed by Russian aristocrats living in Paris. Milonas was confident that the Russian imperial family—above all Louis-Napoleon’s cousin (by marriage) Maria Nikolaevna—the king of Greece, the Ionian nobility, the Egyptian pasha, and the sultan himself would all be among the subscribers to build such a church.30 Milonas was informed that his petition for a “Russo-hellenic” church had to be referred to the Ministry of Public Instruction and Worship, so he submitted a similar memo to that ministry (received in September 1852), again requesting that his petition be forwarded to Nicholas I and the Holy Synod. Besides basing the need for the church on the number of young people attracted to Paris, Milonas listed the benefits that could be derived from building such a church. It would employ “several hundred” French workers, encourage commerce, and “facilitate subsequent religious union between the Gallican Church and the Eastern Church.” To these benefits, he added a rationale about the debt western civilization owed to the Greeks, who preserved the faith in spite of the “barbarians” and “infidels.”31 Milonas promoted the idea that France was the oldest child of the church and was at the head of a federation of Christian nations that could spread Christianity throughout the world. A single sentence written on the memo sealed the fate of his request. “The minister does not want to pursue the matter.”32 As the official historian of St. Alexander Nevsky Church, Nicholas Ross does not believe that Milonas’s and Vasiliev’s projects were related.33 Although Milonas’s efforts did not get anywhere and some of his rationales for the project differ from Vasiliev’s, there are suggestive areas of overlap. Both sought, through different channels, the support of Nicholas I and the Holy Synod. Both drew attention to the idea that there was a ground-up demand for a new church, mentioning that Russians in Paris were clamoring for a new church, and both envisioned that the church would be paid for by a subscription. Both envisioned a church inclusive of Orthodox people regardless of nationality. Given these similarities, Milonas’s and Vasiliev’s attempts to get authorization for an Orthodox church in Paris could have been at least loosely related. Milonas might have acted independently by submitting his letters to Louis-Napoleon and the minister of public instruction and worship. He was overly optimistic about Christian fraternity between East and West in 1852. But he also belonged to a broader Orthodox émigré community and was tuned in to chatter about a new church. Curiously, Milonas

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asked the Worship Ministry to respond to him via Abbé Michon, with whom Vasiliev became acquainted in June 1852, resulting in Ambassador Nikolai Kiselev’s monetary support for Michon’s paper, La Presse religieuse. Milonas and Vasiliev shared a similar vision and had a common French acquaintance sympathetic to the Eastern Church. Given that the Russian embassy church on Rue de Berri was the only Orthodox chapel in Paris, it is likely that Vasiliev and Milonas crossed paths.34 Even if Milonas’s attempt was not directly related to Vasiliev’s efforts, his pan-Orthodox view is significant, especially given an increasing tendency in the mid-1850s among Roman Catholic polemicists and statesmen to portray the Greek and Russian churches as separate religions. Given the periodically tumultuous relations between Russia and Turkey, it was problematic for some Orthodox subjects of the Porte to attend a church attached to the Russian embassy. Milonas’s correspondence to Louis-­ Napoleon, for example, mentioned that the Turkish ambassador in Paris, Prince Callimaki, had never set foot in the Russian embassy chapel in order to avoid being compromised.35 That was one of the rationales behind a successful effort initiated by the Turkish ambassador in 1853—supported by the French Foreign Ministry—for a chapel dedicated to the Greek rite at 22 Rue Racine.36 A letter from Minister of Foreign Affairs Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys to Minister of Public Instruction and Worship Hippolyte Fortoul on this topic specifically noted that since Paris had “only a single chapel of the Greek Oriental rite,” which was “connected in various ways to the Russian Church and to the government of the Czar,” it was “quite natural” for the Ottoman Porte to want to distinguish between the two churches of Constantinople and of St. Petersburg.37 This Ottoman diplomatic victory coincided with the tendency in Catholic polemical literature to suggest that the Greek and Russian religion were not the same, an argument that undermined Russia’s claims to be protector and patron of Orthodox subjects of the Porte. The success of this effort was a blow to Vasiliev, who expressed his mixed feelings in a letter to Protasov. He was glad that there would be another Orthodox chapel, but he was disappointed that this new chapel, created under Turkish auspices, would splinter the Orthodox community in Paris.38 Vasiliev saw a “contrivance” hostile toward Russia in the Porte’s attempt to set itself up as the patron of Orthodox Christians in France. The Turks sought “to take away the right of the sole Orthodox Sovereign [Pomazannik; i.e., an anointed sovereign] on earth, the right to protect the Orthodox Church.”39 The setback was temporary, and the new chapel was short-lived.40 Less than a year after the Treaty of Paris (March 1856), Ambassador Pavel Kiselev obtained French authorization for the Russian church ( January 1857).

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Napoleon III was interested in Franco-Russian rapprochement, and Kiselev sought and obtained permission during the same period when he let Napoleon III know that Russia would be amenable to French acquisition of Nice and Savoy.41 In December 1856 Kiselev wrote a letter to Alexandre Walewski, who became French minister of foreign affairs in 1855, explaining that the lease on the chapel at Rue de Berri was about to end, that the landowner did not wish to renew it, and that the embassy needed to find a suitable location “large enough to contain the faithful of the Greek rite,” given the growing number of Russians in Paris.42 To avoid such difficulties in the future, the Russians desired to have the chapel in a “permanent, convenient, and spacious location,” and thus, the embassy had resolved to acquire land and build a church. Mentioning that he already had the approval of the Russian sovereign, Kiselev requested authorization from the French emperor, basing his case on reciprocity, tolerance, and precedent. Concerning reciprocity, he noted the presence of many Roman Catholic churches in Russia, including the church of the French colony in Moscow, for which Emperor Nicholas I had contributed a significant sum. But Kiselev immediately added that he found it preferable to appeal to “the principles of religious tolerance professed in France where, under the benevolent auspices of an enlightened government, all the religious are permitted the liberty of worship.” Third, he appealed to precedent, noting that the request for authorization did not represent an “innovation” because the embassy had maintained “a chapel of the Greek rite in Paris” for some time, while the Greeks had a church in Marseilles.43 Kiselev’s request generated a flurry of activity between December 20, 1856, and January 10, 1857, as the matter went to the various ministries— Foreign Affairs, Public Instruction and Worship, and Interior—for consideration. In a letter stamped “urgent,” the Ministry of the Interior’s Department of Public Security stated that there was no “disadvantage in the execution of the project.”44 Besides the trail of correspondence on letterhead, the archives contain one little scrap of paper, of unknown origins, in a separate fond. Under the heading “church of the Greek Russian rite in Paris,” the handwritten note states that “on January 9 and 10, 1857, the ministers of the interior and of worship have given their approval to the project developed by Mr. Kiselev, ambassador of Russia in France, for the construction by the Russian community in Paris of a church of the Greek schismatic rite.”45 Although supportive of the church and instrumental in the decision to obtain land for a new church and apartments to house the clergy, Gorchakov believed the Russians were “rousing a new storm” by building a church that a Catholic public, hostilely disposed to Russia, would interpret as an

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attempt to propagandize among Catholics.46 Figuring that even moderate voices would object that Catholics were not allowed to propagandize against the dominant church in Russia, and that there were only Catholic churches in Russia because there were Catholic subjects in the empire, while there were no Orthodox subjects in France, Gorchakov assumed Napoleon III encountered objections to the church and had to show “firmness” and “independence of mind” to approve the project.47 With authorization from both governments obtained, Vasiliev had an audience with the Russian emperor in June 1857, and Alexander II agreed to contribute 50,000 silver rubles (200,000 francs) on behalf of him and his wife.48 By the end of the year, Vasiliev had overseen the purchase of a plot of undeveloped land in a quarter of the city where many Russians lived.49 Le Monde illustré (The illustrated world) reported in December 1857 that the Russian embassy had purchased land for 250,000 francs in order to build a chapel for “the subjects of the czar,” adding that the construction would be “of the greatest luxury” and the project was expected to take four years.50 In fact, the consecration occurred almost exactly four years later. Just before construction began, Ambassador Kiselev showed the plans for the church to Napoleon III, who kept repeating: “It’s very curious, it’s very original, it’s very beautiful.”51

From the Laying of the Cornerstone to the Consecration The laying of the cornerstone—delayed from the fall of 1858 until March 3, 1859 (February 19, old style)—coincided with a secret pact for cooperation between France and Russia that was crucial for the achievement of Napoleon III’s aims in Italy. The agreement provided for Russian neutrality in the event of a Franco-Austrian war and for revision of the Treaty of Paris, which was unfavorable to Russia.52 Vasiliev portrayed the ceremony as a highly successful event. He explained to the over-procurator that to avoid arousing rumors of a “political nature” French state dignitaries had not been invited, although the two main city dignitaries, the prefect of police and the prefect of the Seine (Haussmann), attended.53 After a liturgy and moleben (a supplicatory prayer service) at the chapel on Rue de Berri, those in attendance walked to the location of the new church “in full ceremonial dress,” while an estimated three thousand curious French observers watched from behind the police lines and other spectators viewed the festivities from the windows and rooftops of the buildings along the way.54 Vasiliev’s apolitical sermon, directed especially to the embassy staff, highlighted that the church would be a “spiritual . . . asylum

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for all compatriots” and “a place of our Christian-fraternal relations with all the Orthodox.”55 Like Prophet Samuel arriving in Bethlehem, the Orthodox Church, the new “citizenness” of France, came in a spirit of peace, to sacrifice to the Lord (1 Samuel 16). “No one knowing the spirit and aspiration of the Orthodox Church—which sets aside all worldly care, restricting its concerns to the spiritual aspect of life, the salvation of the soul, teaching its offspring to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God, what is God’s (Matt. 22:21)—doubts in this.”56 Vasiliev wrote that the “general consensus” was that the event produced a “favorable impression.” As a specific example he mentioned the presence of some “local architects” who responded positively to the plans for the structure.57 A few reports circulated in the French press about the new church between the laying of the cornerstone and the consecration. Vasiliev informed the over-procurator that Augustin Golitsyn was perpetuating a rumor that “really troubles the friends of the Roman order,” that the Russian church intended to serve liturgy in French sometimes.58 La Presse wrote that the laying of the cornerstone for a Russian church signified France’s progress toward religious toleration. “This ceremony, an eyewitness tells us, proves one more time how far we are from the times of intolerance when it was not permitted for one confession to exist alongside another. The Russian Church blessed on this occasion the modern civilization and the hospitable legislation of France that, in the aftermath of a memorable struggle, gives Russia such a great testimony of religious fraternity.”59 In early newspaper reports anti-Orthodox sentiment was not explicitly expressed in connection with the building of a new Russian church in Paris, but peppery articles in nearby columns lambasted Russia and repeated negative stereotypes about Orthodoxy. One wonders what kind of connections Parisian readers drew when they read in one column about Russian schismatics, fanatics, and corrupt popes, and in another column about the building of a Russian church in their city. For example, while most of the reporting about the new church in La Presse appeared in the “Miscellany” section without editorial comment, the same issue that reported that the structural work on the Russian church was nearly complete, contained an article discussing the similarities between the United States and Russia. The two nations shared “an equal religious fervor and an equal animosity against papism.” Separation from the papacy had fueled the religious fanaticism of the “Russian schismatics” and the Protestant Americans. “Fanaticism is a fruit of youth, and these two nations are young. Their elders [elder nations] have arrived, while they are barely moving. The history of others ends; theirs is only beginning.”60 The juxtaposition of these two reports could imply that some of the

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Russian antipapist fanatics were just next door. The same issue of L’Univers that mentioned the laying of the cornerstone as miscellany ran an extract “from the frontiers of Poland” on the front page that discussed “schismatic [i.e., Russian Orthodox] proselytism” in the Polish parts of Russia. It repeated common axioms about Russian popes who had families to support, lived in poverty, exploited parishioners by demanding money or labor in return for their services, and among the Catholics and Uniates used a whole array of tricks, deceptions, and bribery to lure people into joining their parishes, without the unsuspecting converts recognizing the “immense change” in jurisdiction that was taking place. After recounting several examples of such trickery, exploitation, and corruption, the author concluded: “Everything that I have just recounted shows an appalling state of things, and truly, when we think about it, we cannot see how regeneration from this corruption and from this decay would be possible, save by a divine miracle.”61 By possible implication, conniving, schismatic popes were building a church right in Paris. From its inception Vasiliev intended for the church to challenge anti-­ Orthodox ideas. With construction of the church proceeding on schedule, the next step in Vasiliev’s vision was to call attention to the church by ramping up the element of spectacle with an elaborate, publicized consecration.

The Consecration: An Orthodox Spectacle in Paris In August 1861 Leonty Lebedinsky, bishop of Reval (i.e., Tallinn, Estonia) and coadjutor of the metropolitan of St. Petersburg, received word that the metropolitans of Moscow and St. Petersburg had chosen him for an unprecedented mission: to travel to Paris to consecrate the new Russian church. The choice of the vicar general of St. Petersburg for this mission made sense, since all Russian churches abroad fell under the jurisdiction of the St. Petersburg metropolitanate. By Leonty’s account, the decision was made after a “great deal of talk” about sending an Orthodox bishop.62 Vasiliev played a key role in persuading the members of the Holy Synod that having a large Russian delegation present at the consecration would present a real opportunity to “exalt the honor and glory of Orthodoxy and Russia” and to make a strong impression on foreigners and the non-Orthodox.63 With an entourage of about twenty-five people—including priests, deacons, readers, and a choir—Leonty left Russia on September 3 (August 22, old style), picked up the “so-called fast train” in Berlin, and arrived in Paris on the evening of September 7.64 Polisadov, who formerly served in the foreign clergy, documented the trip in a series of letters to Father Ivan Efimovich Flerov, one of the editors of Dukh khristianina (The Christian spirit).65

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The idea of being a participant in a spectacle is very evident in Polisadov’s account. He noticed some “inner agitation” in Leonty as they approached Berlin. Here in the Puritan “capital of German Protestantism,” Leonty would make his first appearance before the “hundreds if not thousands of eyes” of western Europeans.66 Like other Russians, Polisadov considered it important that after an interlude of centuries, an eastern hierarch was traveling to western Europe in his episcopal capacity.67 When the entourage crossed the Rhine, Polisadov perceived a change in the deference everyone showed toward Leonty. “With each step the respect toward our Archpastor increased!” The Prussians showed “deference” that was “more like polite curiosity than genuine deference imbued with feeling.” But once the entourage crossed into Catholic regions, “I saw obvious signs of the most deep respect toward His Grace, whether because the French are in general more polite than the Germans, or because Belgium and France are populated with Catholics who understand the dignity of the episcopal office better than Puritan Germans.”68 Leonty was treated as a VIP by the French customs officials, and on the train, the conductors shielded Leonty from the crowds and asked after his comfort repeatedly.69 On arrival in Paris, the party was met at the railroad platform by the Russian colony, the officials of the Russian embassy, the Russian clergy—Vasiliev at the head—people from other embassy churches in southern and western Europe, and “a very great crowd of French people.”70 While it was customary for Russian clergy in foreign countries to wear lay clothing in public to avoid “idle and derisive curiosity,” for the occasion of His Grace’s arrival in Paris, the clergy were fully decorated in cassocks, vestments, and headgear (kamelaukion).71 Leaving Leonty to bless the crowd of Russians that had come out to greet him, Polisadov tended to practical matters until it was time to rejoin Leonty in a “wealthy carriage” for a drive down a “magnificent boulevard” with gas lighting that seemed to Polisadov like it had been lit up for a special occasion but was really just the “usual evening lighting of the city of Paris.”72 In his memoirs, Leonty expressed a keen awareness that he and his entourage were participants in a spectacle in Paris. He expressed how startled and touched he was that he attracted so much attention. “The reception struck us by its magnificent backdrop, and I confess I was rather taken aback—by a hitherto unseen sight and by the so brilliant honor shown to me.”73 As soon as the carriage reached the Saint-Honoré faubourg, Polisadov started eagerly looking around for the church and felt enormous joy and pride when he caught site of its five cupolas lit up by the gas streetlights. It was just before ten p.m. when the carriage stopped in front of the church.

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Here, too, a crowd of French spectators had found their way to “such a secluded street.” The clergy, with their archpastor, were all able to inspect the work that had begun about two and one-half years earlier, and which was still going on around the clock to prepare the church for the consecration.74 The clergy were housed in the two presbyteries adjacent to the church. Polisadov wrote that each day brought new crowds of French spectators to the site. Eager as these onlookers were to see the inside of the church, the public was not admitted prior to the consecration because it would have interfered with the interior work still in progress. In the church’s courtyard, the clergy overheard “everywhere” the expressions of “amazement” over the church’s beauty. But when His Grace would come out, “a reserved rumble rippled through the crowd . . .: ‘C’est l’archévêque, c’est l’archévêque.’ The French called His Grace ‘archbishop,’ both verbally and in writing.”75 This fact confirms Polisadov’s observation that the French showed respect to Leonty. He was not an archbishop, but French spectators took it for granted that he was, a perfectly natural assumption given their milieu. Part of what made the spectacle of the consecration possible was the fact that the newspaper press had not only reported on the purchase of land in December 1857 and the laying of the cornerstone in March 1859, but also announced the completion of the exterior of the church and the plans for its consecration a few days ahead of time.76 Some of the most renowned journalists and illustrators of the day attended the consecration, which was reported in the newspapers without much polemicizing. While there can be no doubt that Vasiliev intended to draw public attention to the consecration, Ambassador Kiselev was not convinced that a large public event with media attention was a good idea. He feared that drawing too much attention to the occasion would provoke the ire of the Catholic press. I didn’t have the intention of giving such solemnity to the rite of the consecration of the church. This was the affair of Fr. Vasiliev, to whom I granted complete freedom of action in St. Petersburg on this point, while warning him nonetheless that if an official request was addressed to me, I would respond that such solemnity of the Orthodox confession in Paris would be awkward [neudobno] and risky [riskovana]. The Catholic clergy is ticklish [shchekotlivo] and the Catholic press is extremely intemperate. Such a provocation could lead to some repressive measures, which would be, at best, unhelpful.77 Kiselev expressed the hope that his fears would not be vindicated, and for the most part they were not, although there was some anti-Russian backlash at Le Monde.

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On the day of the consecration, Providence contributed to the backdrop of the spectacle playing out on Daru Street, as glorious sunshine illumined the structure’s gilded domes, reportedly visible from over twenty kilometers (over thirteen miles) away.78 Describing the “brilliant sight,” one correspondent wrote: “From time to time the bright rays of the sun breaking through the clouds reflected off of the gilded cupolas of the temple, and playing on its ornate walls, imparted a more brilliant shine to the flowers of the painted murals, more radiance to the gold and silver decorations and more whiteness to the marble. The pale light of the wax candles vanished before the radiance that emanated from the shining daystar.”79 At ten a.m. carriages started to arrive at Daru Street. According to Polisadov, fifteen French policemen adept at crowd management were on hand to maintain order and prevent the obstruction of traffic as throngs of people gathered across from the church to see the festivities. The Orthodox could be admitted to the church unconditionally, but non-Orthodox guests needed a ticket for admission. Initially, Vasiliev intended to issue three hundred tickets. But, by Polisadov’s account, after those tickets had been distributed, there was still so much clamoring for tickets that an additional hundred were issued; and what were four hundred tickets in Paris, “with its huge population, impressionable and extraordinarily fond of a celebration?”80 By the time the carriages began to arrive, up to six thousand spectators (by Polisadov’s account) not fortunate enough to have tickets gathered across from the church to watch events unfold.81 Leonty considered the consecration a historic event, on account of the great number of Russian and French dignitaries in attendance, including prelates and cardinals.82 Besides Polisadov and Leonty, fifteen Orthodox clergymen and four readers took part in the celebration. While the clergy were vesting Leonty, Napoleon III’s representative and other distinguished French guests arrived. The French emperor’s representative was placed near Ambassador Kiselev, who was there with the entire staff of the Russian embassy. According to Polisadov, five Roman Catholic priests were present in soutanes, and French witnesses told the Russians that two French archbishops were there in civilian clothes.83 Pelleport identified the two as the bishop of Périgueux (Charles-Théodore Baudry, 1817–1863) and the bishop of Tours ( Joseph Hippolyte Guibert, 1802–1886, confirmed as bishop of Tours in 1857; elevated to archbishop of Paris in 1871 and cardinal in 1873).84 Citing the French police, Polisadov claimed there were up to twelve hundred people in the church.85 A French newspaper suggested the main church had a capacity of about six hundred people.86 It would have been crowded with six hundred, let alone twice as many people inside.

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The consecration and inaugural liturgy lasted from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. and was, as La Presse reported, done in “great splendor in the midst of a large crowd.”87 There were two choirs: one that Leonty brought with him, and the embassy church’s regular choir of French opera singers (who sang in Slavonic). In Leonty’s words, the service went “superbly.”88 Between the consecration and Divine Liturgy, prayers for the faithful (“Many Years”) were sung. Le Nord reported that the prayers were offered in this order: “The first is for Emperor Alexander, for whom the temple is established; second for the Emperor Napoleon, the sovereign of the hospitable land where the new temple is established; the third for the Holy Synod, which is the patriarch of the Russian Church; the fourth is for all Christians without distinction of confession.”89 The festal procession enhanced the element of spectacle: “This procession was impressive and majestic. . . . An immense crowd, attracted by the novelty of the spectacle was stationed outside the railing that separates the small church square from the side of the street. . . . [A]t the moment when the bishop exited the church with the cross and banners, the whole multitude of curious people spontaneously removed their hats, thus rendering homage to the confession which just received hospitality in France.”90 Only a Horace or some other “painter poet,” Polisadov suggested, could truly capture the reality of what happened that day. The clergy were arrayed in vestments of white brocade, with gold crosses, embroidered shoulders, and edging in scarlet velvet. Leonty’s vestments had been brought from St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg just for the occasion. His miter, covered with prominent pearls and shining rubies, “attracted the particular attention of foreigners.”91 With a host of clergy, such a liturgy would not have gone unnoticed in Russia. “How striking it was then, in our Paris church, for the great number of foreigners of all Christian confessions, who attended it.”92 On the evening of the consecration, reflecting back on the day’s events, it dawned on Kiselev that the Russians had neglected to warn their guests of honor that the services would last for several hours. He jotted this detail down in his diary, noting that “our foreigners had to stand, as we all did, for more than three hours,” which, given his declining state of health, he considered “too much” even for Russians.93 While the consecration cast the church into the limelight, it was a highly publicized moment in a spectacle without end: the new church remained as an ever-present visual representation of Orthodoxy for the heterodox foreigners (from the Russian perspective) who lived in or traveled to Paris. After the consecration, the church doors were opened to the public and the church received visitors regularly thereafter. Curiosity drew French visitors to the church, where Leonty served two more liturgies in the days following the

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consecration. Meanwhile large crowds would gather in the church’s courtyard. Leonty’s awareness of being part of a spectacle came to the fore when he discussed his response to the presence of these crowds. He spoke of wearing his “peculiar dress” (kostium), as opposed to his cassock (riasa), when he greeted and blessed the numerous visitors. “The courtyard of the church was almost always filled with people—and I would go out of my room, in order to appear in my ‘peculiar dress,’ and to bless those who so desired; and there were so very many of them that I was amazed.”94 Adding to the element of spectacle, the consecration coincided with illustrated journalism and the international phenomenon of “cartomania” (the photo card craze).95 Leonty recalled that “in the Paris of the photo cards” the Russian photographer Sergei Levitsky told him he sold 10,000 rubles worth of photo cards related to the new church. “That is how curious the French are!”96 An illustration of Leonty, drawn from Levitsky’s photo, appeared in L’Illustration, one of the first and most important illustrated periodicals in France, edited by the renowned journalist Edmond Texier (1815–1887), along with a sympathetic article about the church by Marinos Papadopoulos Vretos.97 The London Illustrated News printed an illustration of the church and an article about the consecration, while Le Monde illustré featured an illustration of Leonty leading the festal procession around the church.98 Polisadov, Leonty, and their compatriots perceived themselves as participants in a drama unfolding in front of a great cloud of foreign witnesses. For the French observers, especially those who attended the ceremony surrounded by a throng of Orthodox worshippers, the devotees of the “schismatic” confession were the foreigners.

St. Alexander Nevsky Church under the French Gaze While Russian accounts of the consecration emphasized all the curious French onlookers, Mac Vernoll’s report in Le Monde illustré observed that the majority of people present “belonged to the Eastern Catholic worship.”99 Although admission to the consecration service was limited to the Orthodox community and distinguished invited guests, when the church was opened to the public on the afternoon of the consecration, it drew crowds of French spectators, who reportedly went into the church as if in procession.100 Press reports publicized opportunities to visit the church.101 Vasiliev’s daughter recalled that the French people were “terribly interested” in the new temple—a shining “city on the hill”—and “came in droves” to see it, queuing up along the street to await admission.102 Two hundred people were allowed inside the church at a time.103 Two Catholic papers confirmed widespread interest

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in the new Church. L’Ami reported that when the church opened to the public, “the number of visitors was considerable.”104 The Paris correspondent for the Catholic Journal de Bruxelles hinted disdainfully at possible enthusiasm about the new church among Parisians, wondering if, like the Russian embassy, “the old Catholic Paris will also applaud at this new invasion of schism.”105 A week later the correspondent stated that “the masses” (la foule) were being admitted to the church.106 The church in the eighth arrondissement became a contact zone, where visitors could encounter Orthodoxy firsthand.107 The church’s existence, even its process of coming into existence, called for the dissemination of descriptive information about Orthodoxy and discussion of Orthodox theology, architecture, and art. Its function as a contact space extended beyond the physical structure of the church to publicity and media about it. A veritable educational campaign in print media—newspapers, periodicals, and tour guides—accompanied the physical structure, contributing to a reshaping of Orthodoxy’s public image. The information that was disseminated about the church, both in the mainstream press and in the tour guides, was based on Description de L’Église russe de Paris (Description of the Russian church of Paris), the informational brochure about the church published by its clergy in 1861.108 Almost overnight the Russian clergy in Paris gained some control of the narratives about Orthodoxy in the mass press. It is even fair to say that a standard narrative about the church, derived from Description, emerged. A couple of types of discussions about the church appeared that highlight its role as a contact space and a vehicle for refashioning Orthodoxy’s public image. First, there were the descriptions of the church itself, as an architectural monument and an example of a church belonging to the Orthodox confession. These discussions sought to explain the church’s physical and doctrinal features to the public. French reactions to the new church suggest that the church simultaneously blurred and sharpened the lines between Russianness and Frenchness and between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. While accurate information about Orthodoxy was widely disseminated, which could diminish misunderstandings and minimize the differences between eastern and western Christianity, the press allowed inaccurate information to be disseminated further and faster too, which could sharpen the distinctions or at least do little to diminish them. Often observers highlighted the beauty of the church and its iconography, but they also pointed out the marked contrast between French and Russian religious aesthetics. Archpriest Vasiliev’s reports of encounters with visitors suggest that westerners experienced fascination and surprise on seeing the church—including, for some, the very realization that Russians were Christian, certainly a significant

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blurring of the lines between eastern and western Christianity. He expressed some optimism that Orthodoxy’s public image was improving as more and more people visited the church; yet in and after 1863 he also perceived that the situation in Poland accentuated the divide between eastern and western churches, irrespective of the church on Daru Street. Second, the new church provoked discussion of religious toleration, although in ways that tended to emphasize France’s superiority over Russia in this realm. These conversations reflected the religious and political divisions in French society. They also indicate that while there was little negative press explicitly tied to the new Russian church in Paris, the church provoked resentment from certain French Catholic journalists who continued to discuss the Russian Church and clergy in critical terms, as if they wanted to prevent any softening of attitudes toward Orthodoxy. Blurring and Sharpening the Lines between East and West

The fact that the new church emerged in the age of the mass press and illustrated papers was critical for the Russian public relations campaign. It helped the publicists get their alternative narrative about Orthodoxy into the public eye, but of course the mass media could also spread inaccurate information or contribute to confirmation bias. Newspapers presented a strange mix of accurate reporting, inaccuracies, and rumors. Mistakes in the reports on the church and its consecration could have resulted from basic ignorance, ill intentions, or just gossip. For example, oddly and erroneously, but perhaps innocuously, some papers stated that the choir of Count Sheremetev (misspelled “Scherernesef ”) composed of fortyeight serfs had arrived in Paris to take part in the “solemnity of the consecration.”109 More egregiously, a description of the exterior of the church that appeared in several newspapers just before the consecration described Alexander Egorovich Beideman’s painting on the pediment—Christ enthroned with the Gospel—as a representation of Christ “seated and showing the book of the law [le livre de la loi].”110 Typically Christ enthroned (i.e., Pantocrator) icons portray Christ with the Gospel, sometimes open to a particular passage. Whether intentional or unintentional, confusing the Gospel with “the book of the law” mischaracterizes Orthodoxy, implying that it is closer to Judaism than to Christianity. While there was no public controversy about whether the “schismatics” should be able to have a church and observe their rites in Paris, it was at least suggested that the new church was a manifestation of political Orthodoxy representing a Russian Panslav agenda. In his “Bulletin of the Day” column

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for L’Opinion nationale (National opinion) on September 17, 1861, Alexandre Bonneau suggested a connection between the church in Paris and Russia’s broader diplomatic aims, although his mention of the church was largely an aside in a discussion about Austrian diplomatic challenges and policies. “We are assured that the Court of Vienna has taken a dim view of the founding of a Greco-Russian Church in Paris and that the pompous inauguration of this edifice would have produced a certain emotion among the Austrian residents. Russia is accused of pursuing right up to the banks of the Seine the Panslav propaganda that it would like to triumph to the detriment of Austria and of Turkey.”111 Bonneau thought that Austria’s concerns about Russian Panslavism were not “fanciful,” given the Austrian Empire’s fifteen million Slavs. Austria would have “to keep in check the propaganda of the tsar which will be one day its fiercest enemy.”112 A family friend of the Vasilievs, the Greek poet Marinos Vretos, responded in L’Illustration to the “error” spreading around Paris that the church represented Panslav propaganda.113 In an article on the consecration he emphasized that the church ministered to many Orthodox Christians from a range of ethnic groups, and he specifically highlighted Greek contributions to the building of the edifice. “What I can affirm is that Paris contains more than two thousand people belonging to the Greek worship (Russians, Greeks, Wallachians, Moldavians, Turkish subjects, etc.). The construction of a vast church was a need that we all felt, and in the two million that its construction cost are found the 20 centimes of the Greek student in Paris and the 100,000 francs of Mr. Bernardakis, the rich merchant who has done so much for Greece.”114 While such reports outline some of the limitations of Vasiliev’s approach, on the whole his vision that the new church and a publicized consecration would improve Orthodoxy’s public image was sound, and the counternarrative portraying Orthodoxy in an accurate light made headway. Months before the consecration, French writers were talking about the church’s uniqueness and beauty. A Byzantine-style church with five onion domes certainly stood out against its Parisian backdrop.115 La Presse reported about the placement and blessing of the gilded cross on top of the main dome, stating: “There is nothing more picturesque and more gracious than this crowning of the new religious edifice, than this gilded cross à doubles branches, rising to fifty meters in the air on its bulbous dome, in the oriental style, which is, like the cross that it supports, entirely gilded also.”116 Le Monde illustré printed an illustration and an account of the church, sympathetic in its presentation of Orthodoxy and praising the church’s ornamentation, by the novelist and journalist Charles Deulin (1827–1877).117 Deulin praised

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Vasiliev and his compatriots for having “the glory of elevating on French soil a temple worthy of holy Russia.”118 Announcing the upcoming consecration ceremony, La Presse and La Patrie described the church as “one of the prettiest edifices of the capital and certainly the most original.”119 For days following the consecration, the newspaper correspondents discussed the church’s splendor. Achille de Lauzières at La Patrie, who clearly admired the interior and exterior beauty of the church, commented that the effects of sunlight reflecting off the church’s domes made the church resemble a “gigantic candelabra burning before the Savior.”120 Another journalist commented that previously the “numerous Russian families living in Paris” had only a “poor little chapel” (pauvre petite chapelle) that was “barely comparable to our most modest village churches.” Now they had a new church “of such sumptuousness and magnificence that it eclipses the most beautiful [churches] of Paris” and was “decorated with a magnificence of which Paris has no idea.”121 The reporter for L’Ami was also struck by the ornamentation of the church with its dome “à l’orientale” over the portico, its five domes “gilded almost from top to bottom” and topped with Russian crosses “in three branches.” He described the décor inside the church, with its sanctuary adorned in “gold and arabesques,” echoing the phrase that “this church is decorated with a magnificence of which Paris has no idea.”122 Using information from Description de l’Église russe de Paris to explain links between the church’s design and its theology, the French littérateur Adrien Robert (Adrien-Charles-Alexandre Basset, 1822–1869) published a favorable article about Paris’s first and only church in the “Byzantine-Muscovite style” for Le Constitutionnel, with high praise for the architect, Roman Ivanovich Kuzmin (1811–1867).123 Robert was positively impressed with both the exterior and the interior of the church. In the absence of any other large monuments in the immediate vicinity, the church was “marvelously situated,” and in its sumptuousness, the iconostasis was “literally dazzling,” its panels “[preserving] the Byzantine character, separated from its rigidity and its dryness.” He continued: “These figures, with a gospel gentleness, surprise and attract; a strange, indefinable charm takes hold of the spirit little by little, and it ends by bowing before the holy image that reflects a ray of hope and of divine love.”124 While overwhelmingly positive in his discussion of the art in the church, his criticisms of a couple of works by the Sorokin brothers (Evgraf and Paul) may hint that he felt some alienation from the aesthetics of Russian religious painting.125 At Le Temps Jules Richard commented that the church’s “extremely picturesque appearance, and its Byzantine architecture, abundantly sumptuous, stands out starkly against the modest appearance of the neighboring

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habitations.”126 Like other French commentators, Richard seems to have been awe-struck by the sheer amount of gilding on the structure—with its five gilded spires topped with onion domes, adorned with gold crosses that were in turn draped with gold chains. He remarked that the style and ornamentation of the church “accord little with the architectural ideas that we profess in France on the subject of sacred monuments.”127 Thus, despite praise and admiration for the monument, Richard highlighted the non-French character of the church, noting that it was modeled after Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia (a detail from Description). While Richard found the interior ornamentation flashy, gaudy, and, with its “garish colors” and the clashing of gold and silver, “not conducive to contemplation,” he nonetheless stated that the effect produced was not “devoid of charm.” He concluded that “nothing is more Russian than the chapel on Daru Street,” and every detail outside or inside the church is Russian. In their sacred arts, he suggested, the Russians had a propensity for stunning outward extravagance and brilliance but lacked more essential traits. “I noticed . . . a great similarity between the style of architecture and religious painting of the Russians, and that of their sacred music. These arts lack in equal measure grandeur, solemnity, mysticism and feeling, and shine above all by flashiness, noise, surfaces, and showiness.”128 Richard’s critical assessment of Russian religious aesthetics echoes stereotypes found in de Maistre, Custine, Henningsen, and other writers that the Russian people were incredibly religious but only externally and superficially so, and that their religious arts reflected this superficiality.129 The idea that the Russian church was very beautiful, but that Russian and French religious aesthetics contrasted starkly was also expressed by Texier at the liberal Le Siècle. For Texier, one significant result of the appearance of the new church in Paris was that this Eastern Church could be known and encountered “on site.”130 He attended the consecration, found it impressive, and presented his observations about the Russian religion with a good dose of humor. Blurring the lines between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, his starting point was that “this confession is not essentially different from ours” except that it was “less comfortable” since there are no chairs or pews and one must “stand perpetually.” The only way to “relax from this long state of inertia” was to kneel, which he evidently did frequently.131 He commented on the “great role” that candles play in the “Greek religion,” suggesting that there was something overly exuberant or wild about the way the bishop blessed the attendees. “At each instant the officiant takes hold of a twobranched candlestick that he wields in his hand and with which he sprinkles the attendees by tracing in the air gigantic signs of the cross.”132 When all those in attendance took a lit candle and followed the bishop in procession,

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it created a beautiful effect but placed clothing in jeopardy, leading Texier to the conclusion that “the Greek religion, despite the magnificence of its church and the splendor of its ceremonies, may be a staining religion [une religion tachante, probably meant as a word play on descriptions of the service as touchante, i.e., touching].”133 He found the singing majestic but too monotonous and repetitive, given the lack of any instruments—whether the organ or the serpent of the village church. Describing the church as “lovely, pretty, entirely glistening in gold,” Texier highlighted the Russianness of the new edifice, contrasting the decorative style of “our Catholic churches” with that of the East. “With numerous frescoes representing the great Christian scenes standing out against a flickering background, the decoration of this church is, compared to our Catholic churches, what the East is to the West. This Russian Church is a Russian work, the architect is Russian, and the artists who contributed to the interior decoration of this pleasing and schismatic monument are Russians.”134 Both Richard and Texier emphasized the church’s Russian character. Its flashiness and flickering were not aesthetically unpleasing but were decidedly un-French. For some observers, the music at the church blurred and sharpened the lines between Russian and French religious aesthetics in unexpected ways. For Adolphe Guéroult (1810–1872), founder of L’Opinion nationale, the Russian choral singing led to a startling discovery. He was swept away by the “chants a little monotonous but imbued with a profoundly religious character” when he attended a “mass” at the church, and “inwardly paid tribute to the truth of the praises that we have often heard about Russian religious music and singers.”135 Thinking of the “low basses” and “silvery tenors” as “unexpected products of a cold and icy climate,” he was taken aback to discover that the singers were born, raised, and trained in Paris: “It is only after the office that we have learned, not without some surprise, that these Russian basses and tenors whose beautiful tones and profoundly religious sentiment we had admired are all Parisians, born in Paris, all pupils of the Chevé school, and trained in this excellent execution by M. Amand Chevé.”136 Similarly, for the editors of a review of sacred music, it was a special point of pride that a French-trained choir could execute this Russian music so well.137 Sharpening the lines, but to compliment Russian sacred music, Abbé Jouve, a Catholic priest and scholar of Christian art and aesthetics, contrasted the “religious character” of the Russian music with “the majority of our so-called religious compositions.”138 Jouve admired how, compositionally, in the Russian music the “individuality of man, with his self-love, fades away,” unlike in western compositions where the ego of the composer is evident in “provocative solos, piquant modulations, and other effects” that are all supposed to showcase the composer’s own merits.139

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Like the newspapers and periodicals, tour guides portrayed the church as an extraordinary and beautiful monument, if also an exotic curiosity, while further disseminating the basic descriptive and explanatory information about Orthodoxy drawn from the Russian priest-publicists. Some guides delved into more details than others.140 Inclusion of the church in tour guides almost necessitated comment about Orthodoxy and the intersection between Orthodox theology, architecture, and iconography. So the tour guides spread the alternative narrative about Orthodoxy, while simultaneously highlighting the uniqueness, foreignness, and “non-Catholic” nature of the church. Some guides included the church in suggested itineraries and walking tours, demonstrating that the church immediately became a monument considered worthy of visiting, even on a short trip to Paris.141 Adolphe Joanne included the church, along with a visit to nearby Monceau Park, in his suggested itineraries for visitors having two or more days in Paris.142 Another guide treated the church as a must-see, including it in a list of “the main edifices and the main establishments that provincials and foreigners must visit even when they would make in the metropolis of the civilized world only a stay of short duration.”143 One guide orientalized the church, while singling it out as one of very few non-Roman Catholic monuments worth visiting in the capital. “Among the religious edifices of the non-Catholic confessions, there are scarcely any to mention except the Russian Temple, or Greek church, whose gilded minarets are seen glittering between the Arc de l’Etoile and the Park Monceaux.”144 Concerning the church’s beauty, Galignani’s New Paris heralded it as a “brilliant edifice” on the outside, “gorgeous” on the inside, with an iconostasis defined as “a screen on which the painter and decorator appear to have exhausted their talent.”145 Paris en pôche (Pocket Paris) discussed the iconostasis as an “elegant partition resplendent with gilding and delightful paintings on a gold background.”146 In the words of Pol de Guy, “a great richness reigns in the ornamentation which is enhanced by gilding to a most magical effect.”147 Bibliotheque de voyageur (Traveler’s library) highlighted the beauty and strangeness of the church as “a curious sample of Byzantine architecture,” adding, “Its elegant silhouette, its dome, its gilded pinnacles, its strange crosses first focus the attention, and the eye revels in the spectacle of this rich and yet plain ornamentation that shapes its ribs and profiles.”148 Located in the eighth arrondissement, near Monceau Park, an English-style park refurbished by Haussmann, the church was built in the midst of the targeted area of urban renewal. Along with the Russian church’s ambiguous legal status in France, it was unique architecturally, both compared with other churches in Paris, and in the context of Haussmann’s urban renewal scheme.

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As one guide, prepared for the Paris Exposition of 1867, expressed it: “This is a curious specimen of Byzantine architecture applied to the orthodoxy of the Greek rite. Everything gilded on the outside, everything painted on the inside, this is one of the richest pieces of architecture in recent years, as the only public monument that has been built outside the influence of the City or of the State; it produces the best effect in this quarter.”149 Nomenclature used in the guides highlighted the foreignness of the church, sharpening the lines between East and West. As in the newspapers, the church was rarely referred to by name, but was simply called the “Russian,” “Greek,” “Greco-Russian,” or “Greek or Russian” “worship” (culte), “church” (église), or “temple” (temple). In one way or another, almost all of the guides classified the church as “non-Catholic.” Some achieved this by listing only Roman Catholic edifices under the heading Églises in the indexes, and by classifying the Russian Church as a “temple.” The designation “temple” is not objectionable from an Orthodox point of view, because Christianity is considered the fulfillment of Judaism, and Orthodox worship retains a fundamental continuity with Judaism. In Russian the terms “church” (tserkov') and “temple” (khram) are used interchangeably. In French usage, however, the designations église and temple were clearly meant to delineate between Roman Catholicism, legally recognized as the religion of the majority of French citizens, and non-Catholic faiths, especially Protestantism and Judaism, the two other faiths that were officially recognized and regulated by the French government in the nineteenth century until the republican government of Émile Combes dissolved the Concordat and separated church and state in 1905. One significant way that the new Russian church blurred the lines between Orthodoxy and Catholicism was that, on seeing the church or attending an Orthodox ceremony, some French observers recognized the similarities in worship between the two confessions. Texier, for example, wrote that “this confession is not essentially different from ours,” and another report in Le Siècle pointed out that in spite of the peculiar grooming rituals that occurred when the clergy greeted their “archbishop,” the dedication of the church “was done more or less as in the Catholic worship, and the psalms that were chanted had exactly the rhythm of the Gregorian chants.”150 This blurring of the lines between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is evident in a two-part article on the Russian church of Paris that appeared in the periodical La Semaine des familles (Family weekly) in 1863, a weekly, illustrated periodical founded in 1858 by the Catholic legitimist journalist Alfred Nettement. It was meant to be an educational and morally uplifting magazine for the entire family that would “instruct without corrupting, please without

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harming, be useful without ceasing to be agreeable, instruct as often as we can without ever professing ex cathedra, offer at last families a paper that could occupy the leisure of the week.”151 La Semaine des familles’s article on the new Russian church, published with illustrations of the exterior and interior of the edifice, drew extensively on Description de l’Église russe to explain the church’s features. The article is also significant because it indicates something about the kind of instruction the magazine’s writers thought Roman Catholic families should receive about the Eastern Church. In keeping with a Roman Catholic point of view, it portrayed the Eastern Church as schismatic but still blurred the lines between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy considerably. The article was based on the physical proximity and accessibility of St. Alexander Nevsky Church, which made it possible to educate readers about the Orthodox faith in a manner that would have been unthinkable without the specific church as a contact zone. It was the fact that the readers had the possibility of visiting the Paris church that made the topic relevant. Yet, with the aid of illustrations, the article could take readers there and orient them to the church even if they did not physically visit the monument. The two illustrations that accompanied the text placed spectators outside and inside the church, respectively, while the text explained what these spectators were seeing. The article began by explaining the cause of the schism between West and East, presenting it as a national or cultural struggle between Latins and Greeks, squarely placing the blame on Patriarch Photius as an ambitious individual, and on a propensity of the Greek clergy to bend to the will of secular rulers. The schism resulted from “the rivalries of races, individual ambition, the vanity of princes, and the detrimental tendency of the Greek clergy, except for rare and honorable exceptions, to slavishly comply, even in spiritual things, to the will of the Caesars of the late empire [Bas-Empire].”152 These characteristics of the schism had remained intact ever since, the author added.153 Doctrinal differences would have been overcome, but the root of the schism was the struggle for eastern sovereignty. The filioque, the supremacy of the pope which all the churches had previously recognized, and the controversy over leavened or unleavened bread were pretexts for what was really a power struggle.154 By explaining the schism in these terms, emphasizing the character flaws of a few individuals, the author, René, clearly diminished the importance of theological distinctions between Latins and Greeks, one way of blurring the lines separating the eastern and western churches, although not an innovation in Roman Catholic polemical literature. While the schism had been passed down from generation to generation, René explained that the

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sacraments retained their validity through the apostolic succession. Nonetheless, the schismatic church suffered because it lacked “spiritual independence” and “spiritual sap.”155 René affirmed that as a consequence of schism, the Russian clergy was in a terrible state, as confirmed by the recent works on the subject: Shuvalov’s Ma conversion et ma vocation and “the work full of interest published by M. Abbé Delière, on the work that a Russian priest has published in Leipzig, under the title Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia.”156 But he did not discuss those works in any detail. For French literature about Orthodoxy, his article was mild, expressing a desire for unity among Christians. With its valid sacraments but its poor conduits (i.e., the clergy), the Eastern Church was unable to nourish the souls in its care. “The harvest is good, but the workers fail to harvest. We can only hope that the Greek Church, separated by such a small number of points from the mother of the Churches, returns to a union where it would rediscover the good days of [Saints] Basil and Chrysostom.”157 When René shifted from the historical background of the schism to a discussion of the Russian church in Paris, his first comment was that the Paris church proved that there were some excellent clergymen in the Greek Church, illustrating how the church on Daru Street could alter perceptions of Orthodoxy. “That there are in the Greek Church some men of good faith, learning and talent, who preserved zeal for their worship, we do not want in any way to deny, and the building of the Russian chapel in Paris would provide the proof of it if need be.”158 As soon as René turned to explaining the church’s exterior features, his reliance on Description de l’Église russe is evident, beginning with his comment that Vasiliev did not find the chapel on Rue de Berri to be in keeping with “the extent and power of the Greek Church,” with Russia’s great-power status, or large enough to meet the needs of the Russian community in Paris.159 He followed Vasiliev in describing the style of the church as Byzantine-Muscovite but added that by virtue of its eastern architecture, the church was “one of the artistic curiosities and architectural decorations of the district.” The sight of the sun reflecting off its gold domes caused René to “think involuntarily of the East, and it seems that the temple has been transplanted during the night from the banks of the Neva or those of the Bosporus to the banks of the Seine.”160 By borrowing heavily from Vasiliev’s explanation of the mystical meaning behind the architectural features of the church, René disseminated Vasiliev’s narrative to educate Roman Catholic readers about Orthodoxy. While the first segment of his article on the Russian church was accompanied by an illustration of the church’s exterior under the observation of four spectators, the second segment appeared with an illustration showing three

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visitors inside the church. Using Description de l’Église russe as his guide, René helped the reader understand what these visitors to the church were gazing at.161 He explained that the church was cross-shaped, divided into the sanctuary, nave, and vestibule, and that the iconostasis represented the veil that separated the altar or Holy of Holies in the eastern-facing branch of the cross from the rest of the temple. Only the priests and deacons (with the Eucharist or Gospel) could pass through the Royal or Holy Doors—so-called because Christ Himself, in the Eucharist and the Gospel, passes through them—in the middle of the iconostasis.162 This practice struck him and brought out his ecumenical disposition, because it revealed what profound faith the “Greeks” have in the real presence of Christ. “We ask ourselves with sorrow how it is possible to have a schism between Christians who adore the same God, present in the Eucharistic species, and who can repeat from the mouth as from the heart the beautiful hymn of St. Thomas: ‘Prostrate I adore Thee, Deity unseen, Who Thy glory hidest ’neath these shadows mean.’ ”163 René followed Description to describe the chief paintings in the church and their correspondence to the Orthodox liturgy. He drew attention to the depiction of Christ—“head of the church and pontiff eternal”—in the main dome and the inscription from Hebrews 4:14–16 that surrounds the painting in Church Slavonic, but that Vasiliev and Prilezhaev translated into French in Description: “Having then for [our] sovereign Pontiff Jesus, the Son of God, who has ascended into the heavens, let us hold fast the faith that we profess.” René advanced the Orthodox Church’s self-understanding that Jesus Christ, and neither any bishop nor any secular ruler, is the head of the church.164 René asserted that the temperaments of the “churches of the eastern rite” and “the Latin rite” differ, reflecting the characteristics of the “genius of the East” and the “genius of the West” respectively.165 Just the acknowledgment that the East had its own genius was a far cry from the tone of the intransigent ultramontanes and some liberal Catholics. Concluding his article, René contrasted East and West, again invoking the idea of the eastern and western genius, but “to explain” both tendencies, not “to critique.”166 The genius of the East is its “profound sentiment for Christian symbolism” and its appeal to “the lively imagination of the people.” René continued: “It seems that in the Greek churches there is not a section of wall that does not speak to the eye, that does not instruct the spirit and that does not move the heart. The arches and the walls, with their frescoes, are like silent teachers that announce God and the sacred mysteries, and the symbolism of the monument blends its teachings with the teachings of the priest. This is the genius of the East.”167 He contrasted the “opulence” of the East with the sobriety of the “more self-composed” West, “where the thinking [pensée] has something of

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the more austere and more vigorous,” concluding: “It is not on this point, I dare to believe, that the papacy, that knows so admirably to discern in the general genius of humanity the particular nuance of the genius of each race, would find an obstacle to union.”168 While emphasizing the theological closeness of the western and eastern churches, René joined other French writers in highlighting the “otherness” of the Russian church (as non-western); yet he framed his discussion, intended for the edification of French families, in terms of the respective genius of East and West. Although orientalizing, his account treated the Eastern Church as fully Christian. He spread the Orthodox counternarrative, raising awareness about the Eastern Church, while blending that counternarrative with his Roman Catholic perspective. Vasiliev’s reports of his encounters with non-Orthodox visitors to the Russian church further illustrate how the Paris church simultaneously blurred and sharpened the distinctions between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. His correspondence reveals his perceptions of Orthodoxy’s public image in France based on his experiences as the leading representative of Russian Orthodoxy in the West in the 1860s. By Vasiliev’s account, many thousands of people visited the church in the days and months following its consecration, but except for the examples from French media, all we know of their impressions is filtered through the archpriest, who maintained a correspondence with Bishop Leonty after the consecration. A member of the Russian diplomatic corps in Paris and the founder of the church, Vasiliev had a personal stake in demonstrating that it was a successful testimonial about Orthodoxy among western Europeans. Yet his letters were private documents not intended for public distribution. The comments that Vasiliev reportedly heard from non-Russian visitors to the church provide insights into French reactions to the new Russian church in their midst. Presumably, the majority of the visitors, excepting the most privileged who had opportunities to travel widely, would have been unlikely to encounter Orthodoxy directly had it not been for St. Alexander Nevsky Church. Some weeks after the consecration, Vasiliev wrote that the church remained “a subject of lively curiosity,” and that he was inundated with a steady stream of visitors—up to three thousand visitors every day except Sunday when the number rose to twenty or more thousand—including many Roman Catholic priests, French bishops, and the Anglican bishop of London.169 He may have overestimated, but there is no reason to doubt Vasiliev’s comment that the large number of visitors presented him with “great difficulty.” He explained that many of the visitors “reverently and unanimously acknowledge the greatness and sanctity of the temple.” Roman

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Catholic priests would often cross themselves and kneel. On one occasion when four bishops came to the church, “they lauded the grandeur of the church, but one of them could not refrain from the exclamation: ‘What misfortune that such a treasure is in the hands of schismatics!’ ” Recognizing that often people visited the church out of curiosity, Vasiliev hoped that would be the start of more significant inward stirrings. “The beginning of a serious judgment is already audible in the exclamations of visitors: ‘So Russians are Christian!’ ‘So Russians are not Protestants!’ ”170 In December 1861, Vasiliev reported that the church continued to attract attention and inspire “astonishment,” and that the visits had not decreased. He had the impression that non-Orthodox people were praying privately in the temple. There was, he mentioned, a French woman who wanted to light five candles before the icon of the Mother of God in the iconostasis and assured Vasiliev of her particular faith in the image; and there was a Protestant chargé d’affaires who kept attending the church, saying that “he can pray only in a Russian church.”171 One day the church received an especially noteworthy unannounced visitor, Empress Eugénie, who commented on feeling a sense of “deep reverence” in the church. “For me the most pleasant of all was to hear her opinion about the pious and prayerful impression that our newly built temple is making.”172 She conversed with Vasiliev about the “magnificent and touching Orthodox liturgy” and the differences between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism (points briefly explained in Description). Showing “common sense and meekness,” the empress did not respond to his comments regarding the Orthodox view of the papacy but indicated that the filioque was not an important difference, that the early church practiced marriage of the clergy and communion in both species, and that while the Orthodox did not accept the doctrine of Purgatory, the churches agreed it was beneficial to pray for the departed. Regarding the liturgy, she asked how long it lasted and about people standing during services. Vasiliev got the impression that “she would have liked to attend our divine services,” but he added that the emperor would not allow her to do so from fear that it would provoke the Jesuits.173 Given her ecumenical outlook and her belief that Christians could cooperate across confessional lines in the interests of common spiritual concerns, it is not surprising that the French empress visited the new Russian church. Her visit can be seen in the diplomatic and cultural context of concern for much-needed restoration work on the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, an issue she cared about, and one particular issue in a broader discussion that took place between French and Russian diplomats about access to and maintenance of the Holy Places. Diplomatic exchanges between the French and

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Russian foreign ministries in 1861 resulted in a treaty between France, Russia, and Turkey regarding the Church of the Holy Sepulcher’s restoration in 1862. This treaty did not achieve its intended practical results, partly due to Pius IX’s opposition to Russia’s involvement and the ultramontanes’ Russophobic orientation.174 Another notable visitor, “a certain Bautain,” the former vicar general of Paris (under Archbishop Sibour), stayed in the church for about thirty minutes, went into the altar, bowed together with Vasiliev, and had high praise for the church. Like Empress Eugénie, Bautain expressed ecumenical inclinations to Vasiliev. “Perhaps in the ways of God this holy edifice is appointed to the rapprochement of the churches, that are unhappily divided. Dogmatic questions aside, I would wish that by this beautiful example our builders would move away from building temples in the pagan style.”175 Soon Vasiliev reported that it was no longer just private individuals who visited the church but also school groups, even from establishments “under church supervision,” which was significant because “young souls are more open to the truth!”176 And almost eighteen months after the consecration, Vasiliev wrote that the church “is still as new for everyone as it was on the day of its consecration. Many visitors every day marvel at its grandeur.” He expressed the hope that anti-Orthodox prejudices could be relegated to history. “Perhaps a new generation, after becoming acquainted in the tender years with the Orthodox Church, will be free from the prejudices of its fathers!”177 Yet Vasiliev perceived that there was still significant anti-Russian animosity in France, especially among the ultramontanes. Despite his hopes and efforts to see prejudices dissipate in the face of the church’s presence, anti-Russian sentiment was exacerbated by events in Poland in and after January 1863. The archpriest interpreted this French animosity in theological terms, and in terms that placed the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches in clear juxtaposition: “Why do they hate good Russia so? Because its greatness incites envy? Why is there such anger toward the Orthodox Church? Without doubt because it preserves the deposit of the pure faith and serves as the unmasker of Roman and other errors.”178 Along with the papers, periodicals, and tour guides that simultaneously reflected and reshaped the public image of Orthodoxy, Vasiliev’s letters suggest that the new church made Orthodoxy more recognizably Christian to the public but also highlighted the separation between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. St. Alexander Nevsky Church attracted publicity, often positive. Westerners could more readily recognize the Russian Church as Christian and form more nuanced perceptions of Orthodoxy. It was a visible testimony to the similarities between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholics, but also to

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the division between them. The French press disseminated an alternative narrative constructed by the Russian priest-publicists that deciphered the mysterious nature of Orthodoxy for western observers. Yet the new church also accentuated the differences between East and West. While the papers and guides stressed the beauty of the Russian church, their emphasis on its uniqueness in its Parisian context, the juxtapositions they described between Russian and French religious aesthetics, especially the idea that Russian worship was external and showy, their classification of the church as “Russian,” “Greek,” “temple,” and “non-Catholic,” and their occasional use of orientalizing language all highlighted the non-French, non-Roman Catholic, and non-western features of the monument. The designations and the classification systems used to differentiate the “Russian” or “Greek” church from the Roman Catholic Church—whether referring to the church on Daru Street or to the Russian and Greek church(es) more broadly—encapsulated the idea that “the churches that call themselves orthodox” were based on national or racial identification, because in the formulation of de Maistre and subsequent Catholic polemicists, all churches cut off from Rome were subjugated to the civil power and condemned to be national churches instead of part of the universal church.179 The Russian church altered the conversations about Orthodoxy and contributed to a better understanding of it, while highlighting its distinctiveness. The Progress of Religious Toleration

The founding of a Russian church in Paris advanced the cause of religious toleration in subtle but intriguing ways. Since anti-Orthodox sentiment was based in large measure on Russia’s reputation for persecuting Catholics, some Russian publicists promoted tolerance to counter such perceptions.180 Russian publicists represented themselves as proponents of religious liberty, while also holding up France as a model thereof. They appealed to French traditions of tolerance to advance their cause, as Ambassador Kiselev did when he sought permission from the French government for building the church. For some French observers, the new church was, for better or worse, a sign of France’s leadership in the realm of religious liberty. Some French journalists responded to the church’s founding by adopting a congratulatory attitude about France’s atmosphere of religious tolerance, sometimes juxtaposing French tolerance against Russian intolerance. Eastern Orthodoxy in France represented an unrecognized confession in a state that officially recognized Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism. Almost as soon as he arrived in Paris, Vasiliev began studying and

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reporting back to St. Petersburg on the legal status of the religious confessions in France.181 He discussed the shifting attitudes among the French during the revolutionary upheaval of 1848–1849 and explained that the French constitution of 1849 granted freedom of confession so that “the difference between recognized and unrecognized rites . . . consists only in the salaried clergy.”182 Before the consecration of the Paris church, Vasiliev encountered some difficulties with local officials who obstructed his ability to carry out his priestly functions because he belonged to an unrecognized rite. This situation provoked some of the Russian publicists and their associate Charles Deulin to use the newspaper press to call for an expansion of religious liberty in France. Notably, religious tolerance represented a sphere where the concerns of the Russian Orthodox community in France coincided with those of French liberals and others interested in limiting Roman Catholic influence in the public sphere. In early 1861 the Russophile Deulin wrote a letter to the editor of L’Opinion nationale about an official who interfered with Vasiliev’s ability to carry out his priestly functions as a representative of a church that was not officially recognized by the state. Le Nord reprinted this letter. Deulin’s editorial called for more expansive religious toleration and freedom of worship in the Second Empire. The editorial recounted how Vasiliev had been called to the deathbed of a parishioner at the Beaujon Hospital. The hospital director, citing regulations that prohibited ministers of unrecognized faiths from performing religious acts in the hospital, would not let Vasiliev see his patient without first appealing to the minister of worship, who instructed the director to make an allowance for Vasiliev. The director accompanied Vasiliev as he administered rites to the patient. When she subsequently died, the director allowed him to administer the customary prayers over her body, but Vasiliev was not allowed to use the hospital chapel or even a private room for this ritual; he had to officiate in a hallway. Whatever the motives behind the hospital regulations, Deulin did not think the imperial government “ever intended to prevent a sick person of the Greek religion from calling to her deathbed the priest of her nation and her confession.” He asked why “in a land that prides itself on tolerance and liberty, the Greek or even Mohammaden faiths do not enjoy even the same privileges as the Jewish or Protestant worship.”183 He called for broad tolerance of the religions of all countries with which France had relations. When Deulin’s letter to the editor appeared in Le Nord, the editor of the Russian paper voiced support for the expansion of religious tolerance and worship in France.184 He cited another case when Vasiliev went to the

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officials to report a death. The archpriest was told that since he was neither Catholic nor Jewish, his status was Protestant; and in an act that would have made de Maistre proud, that was how Vasiliev was entered in the registry. Le Nord’s editor concluded: “France is too justly proud of the principles of freedom of conscience and religious tolerance with which it has endowed the world for us not to be convinced that the French government will have the honor to initiate a proper measure to fill what is obviously only a gap in the French law.”185 Thus, the experiences of foreigners belonging to a religious minority created a situation where Kiselev, the Russian publicists, their associate Deulin, and the paper founded by the Russian Foreign Ministry all championed religious toleration. Among French observers, the idea that Orthodox expatriates in Paris should have access to a church of their own confession was not objectionable, and the plans for and inauguration of the new church do not appear to have provoked much controversy. While there was substantial negative press coverage about Russia in 1861 related to the Polish question, coverage of the church in Paris was fairly neutral, descriptive, and not particularly polemical. If anything, the appearance of the new church only showcased France’s religious tolerance. As La Presse wrote when the cornerstone was laid, “the Russian Church blessed” France’s “modern civilization” and “hospitable legislation.”186 But for the Catholic press, France’s tolerance made reports about Russian oppression of Roman Catholicism that much more irksome. An article on the laying of the cornerstone for the “Russian cathedral” in the legitimist L’Union claimed that the occasion provided clear evidence that Catholicism “shows the most tolerance and understands the liberty of worship the best,” since, while building their church “right in the Saint Honoré faubourg” of Paris, the Russians were restricting the preaching of the Dominican Jean-Marie Souaillard in St. Petersburg.187 Even the Russophobic Le Monde initially spoke of the new Russian church in merely informational and descriptive terms, until Texier published an article about the consecration in Le Siècle that enthusiastically welcomed the church.188 After attending the consecration, Texier wrote about Paris’s “Byzantine firework,” noting with approval that the new church represented the acceptance of another religious confession in Paris, beyond the three officially recognized faiths.189 He suggested that, with the installation of this new church, “brightening the heights of the Saint-Honoré faubourg with its golden cupolas that twinkle in the azure skies,” other confessions “will certainly come” to this city “that modestly claims to be the capital of the civilized world.” He mentioned the clamoring for a mosque, which he ardently desired. The mosque “would attract the Turks, and the Turks going to worship in the

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mosque will be a very agreeable spectacle for the Parisians who are so eager for spectacles.” Finally Texier commented that there could even be a Chinese pagoda for the Mandarin Chinese in Paris.190 As the chief editor of the ultramontane Le Monde, Jean-Baptiste-Victor Coquille (1820–1891) was at ideological odds frequently with papers on the left such as the liberal Siècle and the moderate-left Le Constitutionnel.191 Coquille responded directly to Texier’s article, indignant that Texier not only expressed “delight” about the Russian church but looked forward to the erection of a mosque and Chinese pagoda in Paris.192 Instead, to be consistent with its liberal program, Le Siècle should “preach to Russia”—whose Catholics are not free and have suffered “bloody persecutions”—the “tolerance of all the confessions that appears to be the modern program.” Coquille concluded that the liberal program really only desired liberty and tolerance for all confessions except the Roman Catholic. “Oh! The free thinkers defy neither the Orthodox popes nor the Talapoins [Buddhist monks or priests of Southeast Asia].”193 Thus, the Catholic press expressed some resentment in response to the new Russian church of Paris, based on the perceptions that Catholics in Russia were oppressed and French Catholics were on the defensive at home. Coquille’s response to Texier expressed motifs that ran more deeply in ultramontane thought: on one hand, the anxiety that the liberal program was anti-Catholic—which it often was, since many Catholics were antiliberal— and on the other hand, concerns about Russian persecution of Roman Catholic minorities in the Russian Empire in general and in Poland in particular. For Coquille, the tolerance that made it possible for the Russians to build a church in Paris made Russia’s treatment of Roman Catholics that much harder to bear. It is hardly coincidental that Le Monde launched into an antiOrthodox diatribe by printing excerpts from Delière’s discussion of Father Ivan Belliustin’s Opisanie sel'skago dukhovenstva (published in English [1985] as Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia) two weeks after the consecration of the new church.194 In a direct response to Coquille’s critical article about Texier and the new Russian church, Sushkov entered the polemical fray. He brought up the Russian church’s ambiguous legal status in France and the two incidents—per the letter to the editor in Le Nord—when one local official restricted Vasiliev’s access to a patient at the Beaujon Hospital and another classified him as Protestant. Sushkov contended that “if the ultramontanes had at their disposition similar facts [about Roman Catholics] in Russia, what a noise they would make!”195 According to Sushkov, “the faithful of the oriental Church are more moderated” and do not make a lot of noise about being persecuted

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but hope that the liberal French government will come to recognize that the Eastern Church is “sufficiently venerable” in order that it should enjoy the same benefits of liberty accorded to Protestants and “Israelites.” He also clarified that the Orthodox clergymen in France did not want to be inscribed in the budget but only wanted their ministers to “be free in the exercise of their ministry in conformity with the law.”196 Partly in response to the fact that Russia’s intolerance of Roman Catholics was a recurring theme in the French press, partly in response to the experience of belonging to a religious minority among “heterodox” people, and partly to promote a positive image of Russia, Russian publicists represented themselves as committed to policies of toleration or even freedom of conscience. The common ground between the Russian publicists and French liberals on this issue is indicative of how opposition to Roman Catholic influence across Europe brought interest groups together across ideological and confessional lines. Considered one of Paris’s most beautiful and remarkable architectural monuments, from its inception St. Alexander Nevsky Church represented a significant achievement in a campaign to enhance the international reputation of Orthodoxy. As an architectural and religious monument, Paris’s “Byzantine firework” invited description, discussion, and analysis. Plans to build the church, the building and consecration of the church, and its subsequent presence as a contact space in Paris brought positive publicity to Orthodoxy and finally gave Russian clergy some control over narratives about Orthodoxy in the French press.197 The Orthodox publicists found westerners who were willing to appreciate Orthodoxy on its own terms, even if it was still “other,” and even if sympathetic westerners were not temperamentally drawn to the Eastern Church’s religious aesthetics. The Russian church created a space for direct encounters between westerners and Orthodox Christians in the heart (even if geographically on the edge) of Paris. Such encounters simultaneously challenged and reinforced common attitudes about Russia in general and Orthodoxy in particular. Russia, its religion, and the Russian clergy were distant abstractions, but St. Alexander Nevsky Church and its archpriest made them local, tangible, and human phenomena. The church allowed thousands of visitors to come and see for themselves that the “Russians are Christian.” Nonetheless, while the new church could narrow the gap between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, especially for those with ecumenical leanings, it was still decidedly “other”—architecturally, aesthetically, linguistically, liturgically. Its existence highlighted France’s atmosphere of religious

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tolerance, which in turn, was perceived in ultramontane circles as a contrast to Russia’s intolerance of Roman Catholics, especially in Poland. In spite of the widespread dissemination of an alternative narrative about Orthodoxy, anti-Orthodox sentiments remained ubiquitous in the French press throughout the 1860s as one aspect of broader discussions that were critical of French or Russian policies.

Ch a p ter   4

A Spectacular Success The Paris Church, the Russian Orthodox Press, and the Public Image of Orthodoxy

For someone who lived abroad and who studied religious relations in the West on site, the construction of a Russian Orthodox Church in Paris is a matter of the greatest importance, especially if we take into account that in a short time there appeared in various parts of the western Christian world four public Orthodox churches: one Greek (in London) and three Russian (in Potsdam, Wiesbaden, Nice). But these churches have a too-local setting to serve as representatives of Orthodoxy in the West. The Paris church is indisputably called to this great purpose. —Protopriest Vasily Polisadov, Strannik, 1860

The Paris church was planned and inaugurated right after the Crimean War had sounded the death knell of the Concert of Europe and destroyed “the entire concept of European solidarity [of legitimate rulers] upon which Nicholas had based his foreign policy.”1 For westerners and Russians, the conflict raised doubts about Russia’s European identity. Within the Russian Empire, the years immediately following the conflict were crucial for the formation of Russian Panslavism, an ideological expression of hunger for a renewed sense of “historical mission” and thirst “to restore Russia’s sense of national destiny and the country’s prestige vis-àvis the West.”2 The narratives about the new church in the Russian press reflected Slavophile and Panslav aspirations that appealed “to Russian national pride—a pride that had been wounded at Crimea and exacerbated by German and Italian unification.”3 In the aftermath of defeat, Orthodox publicists believed Russia would rise again to carry out the great salvific task Divine Providence ordained to it—reuniting Christendom. The inauguration of the church in Paris proved that this process was already underway. Orthodox publicists who aspired to raise the profile of the Russian Church and educate western Europeans about Orthodoxy ascribed monumental 116

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importance to St. Alexander Nevsky Church on Daru Street. They saw it as a symbol of ascendant Orthodoxy and projected that image to the Russian educated public. While the consecration was widely reported in the Parisian press, it was treated mainly as miscellany, with little analysis. A liberal like Texier could welcome the new church for broadening the scope of France’s religious toleration, or an ultramontane like Coquille could find in it an occasion for anti-Russian diatribes, but the French press did not endow the church with any particular historic significance. Russian publicists treated the consecration of the new church as a historic spectacle that unfolded before throngs of foreign (to them) heterodox people and “made a very forceful impression” on them.4 They were not reporting but were ideologizing about Russia’s providential mission.5 There was a definite sense that having a bishop present to serve at this event had heightened its overall impact. “The other-believing [inovertsy] were for the first time witnesses of the majestic Russian hierarchical service, which made a deep impression in Parisian society and served to elevate the authority of the Orthodox Church.”6 Eager to share their interpretations of the impressions that the new church made on the heterodox crowds, Russian publicists and participants in the drama portrayed the church and its consecration as spectacular successes. Just after the consecration, Victor Ivanovich Kapelmans (1824–1871), Polisadov, Guettée, Popovitsky, and Pelleport provided accounts of the Parisian spectacle to the Russian reading public. With the exception of Kapelmans, a Russo-Belgian Jew whose journalism career placed him in the role of a Russian publicist, these writers were all devotees of the Orthodox Church, although Guettée was not yet officially Orthodox.7 With the exception of Popovitsky, an active religious publicist known for introducing Russian theological literature to western readers and vice versa, they were eyewitnesses of the consecration.8 Since Popovitsky was not present, he drew heavily on the accounts by Guettée and Kapelmans. Beyond what appeared in the French newspapers and tour guides, there are few sources from which to glean any sense of French firsthand impressions about the church and the consecration, except the sources written by Russian publicists. Yet their accounts present their perception of the impressions the spectacle made on foreign observers. Their perceptions reveal more about their priorities, their ideas about Russia, and their stance toward Roman Catholicism than about what the non-Orthodox foreigners were thinking. According to the Russian publicists, the consecration was a stunning success because it struck and astonished western Europeans, represented a harsh blow to the papists—especially the Jesuits—and was a harbinger of reconciliation between the churches. Paradoxically the reporting on the church

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emphasized, on one hand, how commonplace negative prejudices about Orthodoxy were among western Europeans, and on the other hand, that the moment was ripe for reconciliation among the churches. Believing that the papacy was on the verge of collapse, the Orthodox publicists viewed the Paris church as a historic landmark in the realization of a providential plan. It represented the light of the truth coming from the East to bring the West out of schism and back to the authentic image of the Savior. Kapelmans’s account of the consecration was a bit of an outlier because it was written for the secular press. It appeared in Journal de St.-Pétersbourg (St. Petersburg journal), an organ of the Russian Foreign Ministry,9 and in Russian translation, in Dukhovnaia beseda (Spiritual conversation). He spoke in glowing terms about the church and the consecration ceremony, considering the edifice “a superb sight” that was “beautiful and irreproachable in all respects.”10 The artistry of the building and its decorations elevated rather than detracted from the spiritual character of the church.11 Kapelmans described the ceremony, singling out two moments that “made an especially strong impression on those who attended”: the Great Entrance, and the emotional moment during Leonty’s address when he acknowledged and blessed Vasiliev for his efforts to found the church, while Vasiliev began to sob.12 Beyond the emotional intensity of these moments, it is unclear why Kapelmans singled them out (e.g., whether they were topics of conversation after the fact, whether there was any kind of visual or audible reaction from the crowd, or whether they just struck him personally). While Orthodox publicists saw the Paris church as a forerunner of Christian unity, Kapelmans ended his account with what was essentially a prayer that the church would be a sign and symbol of religious tolerance and brotherhood among peoples. May these walls remain for all time a peaceful expression of the brotherhood of men with one another and a symbol of accord between two great peoples! . . . May this church remind each believer who enters here for prayer, as well as everyone in general who rests their gaze on it, that toleration, joined with love, is commanded to us by divine law, and that people should always love and help each other—for, differing by nationality, they above all are children of One and the Same God!13 With this sentiment, Kapelmans echoed the theme of religious tolerance that appeared in the French liberal press and in Le Nord, but his prayer was also disseminated in an Orthodox weekly tied to the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary. Polisadov wrote the fullest account of the episcopal entourage’s voyage to the West and of the consecration. His letters to his brother-in-law, the

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editor of Dukh khristianina, were intended for publication and appeared both in Dukh khristianina and as an offprint.14 The notion of an Orthodox spectacle in Paris figured prominently in Polisadov’s account, which emphasized that Orthodoxy offered the corrective to papal errors and that the Paris church had a significant role to play in the reunification of the churches by virtue of the fact that it attracted and astonished throngs of heterodox foreigners. On seeing the Paris church for the first time, Polisadov noted—apropos of the depiction of Christ, the true head of the Church, in the main cupola— that it was “a wonderful confession of the true faith, in denunciation of the Latin teaching about the headship of the Roman archpriest!”15 The architecture, design, and iconography of the church testified against papism and had been executed so as to present Orthodoxy in its true light in a non-­Orthodox land. “Every Christian who enters this temple will clearly experience here the vivid and powerful spirit of the common Christian idea.” Orthodox Christians would find “a superlative expression” of their faith. Protestants would be startled by “the aesthetic expression of religious thought revealed so religiously and naturally in the sacred images,” while the Catholic would “see here what the essence of the Christian faith—obscured in his faith and worship by the person of the pope—[really] is.”16 As part of Leonty’s entourage, Polisadov conveyed a feeling shared by participants in the consecration that they were involved in a truly historic event, since the consecration of the Paris church by a Russian bishop was the first time since the Great Schism that an Orthodox bishop had consecrated a church in the West. Once common, such journeys had ceased in the fifteenth century. The reappearance of an eastern bishop in the West in the mid-nineteenth century represented a harbinger for the reconciliation of the churches. “Marvelous are Thy works oh Lord! Oh, if this journey would be the beginning of a brotherly union in Christ of East and West!”17 Leonty recalled feeling blessed to have been the first and only (as of 1887) Orthodox prelate since the Great Schism to have been called to fulfill such a charge. It was by “God’s Providence” that he had been sent on a mission to acquaint western Europeans with Orthodoxy.18 While French sources sometimes reported that the consecration of the Russian church represented the first time since the Great Schism that an Orthodox bishop consecrated a church in the West, a point the Paris priest-publicists made in Description de l’Église russe de Paris, French observers did not appear to attach any particular importance to the consecration of the church by a bishop, other than that it enhanced the element of spectacle.19 If anything, it would have struck them as odd if a bishop had not officiated at the service.

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Related to the idea of the Paris church as a harbinger of Christian unity, Polisadov emphasized how much the church, the presence of Bishop Leonty, and the consecration attracted the crowds and the attention of the Parisians, portraying the church as an object of universal admiration and interest. He did not focus on describing the rites that were familiar to Russian readers, but on “the peculiarities of this celebration, as it happened in a non-Orthodox city, in sight of, for the most part, foreign spectators.”20 Among the foreign spectators at the consecration were French dignitaries and clergy, including two bishops.21 His description of the procession (krestnyi khod) drew special attention to the foreign observers. “It would be necessary to see this procession before thousands of foreign people, people of other faiths, in order to appreciate all its grandeur and all the joy of Orthodoxy!”22 He cited from Le Nord, about the crowd of spectators spontaneously removing their hats at the appearance of the bishop, “thus rendering homage to the confession which just received hospitality in France.”23 After the service, Polisadov reported, thousands of people “who had avidly and impatiently been waiting” for the chance to see the church “inundated it” and “marveled at everything they saw in it.” He noted the presence of laymen, priests, and “even sisters of mercy, who are the most distinguished among all Roman Catholics by [their] intolerance, so as not to say bigotry.” Then he recounted his conversation with a Roman Catholic priest. “Having noticed once a certain Latin priest, I went up to him and said: how do you find the Russian church? ‘Oh! What a magnificent church! What beauty, my God, what richness! I could not even dream of anything like this,’ ” bemoaning an unwillingness among the French to spend money on churches. Polisadov added that he could relay “many other opinions about our church which cheer the Orthodox heart.”24 Polisadov reflected on what attracted foreign visitors to the church and on their perceptions of it when Leonty officiated on September 13 and 15. The greatness of the liturgy, the bishop, the vestments, the singing all held the attention of those in attendance who stood and watched so attentively and silently—as if they were holding their breath—until the very end of the service, despite the large crowd and the absence of pews. They testified afterward that the divine service “touches” and “strikes” the soul, and that they were struck by the choral singing of particular hymns (e.g., “Holy God”), as well as by the grandeur of the little and great entrances.25 The choral singing appears to have provoked many compliments, and Polisadov observed in particular that when the choir from St. Petersburg sang, the French thought they were hearing an organ or some other instrument.26 Citing from Guettée, Polisadov discussed the crowds of non-Orthodox who eagerly sought a

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personal blessing from the Russian hierarch, adding a footnote to point out that an elderly French woman elbowed her way to the front of the crowd just to get a blessing, which she received tearfully.27 Reflecting their broader preoccupation with the Eastern Church’s international reputation, Orthodox publicists emphasized that the world was witnessing a new degree of visibility and respectability for Orthodoxy. Part of the great Russian success story was that western papers in English and German reported on the consecration, meaning the impact and echoes of the event reached well beyond France. Polisadov explained that this attention was due to the fact that before the inauguration of the Paris church, westerners had not seen Orthodox temples of such dimensions or witnessed Orthodox rites. Because the church was a novelty for westerners, many of the papers did not limit themselves to just one report, and some even described Orthodoxy and the differences between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.28 While the events in Paris garnered international attention, Leonty and his entourage also spent time in Germany before returning to Russia. So Polisadov stressed that the relatively new church at Wiesbaden—“this tangible ‘Sermon on the Mount’ about universal Orthodoxy on the banks of the Rhine”—was also drawing foreign visitors, and that the hierarchical liturgy held there during Leonty’s visit received attention in the press.29 Polisadov reproduced Leonty’s pastoral address from the consecration ceremony, which was published in at least three Orthodox journals.30 Although the foreigners could not understand the words, they were “struck” because they could easily apprehend that Leonty’s style was simple and natural. “They understood with their hearts that the arch-pastor conversed with believers, as a father with children, and fully approved such a conversational tone, contrary to the oratory of the French bishops, who, forgetting both their years and most importantly their apostolic importance, enter the great cathedrals and from here recite their artistic speeches.”31 Then the foreigners were even more struck by Leonty’s humility when Leonty expressed his thanks to Vasiliev and blessed him right in the middle of his address. “ ‘This is truly apostolic,’ the French said afterward.”32 The success story par excellence about the consecration and Bishop Leonty’s visit to Paris was the account Guettée published in L’Union chrétienne, written in French and intended for an audience that was not exclusively Russian or Orthodox.33 Guettée identified himself as a priest of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite. Polisadov translated and cited excerpts from Guettée in his account. For Russian Orthodox publicists, Guettée’s version of events demonstrated the favorable impression that the church and its services could make on a French ecclesiastic. By virtue of their intelligence and

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learning, Leonty and the other Russian clergy—especially Polisadov, Archimandrite Avvakum (the renowned Sinologist), and Protopriest Ivan Ianyshev (from Wiesbaden)—impressed Guettée and other (unidentified) French ecclesiastics.34 Guettée affirmed the “antiquity and entirely apostolic character” of the services, with nothing “of modern invention.” There was one sad thought that entered his mind as he attended these services: that the Roman Church stigmatizes the Eastern Church as schismatic and heretical when the Eastern Church’s only “fault” has been to oppose Roman innovations, such as new dogmas (e.g., the Immaculate Conception) and the introduction of superstition “in place of true Christian worship” (e.g., veneration of the Sacred Heart). Guettée ended the article with the hope and prayer that the Roman Church would renounce its errors.35 While Guettée by this point was clearly taking the stance of an Orthodox publicist—during Leonty’s visit to Paris, Guettée told the bishop of his wish to join the Russian Church—his portrayal of events, for a mixed readership, could be used to show (as it was used by Polisadov and Popovitsky) what a powerful impact Orthodox worship could make on the Latin mind. In his second installment, Guettée focused on Leonty’s officiating at divine services held on September 13 and 15. Unlike the consecration, these services were open to the public, and were attended primarily by non-­Orthodox visitors.36 Guettée noted the presence of a great crowd of French people, with Roman Catholics being in the majority, and emphasized how their prejudices melted away in the presence of the Orthodox divine services. They all appeared “greatly impressed with the majesty of the eastern worship” and with its ancient character.37 Guettée explained that these Roman Catholic observers wanted to know “why the Roman Church anathematized such good Christians who have the same belief and a worship so edifying.” When they were told that it was due to the Eastern Church’s opposition to “the encroachments of papal despotism,” their response suggested that “they gave their entire and absolute approval to this opposition.”38 The Protestants who attended the services, according to Guettée, did not “show as many external signs of respect as Catholics.” Nonetheless, they “bowed respectfully when the bishop blessed them with the cross and the candlesticks” and indicated that “they were profoundly touched by what they saw,” finding in the Orthodox worship “simultaneously something of the primitive, simple and grand, like everything that belongs to the first centuries of the Church.”39 By Guettée’s account, Leonty’s presence, his officiating, and his blessings bestowed on the large crowds, all had an enormously beneficial impact on the French spectators, by drawing attention to the Eastern Church and causing prejudices to fall by the wayside. “Used to considering the Eastern Church as

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schismatic and heretical” and believing “the Easterners don’t have any beliefs of the Roman Church, and that this latter church alone possesses the true faith and the true Christian worship,” the Roman Catholics who attended services were surprised to find the church “decorated with images of Jesus Christ, the Holy Virgin, and the saints” and to see with what “piety,” “faith,” and “dignity” the bishop and “venerable priests” officiate and celebrate the Eucharist. “We have heard a mass of reflections from the mouths of Roman Catholics which have given us to understand that many prejudices have disappeared from their minds.”40 Guettée imagined that Leonty’s “heart beat more briskly” when he blessed the non-Orthodox “who did not belong to his church but in whom he saw brothers, imprinted by the divine character of Christ.” In fact, Leonty’s presence was so beneficial that Guettée suggested that having an eastern bishop come to Paris periodically could be “one of the most powerful ways to prepare the path to union.”41 Ultimately, the rapprochement of the churches could only be achieved through a groundswell of popular support that would lead the bishops and the pope to understand “that it is better to love each other than to anathematize.” It was precisely the firsthand encounter with Orthodoxy that could brush prejudices aside and produce this kind of change in public opinion that Guettée saw as a necessary precursor to the reunion of the churches.42 Like Polisadov and Guettée, Popovitsky also highlighted the ecumenical significance of the Paris church. At a time when the “age-old prejudices” were disappearing and “many distinguished members of the Catholic clergy” were looking to the Orthodox Church and “seeking in it the origins and beliefs of the true Church of Christ, unfortunately long forgotten in the West,” St. Alexander Nevsky Church would provide a meeting ground for the working out of reconciliation. “A newly built Orthodox temple in the capital of France can serve as a kind of footing on which, with God’s blessing, brothers who have been separated can gather and join forces for the reconciliation of two churches, that formerly represented the one holy Church, with one Pastor and Head, our Lord Jesus Christ.”43 Basing his article on Guettée’s portrayal of events, Popovitsky expressed the conviction that “many” Catholic clergymen were experiencing a change of heart toward Orthodoxy. As far as Catholic clergymen go, the “many” was probably just Guettée and a handful of others. Given Guettée’s comments that the Roman Catholic Church calls the Eastern Church heretical and schismatic, when all the Eastern Church has done is to oppose innovations, Popovitsky exclaimed: “Such are the ideas that can enter the mind of an impartial inoverets [a non-Orthodox Christian] when visiting our Orthodox temple! And to what favorable results for the Church similar ideas can lead with the help of God!”44 Popovitsky described

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Guettée as “impartial” because the French abbé was favorably rather than hostilely disposed to Orthodoxy, a relative rarity in France at the time. But Guettée, who was full of antipapal zeal, was hardly “impartial.” Using L’Union chrétienne as an example of how the foreign papers “were full of the most enthusiastic opinions about the celebration that took place,” Popovitsky closed his article with the prayer that “the Orthodox Church of Paris would serve as a symbol of brotherhood and mutual love between peoples and as a voice of reconciliation between the separated churches.”45 In less conciliatory language, Pelleport combined Orthodox providentialism with the theme that the Parisian church alarmed the Jesuits, who after all—and there is truth to this idea—bore significant responsibility for distorting westerners’ understanding of Orthodoxy. In a letter to the editor of Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, Pelleport described the new temple as the end of “centuries of eclipse,” as a breach in a wall of ignorance that Roman Catholics, especially Jesuits and ultramontanes, had built to defend themselves from the true light of Orthodoxy.46 This wonderful event alarmed the whole ultramontane party. The Jesuits, who looked with indignation at the building that was erected, jealously kept an eye on everything that Fr. Vasiliev, the Paris protopriest, silently and without sensation, accomplished as much for the French Orthodox as for the edification of the Russians living in Paris. At last it fell to the lot of the Jesuits to see what an extraordinary impression the visit of His Grace Leonty—his officiating, his noble, worthy, and good-natured Christian manner with each and all, the very celebration of the consecration of the House of God, the solemnly perfect liturgy according to the arch-hierarchical rite—made on the Parisian population.47 Naturally, crowd size at the consecration and subsequent services was central to the narrative of the new church as a spectacular success. Although French sources corroborate the general idea of large crowds at the consecration, it is difficult to develop a clear sense of the ratio between Orthodox and non-Orthodox in attendance at the consecration. After listing some of the most notable of the Russian and French dignitaries who attended the consecration, L’Opinion nationale reported that “several members of the Institute of France and a great number of notable figures from the world of letters” were present.48 Le Nord’s correspondent claimed that in addition to the Orthodox worshippers, “more than four hundred guests foreign to this confession crowded into the church.”49 There was a French audience for the

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occasion, but it is also evident that Orthodox publicists had a tendency to exaggerate when talking about the size of the crowds. Concerning the consecration, privately Ambassador Kiselev wrote in his diary that of the three hundred invitations Vasiliev had sent out to French Catholics, only about fifteen or sixteen people came.50 Kiselev’s account is more sobering than that of the enthusiastic Polisadov, who talked about so much clamoring for tickets that a hundred additional invitations were added to the original three hundred, and who estimated that by the time the carriages began to arrive, up to six thousand spectators not fortunate enough to have tickets had gathered across from the church to watch events unfold.51 Kapelmans did not estimate the size of the crowd in attendance, but pointed out that it was “numerous,” and “mixed,” with representatives of all nationalities and all confessions, including five Catholic priests.52 Popovitsky’s numbers are close to those of Polisadov: twelve hundred people inside the church and about five thousand spectators outside.53 Pelleport indicated that every time Leonty served, there were fourteen to eighteen hundred in attendance representing all social estates. He added that “officially it is known that in the course of the first five days after the consecration of the church, during divine services more than six thousand people were present, but up to eighty-four thousand people looked around the temple.”54 That would have required a steady stream of people to be entering and exiting the church throughout the day. With more hyperbole, Pelleport wrote that these crowds “unanimously declared that the divine service of the Russian Church struck them with the impression of its ancient and apostolic character.”55 Guettée expressed such an opinion, and perhaps Monseigneur Baudry did too. While other observers reportedly left with positive impressions, we know little about what the crowds thought. But Pelleport was confident that “the Russian Church gained entrance into the hearts of several thousand people not belonging to its depths.”56Although many of the visitors were Italians and Anglicans, he portrayed the event as an enormous success with the French public, adding that ten days after the consecration “anywhere that we go, everyone is still talking about it and they speak favorably, even with emotion.”57 Like some other publicists, Pelleport may have had a tendency to superimpose the comments or reactions of a few individuals onto the crowd as a whole. Many of the people who visited the church, Roman Catholic or otherwise, may have left with favorable impressions or some kind of fresh perspective, but the specific extent or nature of such shifts in perspective are elusive. So while the founding of the new church and its consecration by a bishop were

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reported to the Russian educated public as significant events spreading the light of Orthodoxy, the cautious tone of Pravoslavnoe obozrenie’s correspondent in Stuttgart, Deacon Replovsky, provided a certain counterbalance to the exuberance conveyed in the other accounts. Agreeing that Leonty’s trip to the West “was an important event in all respects,” and acknowledging that people in Russia have most likely “heard and read time and time again how well the celebration of the Orthodox divine services affects people, few though they may be, who are capable of rising above fanaticism,” Replovsky suggested that similar events would be beneficial; yet he cautioned that real rapprochement between the Christian confessions was still far off.58 Besides the accounts of the consecration, Vasiliev’s contemporaries found other occasions to express their conviction that the Paris church was a spectacular success, profoundly influencing the way Europeans perceived Orthodoxy and confirming Orthodoxy’s rising international prestige. Of course, Empress Eugénie’s visit could not go unmentioned. Vasiliev described her December 1861 visit, which had taken him by surprise, in a businesslike report to the over-procurator and in a warmer and more detailed letter to Leonty. In January 1862 Strannik published an account of the episode that contained many of the details mentioned in Vasiliev’s letter to Leonty, but that was also embellished to emphasize how impressed the empress was by the church and by Vasiliev. The archpriest reported to both the over-procurator and the bishop that the empress stayed about twenty minutes. Strannik reported that she stayed about an hour and fleshed out the conversation between Vasiliev and the empress into a full-fledged dialogue. An important detail in all three accounts was that Empress Eugénie had heard that the consecration was magnificent. She expressed feeling a sense of reverence in the church, was very curious about the altar, and asked Vasiliev about the differences between the western and eastern churches.59 Vasiliev’s letter to Leonty and the Strannik article both reported that she asked whether the bishop who had come to Paris for the consecration was married. When Vasiliev explained that bishops had to be monastics, the empress replied, according to Vasiliev, “too bad that you cannot be a bishop,” and according to Strannik, “what a pity . . . that you are married . . . and that such an excellent priest can never attain the episcopal office!”60 The Strannik article also featured the empress expressing her approval of giving communion to children, a detail absent in Vasiliev’s letters.61 While the factual discrepancies between the Strannik article and Vasiliev’s letters are not that substantive, Vasiliev complained to Leonty about them, not wanting to be blamed for them and wanting Leonty to use the authentic version of events to correct rumors.62 Leonty confided to a colleague that it

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was unfortunate that the “very interesting” conversation between Empress Eugénie and Fr. Vasiliev was altered when it appeared in Strannik; yet he did not have Vasiliev’s letter about this matter published but gave it to “Vladyka” (presumably the metropolitan of St. Petersburg) who read it in the Holy Synod.63 The incident is illustrative of how, in their eagerness to believe and zeal to demonstrate that the Parisian church was having a decided impact on European opinion, the Russian publicists sometimes played fast and loose with the facts. Leonty shared the aspirations and impressions of the Orthodox publicists and viewed the new church as a significant development. “What is written about the impression of our divine services on the minds and hearts of the Roman Catholics is fully justified. The harvest is plentiful! Very many are visiting our church (as Fr. Vasiliev writes) even now, every day.”64 Leonty’s memoirs (1887, published 1913–1914) suggest that he had an exaggerated notion about the media attention the consecration garnered, recalling that his picture appeared “in almost all the European and even in some Asian papers,” and that his homily was translated and published the day after the consecration “in the French papers.”65 In actuality, the two French-language papers that published his address—which talked about the new church as inhabited by God in the “illustrious city” of Paris, reminded the faithful that the church connected them with the faithful in Russia, and called on the faithful to love the church and to pray—were both Russian organs: Journal de St.-Pétersbourg and L’Union chrétienne. It appeared in the latter only in December 1861.66 Nonetheless, media attention gave Leonty a certain celebrity status that followed him back to Russia. He clearly enjoyed the fame while it lasted, reminiscing about his time in Paris as the most pleasant experience of his life.67 The fact that he was treated as a celebrity when he returned to Russia after the consecration confirms that his contemporaries attached importance to the new church. Leonty found, however, that there was a downside to his celebrity status. Repeating himself to all the “various high-ranking people, men and women,” whose visits left him no peace, lost its charm.68 He also indicated that his fame provoked envy. While the over-procurator of the Holy Synod, A. P. Tolstoy, “on account of his apathetic character” listened “coldly” to his report, Foreign Minister Gorchakov, who sought rapprochement with France, expressed his pleasure. Gorchakov expressed the sentiment that Leonty’s “commission” had been fulfilled “superlatively,” exceeding the foreign minister’s expectations.69 Eventually, Leonty recalled, the public clamor about events in Paris faded and the bishop embarked on the next phase of his career. Shortly after his trip to Paris he was assigned to the “second-class” diocese of Kamenets Podol'skii in western Ukraine.70

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Vasiliev’s daughter Liudmila Avtonomova left a memoir about her father that was published, like Leonty’s memoirs, a few years after the fiftieth anniversary of the church’s founding. While some of the contemporary accounts highlighted the polemical aspect of the church in its witness against papal errors (e.g., Polisadov) or its ability to instill fear in the hearts of the Jesuits (e.g., Pelleport), Avtonomova drew on Jesuit conspiracy motifs, although she did not conflate Roman Catholicism entirely with Jesuitism. Her memoir, inaccurate on some points, not only highlights her strong conception of Jesuitism as antithetical to Russian identity but also obscures how cautious the Russian government was about the whole endeavor. According to Avtonomova, her father had terrible difficulties getting authorization for the church from the French government, succeeding only after Vasiliev overcame “various hindrances” placed in his path by the Jesuits: “All the other confessions, even non-Christians, had their places of worship; but the French government—under the pressure of the Jesuit order, which was very strong then—obstinately declined every petition, considering Orthodoxy a harmful sect that defected from Catholicism, and called us nothing other than schismatics.”71 In fact, it had taken Vasiliev three attempts and ten years to get authorization from the Russian government. His “two unfruitful attempts” were even explicitly mentioned in Description de l’Église russe de Paris, but some Russian accounts either omitted this point or suggested the Jesuits and French government were responsible for the first two denials.72 Given Napoleon III’s interest in an entente with Russia, Kiselev appears to have had little difficulty getting the approval of the French government. Vasiliev’s daughter, however, provides a colorful version of events that involves her father having to bear the full weight of seeking the authorization from the French government because the Russian government would not. In her version, Vasiliev obtained permission after a face-to-face meeting with Napoleon III. During this purported meeting, the French emperor questioned Vasiliev at length about the Orthodox sect, demonstrating such “profound ignorance,” that there could be only one explanation: the Jesuits. “No doubt it was the doing of the Jesuits to keep Napoleon [III] in complete ignorance concerning the Orthodox faith which they fanatically loathed, probably conscious of its rightness, truth, and therefore fearing it.”73 But after Vasiliev gave Napoleon III a lesson in church history, the former received the necessary authorization, although with prohibitions against spreading propaganda among Catholics and against bells.74 Avtonomova confirmed that by and large Catholic clergy did not visit the church, but the clergy were not representative of the French population in general, who took great interest in it.75 As anti-Jesuitical as her account

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is, it is also notable for the fact that she explained differences in French and Russian customs, demonstrating the reciprocal nature of the church as a contact zone. She recounts some of the issues that arose when the church was inundated with curious visitors. Many tried to wear their hats into the church, and French ladies would even try to sneak in their little dogs. So the wardens had their work cut out for them, knocking hats off the heads of the unruly and, if necessary, pulling a little dog by the scruff of its neck from under a cloak and flinging the poor creature down the stairs. The Russians had to put up signs to let visitors know that hats and dogs were prohibited inside the temple. But Avtonomova explained that the French did not consider it “improper” to bring a dog into a church because everything is God’s. She recalled seeing dogs roam freely among the pews when she was among devout Catholics in Italy.76 By her recollection, the icons in the church were what really struck the French, because in their churches they bowed before the crucifix and statues of Christ or the Mother of God, but they were not accustomed to venerating icons.77 Avtonomova went so far as to suggest that the Jesuits threatened Vasiliev because of the church’s success in attracting curious French Catholics. The French clergy was “so startled and embittered by the wonderful impression made on Catholics by our church, and especially by the visit of Empress Eugénie, that the Jesuits sent father anonymous letters in which they threatened: ‘Beware, we’ll blow you into the air with your gilded shop.’ ”78 But with time the “passions” and the “religious rivalry” subsided and foreigners continued to attend services, behaving appropriately.79 The Russian church on Daru Street was a “showcase” of Slavophilism.80 Orthodox publicists heralded the new church as a spectacular success. Their representations of the church expressed Orthodox ecumenical aspirations and Slavophile dreams about Russia’s historical destiny to reunite the Christian churches. The Paris church bridged the two movements of Slavophilism and early Russian Panslavism by translating Slavophile ideas of Orthodox destiny into concrete action with the limited, albeit still political and diplomatic goal of raising Russia’s and the Eastern Church’s visibility and prestige. Neither Slavophilism nor Russian Panslavism represented well-defined, cohesive ideologies. The former was rooted in the belief that the Orthodox had preserved the primitive faith and that Russia’s historical destiny was inextricably linked to the preservation and defense of Orthodoxy. Russian Panslavs more actively aspired to the cultural and/or political unity of the Slavs. Russian Panslavism was “the ideological heir” of and “practical extension” of Russian

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Slavophilism, and Panslavs sought to apply Slavophile ideas to the realm of foreign policy.81 Both movements involved disparate elements of educated society, including some government ministers and members of court circles, but neither had official state sanction.82 The religious nationalism that emerged in discourses surrounding the Paris church was suggestive of a primarily spiritual goal, and the aspiration of reuniting the churches was a universal goal that exceeded the bounds of the Slavic world. Given this universal vision and the emphasis on Orthodox cultural unity, the Paris church was more an embodiment of Slavophilism than of Panslavism, and the religious nationalism surrounding it was distinct from the more explicitly political and militant forms of Panslavism that emerged in and after 1867.83 Russian reports of the consecration emphasized that the new edifice, before, during, and after its consecration drew crowds of western heterodox foreigners to the church. Even though Russian Orthodox participants in and publicists of the consecration believed the new church would narrow the distance between Orthodox and non-Orthodox confessions, paving the way to reunion, the spectacle they presented simultaneously expressed and reinforced their own sense of distinctiveness and their claim, in opposition to the Roman Catholics, to have the full deposit of the faith. While the establishment of the church blurred the lines between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and even though Orthodox publicists saw the Paris church as a steppingstone on the path to reunification of the churches, the Russian narratives simultaneously sharpened the lines between confessions by reinforcing the idea of western heterodox foreigners being confronted with the truth of Orthodoxy. Of course, the Orthodox publicists acknowledged other confessions as genuinely Christian, theological differences aside. The founding of the church had a significance for the Orthodox publicists far greater than what it had for contemporary French observers. It was the pinnacle of a public relations campaign that demonstrated that the Russian educated public was self-conscious under the European gaze. Russians cared a good deal about how westerners perceived them and their faith. Along with Vasiliev’s letter to the bishop of Nantes which made the archpriest famous in Russia in the spring of 1861, the church and the success story told about it in the religious journals, especially in the fall of 1861 and early 1862, had symbolic importance for the Orthodox reading public in the aftermath of the Crimean War. St. Alexander Nevsky Church of Paris was comparable to what the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur represented to French Catholics after 1871—a symbol of national regeneration following a national trauma.84 The Paris church suggested that Providence was raising Orthodoxy and Russia to prominence at precisely that moment when the fate of the papacy was

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uncertain, promising—it could be hoped—a reappraisal of authority in the western church and healing of the schism. But the temporal power did not entirely collapse, and even as it was challenged, the papacy was consolidating its spiritual authority. With the papal question unsettled in the 1860s, French Catholic polemicists clung to the law of schismatic churches and their narratives about the enslaved Caesaropapist Russian Church. The same anti-Orthodox and sometimes Russophobic attitudes proliferated after 1861 as before. While not directly caused by the establishment of a Russian church in Paris, it is possible to see in some antiOrthodox narratives of the 1860s elements of backlash against the Russian Orthodox Church’s closer proximity and greater visibility.

Ch a p ter   5

The Church Chained to the Throne of the “Czar” But for as long as it has existed, what else has the Orthodox Church been except a debased slave chained to the foot of the throne? —Abbé Louis-Henri Delière, 1862

After the consecration of the Paris church, the Orthodox counternarrative that explained Orthodox doctrine, worship, art, and architecture and affirmed that the Orthodox Church recognizes only one head, Christ, existed alongside anti-Orthodox narratives that persisted throughout and beyond the 1860s. While historians often think of Alexander II’s reign, characterized by the great reforms, as contrasting sharply with his father’s, when it came to Russian policy in the Kingdom of Poland and the western borderlands, there was considerable continuity between Alexander II and Nicholas I, which became eminently clear after Russia crushed the Polish rebellion of 1863–1864. Russia regarded the insurrection as an internal affair and refused British and French calls for an international congress on the Polish question.1 Since the government was convinced that the Roman Catholic clergy provided the spiritual backbone for the Polish national cause, Russification policies that followed the rebellion included the closing and confiscation of property of churches and monasteries and the eventual abolition of the last Uniate diocese and churches in the empire.2 Russian policy toward Poland spelled the end of Napoleon III’s hopes for a FrancoRussian rapprochement and killed Russia’s concordat with the papacy, formally abrogated by Alexander II in December 1866.3 Public opinion in Paris raged against Russia.4 Vasiliev wrote, “It is sad to live in Paris now: terrible hatred toward us is being expressed in conversations and papers.”5 Young and 132

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unlearned “ultramontane” professors at the Sorbonne took every opportunity to “thunder against” Orthodoxy with “abuse and slander.”6 Geopolitical concerns, namely the Roman and Polish questions, kept anti-Orthodox attitudes alive and relevant in the 1860s. As in the Catholic polemical works of the 1840s, the myth of the tsar’s supreme headship over an enslaved church and subservient clergy remained a central theme. But while further perpetuating negative attitudes about Orthodoxy that had been circulating since the 1840s, anti-Orthodox narratives of the 1860s are also indicative of backlash against the foothold the Orthodox publicists had established in the middle of Paris.

The Belliustin Affair: The Leipzig Brochure “Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia” Whenever possible, anti-Orthodox writers drew on Russian sources, often the works of converts to Roman Catholicism, to substantiate their claims about the failings of the Russian Church. Discussions in Russia about the need for church reform, in part a response to negative publicity in the West, provided material for Roman Catholic polemicists. One work in particular fell into the hands of western polemicists, who found in it indisputable proof of the Russian Church’s bankruptcy. In 1858 in Leipzig, the work of Father Ivan Belliustin, a Russian Orthodox priest, was published anonymously—in Russian—without the author’s knowledge. Belliustin’s friend, the publicist and Panslav Mikhail Pogodin, had asked the priest to document the conditions facing Russia’s rural clergy.7 In his Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia, which was intended to be an internal document, Belliustin presented a dire assessment of the material and moral condition of the Russian parish clergy—accompanied by a scathing critique of the episcopacy—and appealed to the emperor for sweeping reforms.8 The work lent impetus to the church reform movement in Russia by making the necessary reforms a subject for public discussion and debate.9 Belliustin was mortified when he discovered that Pogodin had published the book abroad, knowing too well that ecclesiastical authorities would be displeased.10 He protested to Pogodin that “my guilt, in their words, consists not in writing the book but in [permitting] all Europe to know what is going on here.”11 Prince Peter Vladimirovich Dolgorukov (1816–1868), banished from Russia in 1861, commented in his work La Verité sur la Russie (The truth about Russia, 1860) that it was regrettable that Belliustin’s work had not been translated into French, as “it would have made the Russian government turn red in the eyes of civilized Europe.”12

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Actually, Belliustin might not have realized how few criticisms his book contained that would have been new to western readers in the wake of Horrer, Custine, Theiner, and by the mid- to late 1850s, Gagarin and Shuvalov. The chief novelty was that Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia was the work of an Orthodox priest, not a Roman Catholic polemicist or zealous convert. As both an eyewitness and an Orthodox priest perceived (by Catholics) as loyal to his church, Belliustin’s work corroborated the Catholic accounts of the wholesale poverty—material, educational, and moral—of the Russian Church. Belliustin blamed the episcopacy for the dreadful conditions, however, which differentiated his characterization from western polemical works. Driven by concerns about Napoleon III’s foreign policy, the papacy, Poland, Panslavism, and/or ecumenism, it was not long before French Catholic polemicists appropriated Belliustin’s work. Discussion of the Leipzig brochure in Le Monde in the spring and fall of 1861 can be interpreted as anti-Orthodox backlash in response to the Russian priest-publicists’ activities in Paris. First, simultaneously with the Jaquemet-Vasiliev open-print polemic in the spring of 1861, Le Monde published an article on Russia by Gustave de La Tour (1814–1893), who summarized the Leipzig brochure that “unveiled the depravity and vigorously attacked the ulcers of the Russian Church.”13 La Tour repeated clichés about the Russian clergy having no real influence on the population due to their absolute dependence on the civil power. While the goal of the Nikolaevan system had been “the absolute unity of the Russian empire, under the power of an autocrat, supreme pontiff, and dictator,” a new era had begun at Nicholas I’s death. Anticipating that emancipation of the serfs would lead to turbulence, La Tour wrote: “In other lands the clergy could prevent these disorders, but the Russian clergy has no influence; rendered impotent by its awful degradation, it shows what comes of a Church reduced to become a docile instrument of the civil power. There is no sadder spectacle.” Since bishops were in a condition of “absolute dependence on the civil power,” they made up for it by treating the popes like slaves. La Tour reiterated claims about the Russian clergy’s unimaginable ignorance and inability to preach. He explained that “the secular clergy forms a caste almost similar to those of India.” Russia’s ecclesiastical educational institutions were defunct and in need of a complete overhaul because “the Government and the prelates, mastered by the conscience of their schism, are too suspicious to allow serious study.”14 This discussion of the Russian Church was germane to his overarching argument: While the Nikolaevan system had passed, Russia was dominated by a “revolutionary doctrine” with “two faces, . . . panslavism and liberalism.”15 The intrusion of liberal elements into Russia would at

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least “destroy the official church to the definitive benefit of Catholicism,” which alone could save Russia. In the meantime, he considered support for Catholic co-religionists—Polish, German, or Slavic—vital to check Russia’s “formidable ambition” of “world domination.”16 While La Tour focused on the Panslav threat, with the papal question a pressing concern, exactly two weeks after the consecration of the new Russian church, Le Monde began publishing excerpts from the work of a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Poitiers, Abbé Louis-Henri Delière, who translated large sections of the Leipzig brochure, adding plenty of his own colorful commentary.17 Delière’s work on Belliustin appeared in book form in 1862: Tableau d’une Église nationale d’après un pope russe (Picture of a national church according to a Russian pope).18 Delière presented a lively narrative that reiterated many of the common prejudices of his day. He cited several other sources to paint his tableau of the horrific state of the Russian Church, including Horrer, Theiner, and works of Russian writers who used the foreign press “to report the dangers that threaten their country and to indicate the ways to remedy them,” such as the anonymously published works of Muraviev (Le Raskol) and Dolgoroukov (La Vérité sur la Russie).19 Significantly, Delière’s stated motive for analyzing Belliustin’s work was anxiety about a breach between the French and Roman churches. As for Bishop Jaquemet in his Lenten Epistle of January 1861, for Delière the Russian Church, subjugated to the emperor, stood in for what the French Church under Napoleon III must not become: a schismatic, national church. Delière called Belliustin’s Description a “groan . . . from the depths of the Russian schism; it is the cry of pain from a priest of the unfortunate Greco-Russian Church, horrified at the sight of the abyss to the bottom of which the clergy of this Church, especially the lower clergy, has fallen.” Rather than turn his eyes toward Rome, for the schismatic author “the true head of his Church is the Emperor.”20 For Delière, the appearance of Belliustin’s work about this “degraded Church” was providential. Its publication, just when the “Sovereign Pontiff ” was subject to “the most violent and unjust attacks” was no less than “an eloquent demonstration for Catholic nations of the absolute necessity of a supreme head, independent from [any other] temporal power, in a spiritual society.” Delière asked: “Isn’t this finally a serious and solemn warning by which Divine Providence seems to say to the Catholic nations: Here is what you will be one day if you ever separate yourself from the great center of unity.”21 Delière argued that Catholic societies are always reformable. He likened Catholic societies to a tree whose branches may break and leaves may fall

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off, but despite such signs of decay the trunk is still attached to the root: the Church and the Holy See. Russia, in contrast, was like the colossus of Nebuchadnezzar—the head and body were of solid and precious metals, and it was possible to make some embellishments, but the base was clay. No serious reforms were possible.22 Russia, according to Delière, was a land characterized by the despotism not only of the tsar but of bureaucratic machinery; nowhere are “fear of light, duplicity, hypocrisy, and deceit elevated to as high a degree as in Russia.”23 Yet Russia wanted to appear liberal and progressive in the eyes of Europe. “From this results an absolute lack of good faith, something that resembles a general conspiracy having the aim of deceiving the world.”24 The French abbé parroted the theme common among his compatriots and critics of Russian Orthodoxy: the complete enslavement of the Russian Church.25 In a critical jab against the idea of a French national church, Delière asserted that there was idiocy and stupidity “in the conduct of a nation and of a clergy that breaks with the Holy See, under the curious pretext of liberty and of independence.”26 In discussing Belliustin’s picture of the Russian Church, Delière reminded his readers that the Russian author was a devoted and loyal member of the church whose clergy he described in such grim and demoralized terms. From Delière’s point of view, Belliustin made an especially grave error by appealing to the “czar” to bring about the major reforms that the Russian Church needed. Belliustin wrote: “A radical transformation for the entire clergy is essential. . . . But can this transformation be achieved only by some powerful hand? Yes, it can be done only by the Sovereign himself. Does the clergy deserve to move his hand to act? That is, is it so useful and essential to the state that the Sovereign will deign to turn his attention to this matter? That is the question!!! Upon his decision depends the whole future fate of the clergy, that is, will it arise again to a new, joyous, and beneficial life, or will it rot in some putrid swamp?”27 Belliustin then drew on the liturgically significant passage from Ezekiel 37—read during the Matins of Holy and Great Saturday (i.e., during the liturgical commemoration of the period between Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection)—comparing the Russian clergy to a field of dry bones and calling on the sovereign to embrace his prophetic calling and bring the dry bones back to life, to bring “out from the darkness of the netherworld those who are to lead others to the celestial world.” Then and only then: “A mighty host, called to life, will dedicate all of its most fervent prayers to the life-giving, divinely anointed Sovereign, to all his family and realm. And this mighty host, there in the land of eternal life, before the throne of the King of Kings, with a powerful voice will cry out the name of

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that tsar of the Russian land who achieved what has not been done since the time of Prince Vladimir, the equal to the Apostles.”28 Delière was horrified by this appeal to the civil authority to reform the Russian Church. Only grafting the Orthodox Church back onto the true vine could save it, and then the pope could protect the Christians from the crushing blows of the civil authorities who killed consciences and rendered the Russian Church to its servile and deplorable state. Thus, Belliustin’s appeal to the temporal authority to resurrect the Russian clergy provoked a peppery diatribe. What shame! What degradation! Oh Photius, oh Michael Cerularius [ninth- and eleventh-century patriarchs of Constantinople whom Roman Catholics blame for the East-West schism]! Would you ever have believed that such would one day be the consequences of your separation from Rome! The word of liberty fills your mouth, and your Church has found only slavery. A few years ago, a great Catholic preacher characterized the schismatic Greek Church: Christianity in a state of petrification; today, a priest of this very Church sees further: the sanctuary itself, the clergy . . . is a field of dried-out remains. And then, the height of shame, the priest himself, who has had the courage to break the walls of the temple and to reveal the horrors of the schismatic sanctuary, ends in throwing himself at the foot of the throne of the czar and beseeching him to call back to life these dried bones, to restore the vigor to this tasteless salt. . . . But for as long as it has existed, what else has the Orthodox Church been except a debased slave chained to the foot of the throne?29 Delière found in Belliustin proof of the hopeless dependence of the Russian Church on civil authority and the deplorable results of its schism with Rome. His themes were not new or original, but his use of Belliustin’s work to broadcast the Russian Church’s problems was an example of precisely the type of publicity that the Holy Synod would have preferred to avoid. Nonetheless, Belliustin’s and Delière’s works received further dissemination in the French press and other venues. Gagarin utilized Belliustin’s work to publicize the fact that the Russian Church was “in crisis,” but he found Delière’s book on Belliustin unsatisfying.30 The Russian Jesuit thought that Delière would have done his readers a greater service if he had published a translation with commentary rather than his own assessment of Belliustin’s work. As a Russian exile, however, Gagarin might not have been as tuned in to the subtext of Delière’s work, concern about Napoleon III’s papal policy. As critical as their works were of

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the Russian Church, and as much as their works reaffirmed the idea that civilization emanated from the papacy, the Russian Roman Catholics generally expressed love for Russia and lacked the hostility that characterized many works by western polemicists. Gagarin found Belliustin’s work moving and considered it extremely significant as the testimony of an eyewitness writing with the most “heartfelt sincerity” about the “deplorable situation” of his church. The author’s “naïve ignorance” prevented him from understanding the “true” sources of his church’s misery (i.e., schism from Rome) and remedies.31 Gagarin added that he had been partially aware of the problems in the Russian Church before reading Belliustin, but that he “did not know that it had reached such dreadful proportions” and “would refuse to believe it if I had not been entirely convinced by the simple and depressing narrative of this poor priest.”32 Yet Belliustin’s sincere and convincing portrait was lost in Delière’s account—which pasted together excerpts from Belliustin with excerpts from other dubious or unreliable sources. “I confess that if I had not first read the Russian brochure, I would have had only a mediocre faith in the assertions contained in the French brochure.”33 Although critical of Delière, he shared with other Catholic polemicists the belief that the problems faced by the Russian Church and clergy were a “consequence of the absorption of the Church by the State.”34 Besides reviewing Delière, Gagarin utilized Belliustin’s Description in two later works.35 Thanks to Delière’s popularization of it, Belliustin’s Leipzig brochure turned up in other works. One was a French translation of Thomas William M. Marshall’s Christian Missions (1862). Although Marshall, an Anglican convert to Catholicism, already displayed an extremely anti-Orthodox tone, his French translator, Count Van Der Cruysse de Waziers, substantially augmented the volume with more anti-Orthodox material, including Delière and Belliustin. Waziers incorporated citations from Russian sources in order to bring more testimony to bear on the degradation of the church that “breaks with the Holy See under the pretext of liberty and of independence.”36 René’s article on the Russian church in Paris in Semaine des familles also mentioned Delière’s book in passing as a “work full of interest,” noting that anyone who consulted it “knows what to expect” about the condition of the Russian clergy.37 Besides appearing in the Catholic press, Delière’s work on Belliustin found its way into an intellectual circle, the Society of Antiquarians of the West. After Delière assisted the society with some translations for an atlas of Russian antiquities, the society’s members proposed making Delière a permanent nonresiding member of their organization. Presenting this proposal to the society in 1865, the speaker mentioned that Delière “was kind enough to

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give me Tableau de l’Église nationale russe, a narrative conveyed according to a pope, and in which we find the most curious and the most useful information about the schismatic Russian church and about its clergy.”38 Delière used the Leipzig brochure to critique Napoleon III’s Italian policy and to support ultramontane claims about the need for strong papal authority. As also seen in Jaquemet’s January 1861 Lenten Epistle, the “enslaved Russian Church” narrative had become integral to the “papacy as the necessary center of unity” narrative. For the Catholic apologists, Belliustin’s Description confirmed that the Russian Church was in a lifeless state and could be revivified only by reunion with Rome. L’Union chrétienne, which followed coverage of Russia in the Parisian press closely and responded to anti-Orthodox journalists, kept silent about Belliustin’s book and Delière’s popularization of it between September 1861 and the summer of 1862, even though the recurring axiom that the Orthodox publicists kept challenging was the tsar’s alleged pontificate over an enslaved church, a prominent theme in Delière. There might have been some good reasons for avoiding direct discussion. First, the Belliustin affair represented a new phenomenon, as the Orthodox publicists had not encountered such a dire assessment of the Russian Church from an Orthodox source. Vasiliev, whose sympathies were with the white clergy even if he did not necessarily bear animosity toward the black clergy, believed that the Holy Synod’s support for L’Union chrétienne was tepid at best. He might have preferred to leave the Synod in the dark about the discussion of the Leipzig brochure. He would have had a sense of the aggravation that Belliustin’s work caused in the Synod; adding to the chagrin of the Synod and to the force of the critique that the tsar was the head of the Russian Church, it was the emperor who saved Belliustin from a harsh northern exile. In addition to those considerations, Guettée’s request to be received into the Russian Church remained pending until June 1862.39 At roughly the time when Guettée’s confessional status was resolved, Sush­ kov published an article in serial form in L’Union chrétienne, responding to serious criticisms leveled against the Russian clergy, such as the notion that there was a clerical caste in Russia, an idea perpetuated by Belliustin’s work among others.40 Even when Sushkov broke the silence, he was actually responding directly to a letter in Le Nord from its St. Petersburg correspondent, who decided to address “a social question that profoundly interests our land,” meaning the question of church reforms.41 The correspondent mentioned that the Russian clergy “forms a caste almost completely isolated from the rest of the nation” and that in the countryside the clergy lived “almost outside of civilized society.” Clerical education and the hierarchical structure

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of the clergy had been static for centuries. He alluded to a “brochure published abroad a few years ago by a young priest” which “disclosed for the first time the vicissitudes of this disinherited class [the white clergy],” a clear reference to Belliustin, and then mentioned some of the reforms that were under consideration to rectify the problems and to enhance the clergy’s influence in society.42 In his response to Le Nord’s correspondent, and indirectly to Belliustin, Sushkov mentioned that since the newspaper had circulated some “inexact opinions” about the Russian Church and its clergy around the world, he wanted to rectify an injustice.43 He thought Le Nord’s correspondent exaggerated the negative state of the Russian clergy vis-à-vis the western European clergy and vis-à-vis the rest of Russian society by portraying the Russian clergy as the most backward and harmful, as well as the least civilized and respected class in Russia.44 Sushkov also objected to the axiom that the Russian clergy formed a caste. He admitted that it had become rare for people from nonclerical estates to enter the clergy and commonplace for children of clergy to follow the careers of their fathers, but he explained these traditions as “purely accidental” and changeable, since such practices were not rooted in doctrine or principle.45 Discussion of the Leipzig brochure in Le Nord has significant implications. Regarded in the French press as the organ of official Russia, the paper founded by the Russian Foreign Ministry was openly discussing the need for church reform in Russia. Yet this public scrutiny and discussion in western Europe and in Russia of the need for church reforms, while embraced by some lay officials, was not necessarily so enthusiastically welcomed by the ecclesiastical authorities who bore the brunt of the criticism, even though they too recognized the need for reforms. The Belliustin case illustrates that when it came to self-criticism, the Russian publicists faced a catch-22. The discussions in Le Nord—not to mention Pogodin’s decision to publish Belliustin’s manuscript in Leipzig—show that among Russian publicists there was no agreement about how best to defend Orthodoxy’s public image and Russian interests. The paper of the Russian Foreign Ministry saw fit to acknowledge before the West that Russia was having a public discussion about the need for church reforms. Publicists like Pogodin, who used the freer western press to push for ecclesial and legal reforms, poured fuel on fires lit by Catholic polemicists who seized on such works to confirm their anti-Orthodox narratives. While Horrer and Custine had exposed Russian persecution of Roman Catholics precisely because they believed that Russia feared bad publicity, some Russian publicists understood that pressure from abroad was a powerful impetus for reexamination on the domestic front and used the freer western press and freer Russian press in the West as a venue for a critical

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reexamination of Russian church-state relations and to increase the pressure for church reform.46 Meanwhile, the association Roman Catholic polemicists made between the Catholic Church and civilization was so strong that they greedily pounced on Russian self-criticism to confirm their view of the Eastern Church’s bankruptcy, to defend an independent papacy, and comment on foreign policy issues.

A Liberal Catholic Perspective on the Problem with Russia Interest in the progress of reform in Russia, and perhaps a sense of disillusionment regarding that progress after the suppression of the Polish rebellion of 1863, kept French Catholics reflecting on whether Russia was a menace to Christian civilization or was a power that could be integrated into the family of European nations. Even Russophiles (e.g., Laurentie) who supported the second position believed European integration would be possible only if Russia returned to the Roman Catholic fold. Felix Dupanloup, the liberal Catholic bishop of Orléans, expressed a similar mentality in a letter to Prince Augustin Golitsyn that served as an introduction to Golitsyn’s 1864 reprinting of Father Jean-Louis Rozaven’s De la réunion de l’Église russe avec l’Église catholique (On the reunion of the Russian Church with the Catholic Church, 1822). Dupanloup’s letter to Golitsyn illustrates that even a liberal Catholic desiring Russian integration with Europe shared a common set of attitudes about the Russian Church with his most ultramontane, reactionary compatriots. Because Catholic polemicists across the political spectrum generally believed a tsar-pope ruled over an enslaved Russian church and considered Orthodoxy a schismatic and distorted form of Christianity at best, the Orthodox publicists did not bother to distinguish much between liberal Catholics and intransigent ultramontanes. From their point of view, all Catholics were papist and hence more or less ultramontane. The Russian Jesuits began to actively propagandize in Paris in the 1850s, especially after the Crimean War, and their efforts increased during the 1860s. Augustin Golitsyn, one of the most active Catholic publicists, was one of L’Union chrétienne’s chief intellectual adversaries. There may not have been any particular event that inspired Golitsyn to reprint two works of the Russian Jesuit Rozaven (1772–1851), but the fact that Orthodox apologists were publishing in the West was likely one factor, while the Russo-Polish conflict of 1863–1864 and the ongoing issue of Catholics in Russia’s western borderlands kept fueling religious controversies. A convert to Catholicism, Rozaven had entered the Jesuit order in 1804 and lived in Russia as a Jesuit missionary from 1804 to 1820, a period when Roman Catholicism attracted

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a following among the Russian aristocracy, leading to a reaction against Roman Catholic proselytism and the expulsion of the Jesuits from Russia in 1820. Rozaven’s spiritual descendants Gagarin and Golitsyn claimed, like Rozaven, to intensely love Russia. Consequently they devoted themselves to the task of working to reunite Russia to Rome under papal auspices and saw preservation of the eastern rite as an important key to that union. Russophobic themes were absent from the works of the Russian Jesuits. They were Catholic Westernizers, though they shared with more vitriolic French polemicists the view that only Roman Catholicism could fully civilize and bring Russia into the family of European nations. As the Russian Jesuits stepped up their propaganda efforts in the 1860s, they did not hesitate to enlist French Catholic publicists in the cause. So when Golitsyn prepared a new edition of a work Rozaven originally published in 1822, it contained a foreword penned by an outstanding representative of the liberal Catholic movement, Monseigneur Dupanloup.47 Dupanloup extolled Rozaven’s work as a “masterpiece,” a veritable comparative study of the Russian and Roman Catholic churches.48 He discussed Rozaven’s fruitful activity in “the ice fields of Russia,” directed by the beneficent hand of Providence, during the period when “the French altars were lying overturned.”49 Dupanloup believed the book would be useful to Catholics who wanted a better understanding of their faith, as well as to “all men of good will” who were in schism due to “the misfortune of their birth” but who wanted to “reflect on their own beliefs.”50 The bishop of Orléans referenced Rozaven’s profound love for Russia. “What voice more competent and less irritating could be heard?” Rozaven spoke to his compatriots “not to wound them but to heal them.”51 Dupanloup’s assessment of the Russian Church highlights the intersection between French liberal ideology and Catholic thought. In the nineteenth century, French narratives about Russia—whether primarily Catholic or liberal in orientation—placed considerable emphasis on what Russia lacked. A French liberal narrative portraying Russia as a land of absences— lacking a middle class, civilization, civil society—achieved hegemony by the late nineteenth century.52 There is clearly an important shared theme in the civilization narratives of French Catholics and French liberals, since Catholic narratives also consistently emphasized Russia’s underdeveloped civilization, stemming from the absence of life-producing, proselytizing Christianity— that is, Latin Catholicism. It appears that othering Russia had broad appeal in an increasingly religiously and politically divided France. According to Dupanloup, the Russian Church contained many ills, all the fruit of schism. Above all, the Russian (and Eastern) Church lacked the center of unity—the papacy. On the surface, Dupanloup explained, the Eastern

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Church does not appear all that different from the Roman Catholic Church, and on matters of essentials—“transubstantiation, devotion to the holy Virgin and all her prerogatives, the veneration of images, indulgences, the necessity of grace for salvation, and the free cooperation of man”—there are no significant differences.53 The churches differ only concerning “their relations with the Pope, with the center of unity.” But this was no small difference, argued Dupanloup. It was the source of an enormous chasm between the churches, a “gap” (vide) that needed to be filled; and while the Russians and Greeks “flatter themselves” that the gap can easily be filled, “a dreadful abyss [between the churches] has widened.”54 After claiming that he did not wish to offend Russian patriotic feeling, Dupanloup presented a harsh assessment of Russian Christianity as stillborn. Consequently, Russian society showed signs of outward development and progress, but in reality, any development was superficial, masking inward decadence and decay. Ah! Far be it from me to have any intention of saying anything that could offend or only just sadden the just patriotism of Russia! But I appeal to it, to so many of the confidences that I have received from the most devoted of its children, to the complaints so often repeated by its politicians, its publicists, its moralists, its poets: Is it what it should be? Does it feel itself in possession of the destinies that attract it? Isn’t it afraid for its future? A religion that has fallen into the miserable condition of an institution of State and a police matter, an enslaved and disgraced clergy, mysteries and dogmas that have no hold either on minds or on souls, sacraments that languish without virtue, practices that carefree disbelief soon repudiates or that disintegrate into disgraceful superstitions, a disfigured Christ in a diminished Christianity, little chastity in families, little probity in society; next to the most noble aspirations that do not know where to attach themselves and quickly die, surprising and monstrous vices, incredible perversities, prodigies of corruption, the most savage explosions of barbary clashing with the latest refinements of a luxury that is itself impoverished; in the middle of developments sometimes excessive, there is something of the unfinished and shapeless, something that is not maturing, as if the new man, the man of the Gospel, was still not wholly born in the heart of the Russian, and as if halfway out of the cradle, he was inevitably arrested—I was going to say choked—in his growth.55 Russia was a land of absences, lacking an independent church and clergy, virtue, morality, maturity, growth. From all of these features, characterizing Christianity cut off from the center of unity, there followed a lack of missionary zeal and of the ability to civilize either Russians or the other subject

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peoples of Russia’s expanding empire. “Russia will enter full civilization only upon getting back to integral Christianity,” that is, Roman Catholicism.56 But until Russia returned to Rome, Russia would remain in its state of schism, with its “disabled” (mutilé) Christianity, that results in its “dazed” conscience with respect to Poland and its failures to civilize its recent Asiatic territorial acquisitions.57 “Russia gains territory without gaining in vigor; . . . it conquers but it does not civilize, and it is reduced to granting to idols the tolerance that it refuses to the God of Saints Hedwig and Sobieski.”58 Dupanloup’s liberal tendencies are evident in his discussion of the inevitability that sooner or later the Russian population would play a “more or less large” role in Russia’s government. Having thrown off “social serfdom,” Russia would need to “destroy” its “political serfdom.” When that time came, Russia would need powerful “restraints,” which only the Roman Catholic Church could supply.59 Dupanloup’s emphasis on the idea that only Catholicism could constructively guide Russia’s development and restrain the forces unleashed by its social and political reforms aligns him with the Catholic Westernizers. Tiutchev believed there were two possibilities for Europe: Russia or revolution. Catholic apologists thought in a similar dichotomous manner: Rome or revolution. Dupanloup’s foreword demonstrates that despite the issues that divided French Catholic publicists in the mid-nineteenth century, they could largely agree in their assessment of the Russian Church: its schismatic status and its supposed total enslavement to the state were integrally linked. His assessment of the Eastern Church as embodying the form of Christianity without its substance is reminiscent of other French writers who portrayed Russian Orthodoxy as a superficial if not audacious veneer substituting for the essence of the Christian faith. When it came to attitudes toward Russia, there was a spectrum of opinion among Roman Catholic polemicists, from Russophobes who emphasized that Russia and political Orthodoxy were a menace to Christian civilization, to Russophiles who eagerly sought Russia’s full integration into the European family of nations. Dupanloup was closer to the latter. But there was not all that much distance between the points on this spectrum because the only way Catholic polemicists could envision Russia’s inclusion in a European family of nations was for “the churches that call themselves orthodox” to return to Rome.

The Russian Emperor in Paris: An Assassination Attempt, the Russian Church, and the French Press Amid great fanfare, Alexander II arrived in Paris on June 1, 1867, for the Universal Exposition, and remained until the eleventh. He was housed in the

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Élysée Palace, and his mistress, Katerina Dolgorukova, stayed at a nearby hotel.60 On a few occasions as Alexander toured the city with Crown Prince Alexander and Grand Duke Vladimir, the emperor was met with cries of “Vive la Pologne!” The newspapers responded to these incidents according to their ideological positions. Despite considerable pro-Polish sympathy, not everyone thought it was appropriate to receive France’s prestigious guest with such outbursts. The participation of some members of the Bar in these incidents was especially controversial. French papers also pointed out that the amnesty Alexander issued to Polish political prisoners earlier that spring was clearly done to ease tensions before his visit. Contrasting with expressions of sympathy for Poland, the Russian emperor was reportedly pleased when he was received with performances of the Russian national hymn, “God Save the Tsar.”61 Prayers for the protection of the tsar did not go unanswered. Within days, anti-Russian (or pro-Polish) outbursts in the city and the press were mitigated by an attempt on the life of Alexander II perpetrated by a Pole. On June 7, all the papers were preoccupied with reports of a distressing incident that happened the day before, following a military review in the Bois de Boulogne. It took a couple of days to unravel the precise details, but while Alexander II was traveling in an open carriage seated alongside Napoleon III, a Polish refugee named Anton Berezowski—reported to be the son of Uniates forced under Nicholas I to accept the Russian faith—fired at him using a double-barreled pistol.62 In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, seeing some blood on Vladimir, Alexander II reportedly feared that his son had been hit.63 As it turned out, the blood belonged to the main casualty of the ­shooting—the horse ridden by one of Napoleon III’s equerries, Raimbeaux.64 Initially, people assumed that Napoleon III had been the target of the assassin; but as the investigation proceeded, it became clear that the assassin’s bullet was intended for the Russian emperor. Raimbeaux was the hero of the hour, credited with saving Alexander’s life, and was generously rewarded for it by the Russian emperor.65 Despite tremendous animosity toward Alexander II on account of his Polish policies, widely construed to be anti-Catholic and antiliberal, the assassination attempt provoked general indignation toward the assassin and sympathy toward Alexander as the victim of an ignominious attack. For starters, the attempted regicide violated France’s reputation for hospitality. As a lead article in La Presse expressed it, “There will be in France only one voice to strike with reprobation this disgraceful assassination attempt that has almost stained our hospitable land with blood, and to thank Providence of having confounded the hopes of the assassin.”66 When Alexander

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had first arrived in Paris, the ultramontane, pro-Pole, and anti-Russian organ Le Monde expressed the view that Alexander deserved a “respectful but reserved” welcome in the city. Why respectful? Because he was a guest of France.67 Representing one of the extreme poles of the political spectrum, in the aftermath of the assassination attempt Le Monde reported that “we thank God” for sparing France “the grief ” of seeing a sovereign who was enjoying France’s hospitality harmed by an assassin.68 Another widely expressed sentiment was relief that the infamous act had not been perpetrated by a French citizen but by a foreigner. “We write under the blow of a profound and distressing emotion: an odious assassination attempt has been directed . . . against the emperor Alexander II, the guest of France. We praise God on two accounts: no one has been hit, and the assassin is not French!”69 L’Union reported the day after the assassination attempt that “we don’t know yet exactly who the assassin is; thank God this would not be a Frenchman! But we add with a profound sadness that the public rumor designates him as a Pole.”70 In a rare occurrence, Guettée and the ultramontane press were in agreement, equally ready to condemn regicide. But when Veuillot attributed modern regicide to the false ideas of 1789 and regretted that the shameful act dishonored the true martyrs of Poland, Guettée joined some of the major newspapers in mocking Veuillot’s analysis of the causes of regicide and, like several others, expressed relief that the assassin was a foreigner. “Thank God that it was not a Frenchman who was found culpable of this baseness. We would have been ashamed for our country if the foolishness of some pseudodemocratic papers had been able to lead astray the good sense of a single Frenchman and inspire in him the detestable project that a Pole wanted to execute.”71 Had it not been for the fact that, following the assassination attempt, a thanksgiving service was held at St. Alexander Nevsky Church, drawing a large crowd to the area, it is difficult to say whether the Russian emperor’s attendance at religious services during his stay in Paris would have attracted any attention. Napoleon III, Empress Eugénie, and King William I all joined Alexander, his sons, and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna, for this emotional event, which thrust the Russian church of Paris into the news.72 Alexander II’s attendance at religious services provided a fresh opportunity for the French press to promote the idea of the emperor’s purported pontificate over the Orthodox Church. Misinformation circulated freely but did not go unchallenged by Russian publicists. An apolitical report in Le Monde focused on the emotions that gripped the crowd at the Te Deum. When Alexander arrived, he was met with energetic cheers. Before mounting the stairs to the porch, and again before entering

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the church, he turned to salute and respond to the cheers of the crowd, many eyes wet with tears. Admittance into the church for the Te Deum was heavily restricted, and the service, conducted by Vasiliev, lasted about twenty minutes. When the Russian emperor emerged again, the crowds outside the church and lining the streets of the Saint-Honoré faubourg greeted him with possibly even more energetic cheers of “Vive l’Empereur!” Thus, the crowd protested against “the heinous assassination attempt that almost made the guest of France its victim.”73 Henri-Léon Camusat de Riancey, the Roman Catholic editor of the legitimist (pro-Bourbon) L’Union editorialized when he reported that the Russian emperor and his entourage participated in a service at the Russian church to thank God for the emperor’s miraculous escape. Riancey expressed two regrets about the Te Deum: first, that the Russians were not part of the Roman Catholic Church “that alone has the way and the life”; and second, that there had not been a Catholic Te Deum in the city, so that French Catholics could attend, and, in keeping with their own faith, thank God for “having spared a foreign sovereign, the guest of our fatherland, and for having preserved our soil from the shame of serving as the theatre for a regicide. Fervent prayers would be raised directly to the living God that he touch the magnanimous soul of Alexander II and that he inspire him to accord to the Catholic Church the liberty that it needs, the liberty that he [God] loves above all.”74 At L’Illustration, René du Merzer discussed the “universal reprobation” evoked by the assassination attempt and suggested that by virtue of the thousands of signatures left on the registers at the Élysée Palace, expressing sympathy for Alexander, it was as if “the entire French nation thus joins in the Te Deum that was chanted in the Russian church to thank heaven for having saved the czar.”75 The following week, L’Illustration published an engraving of the three sovereigns at the Te Deum by the periodical’s artistic director, an illustrator much in demand, Ange-Louis Janet (a.k.a. Janet-Lange, 1815–1872). Janet homed in on the moment when Alexander II embraced his sons, who, at the time of the shooting, Alexander believed had been hit. Merzer considered this embrace an especially moving moment during the memorable event.76 Despite general agreement that Berezowski’s actions were reprehensible and a more sympathetic stance toward Alexander II following the assassination attempt, within a few days the reports about the Te Deum evolved into more general discussions of Alexander II’s religious observances at the Russian church in Paris, and the coverage became distorted. Factual errors expressing the standard anti-Orthodox prejudices circulated. Above all, Alexander II’s reception at the Russian church confirmed that he was the Orthodox pope.

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In its June 10/11 issue, La Presse gave a muddled and problematic account of the emperor’s religious observances on Sunday (note the italicized phrases): Yesterday at eleven, the emperor of Russia, the grand dukes, and persons who accompanied them were at the Russian church on Cross Street. His majesty was received with his sons at the entrance by the archimandrite with the ceremony commonly used in the Catholic church for the reception of the holy father on his entrance into a church. The czar is the supreme head of the Greek Orthodox Church; at his approach, the archimandrite kneeled and kissed the hand that the emperor presented to him; he got up and walked behind His Majesty. Everyone in attendance was standing. The large and brilliant crowd filled the walls of the temple. The women were decked out in the richest of outfits. The presence of the czar was marked by the unanimous cheers of those present.77 A similar report showed up in Le Petit Journal—the French equivalent of the penny newspaper and Paris’s highest-subscribed newspaper—on June 12, but a few details changed.78 This time, the correspondent had the emperor and his entourage attending Pentecost services. The sections about the “archimandrite” greeting the “czar” in the same way that the holy father is greeted in a Catholic Church, the “czar” as “the supreme head of the Greek Orthodox Church,” and the “archimandrite” kneeling to kiss the emperor’s hand, and then walking behind him, were repeated verbatim. To the detail about the people standing, the phrase “during the entire service” was added.79 Two days later at Le Monde, Editor in Chief Coquille reprinted La Presse’s report, replete with errors, adding a Russophobic diatribe. By this point, Alexander II had left Paris. Using the claim that “the czar is the supreme head of the Greek Orthodox Church” as his starting point, Coquille expounded on the theme of the Russian emperor as the pontiff of the Russian Church. He suggested that the atmosphere of festivals and spectacles surrounding the Universal Exposition had distracted people from noticing the main similarity between the “czar” and Roman Caesars: the concentration of religious and political authority in a single person, propped up by the fanaticism of eighty million subjects. This situation had no parallel in the West. “It is good to remember that the Czar is supported by the fanaticism of an entire people, whereas the Catholic princes are separated politically from the Holy See, and the Protestant princes are no more than nominal heads of a nominal religion. The concentration of the religious and political element in the same person does not cease to be threatening when this

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person commands eighty million subjects.”80 Russia’s expansionist program under religious ­pretexts—in Poland, in Asia, and the Caucasus and its attempts through Panslavism “to rally to Caesarism all the Slavs of Austria and ­Turkey”—headed by the Caesar-pontiff—was all too clear and consistent, while France, Britain, and Austria had been weakened since the Crimean War by lack of a clear agenda, by materialism, and by lack of any claim to religious sanction or authority. “Russia attributes to itself a mission at once political and religious, and uses every means to reach its ends. The emperor Alexander is the head of the Russian Church, called orthodox. This explains things very well.”81 Coquille directed his criticism against Russia, but it is also clear that he was deploring French policies, in Italy and Austria, that he considered detrimental to Catholic interests. As part of the Paris Peace (1856), Britain, France, and Austria formed a Triple Alliance against Russia, to ensure that the treaty was enforced and that Russian attempts to breach the treaty provisions would be met by force. Yet Austria, not Russia, ended up being the biggest loser in and after 1856, severely weakened by military defeats against France (1859) and Prussia (1866).82 Furthermore, Coquille’s concerns about Panslavism were voiced in the context of the Panslav congress that was taking place in Moscow while Alexander II was in Paris. Despite the efforts of Orthodox publicists to debunk the tsar-pope/ enslaved-church myth since the 1850s, press coverage of Alexander II’s religious observances in Paris suggests that in 1867 it remained as strong as ever. The references to Alexander as “czar” (used as a synonym for Caesar) and “supreme head of the Greek Orthodox Church,” and the suggestion that he was received ceremoniously as the pope would be received all perpetuated the myth. The details about the “archimandrite” kneeling, kissing the emperor’s hand, and walking behind Alexander II enhanced the myth by demonstrating that the priest behaved in a servile manner vis-à-vis the “czar.” For his small readership, Russia’s zealous apologist Guettée extolled the emperor and corrected the erroneous reporting, informing his readers that prior to Sunday, June 9, Alexander visited the church named for his patron saint three other times: for liturgy (Sunday, June 2), Ascension (Thursday, June 6), and the Te Deum (Friday, June 7). Guettée spoke of the emperor’s humility at divine services, regretting that the Roman Catholic proponents of the tsar-pontiff idea were not able to witness how, by his piety and humility, the emperor was practically indistinguishable from his entourage. This fact “says more than all the arguments against the ridiculous prejudices that the enemies of the Orthodox Church seek to spread.”83 Guettée did not comment in any detail on the Te Deum. Instead, he focused on the assassination attempt as an act of nihilism, perpetrated against the liberator of Poland

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and a guest of France by a Pole who took advantage of France’s generous hospitality to perpetrate his heinous act.84 The article that in variant forms made its rounds in the Parisian papers provoked a colorful letter to the editor of Le Petit Journal (Léo Lespès, a.k.a. Timothée Trimm) purportedly by an annoyed Slav living in France, Dmitry Habakoumov. His first priority was to debunk the myth that the tsar was the head of either the Greek or the Russian Orthodox Church, emphasizing that the tsar did not enjoy special religious authority even in Russia, let alone over the Orthodox world, and that the tsar was no more the head of the Orthodox Church than the sultan or king of Greece was. “First, monsieur, you should eliminate from your pages this foolishness that the emperor of Russia is the supreme head of the Greek Orthodox Church. Not only is he not the head of the Greek Church, but he is not even the head of the Russian Church. He has no religious authority and claims no authority of this sort.”85 Spiritual authority in the Orthodox Church, Habakoumov explained, resided with the bishops, who in normal times, were represented by the four patriarchs (Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch) and two Holy Synods (Greek and Russian). Closely related to the issue of the tsar’s supposed religious authority was the idea that Alexander II had been greeted “with the ceremonial commonly used in the Catholic Church for the reception of the holy father.” Habakoumov claimed the tsar was actually “received with much less ceremony” than the Roman Church uses when “receiving sovereigns.” He also noted that Alexander went to the church four times but was greeted ceremonially only the first time.86 Habakoumov explained that the report in Le Petit Journal got almost every detail wrong. The correspondent confused Ascension with Pentecost.87 He called the priest “archimandrite,” a monastic rank, though Vasiliev was married. The correspondent said the priest knelt to present the cross to the emperor, and then followed the emperor into the church. On the contrary, Vasiliev did not kneel to present the cross, and the emperor followed the clergy into the church. Since Le Petit Journal’s correspondent indicated that everyone was standing during the entire service, implying that this was done out of special deference to the emperor, Habakoumov pointed out that it was routine to stand during Orthodox services; the tsar stood just like everyone else. “Not even a chair for him; and especially not a throne as for the pope.” Hinting again at the emperor’s supremacy over the church, Le Petit Journal’s correspondent mentioned that the priest kissed Alexander II’s hand. Here Habakoumov explained that it was customary for Orthodox Christians to kiss the priest’s hand when they receive a blessing. Members of the imperial family kiss the priest’s hand, but the priest kisses their hands simultaneously.

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Finally, Habakoumov asked Le Petit Journal to set an example for the (more expensive) grand journaux by writing “tzar” meaning “sovereign,” instead of “czar,” because some newspapers mistakenly made “czar” out to be a special title that “would signify roughly absolute despot, which is not at all true.”88 Trimm printed Habakoumov’s letter on July 8 without much comment except to note that he had already substituted the spelling “tzar” for “czar,” and that the mistakes of his correspondent were probably due to the fact that only Russians had been admitted to the church for the Te Deum.89 Habakoumov was probably Guettée, who had already printed both the original report from Le Petit Journal and Habakoumov’s response to it in L’Union chrétienne two weeks earlier, also reproaching Coquille for taking the claim of the tsar’s headship over the church to extremes.90 L’Union chrétienne was not licensed to discuss political matters, however, so Guettée could not discuss Panslavism, the Eastern question, or the significance Coquille deduced from the supposed combination of all religious and political power in the person of the “czar.” He limited himself to the observation that Le Monde was the “official organ of the Roman court in France” but was becoming “more and more Turkish.”91 He suggested that Coquille’s ideas were un-Christian and that the papists were in league with the Turks, a possible allusion to a disdain shared by many Panslavs for those who prioritized preservation of the Ottoman Empire over protection of the Christian subjects of the Porte. When the French press took up discussion of the Russian emperor’s religious observances during his stay in Paris, it illustrated that the pet theme of the tsar’s alleged pontificate over the Russian Church had not lost its relevance or appeal. But if the Russian emperor’s supreme headship over the “Greek Church” was still widely accepted, perhaps Habakoumov’s letter to Trimm signaled that a shift had taken place. Since Russian publicists could not get access to mainstream French publications prior to the 1860s and had to create their own organs, just the fact that Habakoumov’s letter to the editor was printed in the highest-subscribed newspaper of the day represented a significant development for the Orthodox publicists. When the assassination attempt threw the church on Daru Street into the limelight, the press coverage demonstrated once again that the presence of a Russian church in Paris could just as well confirm and reinforce prejudices as dissipate them. If the presence of a Russian bishop in Paris was an efficacious way to dispel anti-Orthodox prejudices, as Guettée had suggested in 1861, the same could not be said of the Russian emperor’s visit to Paris in 1867. It would be tempting to think that the presence of a Russian church in Paris and the ability to study the Russian religion on site began a steady linear

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process of dismantling anti-Orthodox attitudes in the French public sphere. But the attempts by Orthodox publicists to make their faith more visible and to defend it in the city called “the capital of the civilized world,” while the fate of the papacy and temporal power hung in the balance, triggered some anti-Orthodox backlash. The tsar-pope/enslaved-church myth persisted in the French Catholic imagination. Although Orthodox and Catholic polemicists alike were genuinely interested in church unity, the Russian Orthodox other—with the tsar supposedly the pontiff of a church that lacked independence, a free and learned clergy, missionary zeal, civilizing potency, or even the ability to effectively reform itself—remained integral for defining French Catholic identity in the 1860s. In the public sphere, discourses about the Russian Caesar-pope were vehicles for critiquing the French state’s intrusiveness in church affairs, Napoleon III’s foreign policy—in December 1866 he withdrew his troops from Rome on assurances that Italy would not invade—and Russian imperialism. Anti-Orthodox narratives reflected the anxiety of French Catholics over the fate of the papacy; yet they also reflected a sense of self-assuredness concerning the superiority of Catholic civilization. While Orthodoxy was discussed in both French and Russian milieus in ways that allowed French and Russians alike to feel vindicated in their respective ideas of cultural superiority and historical purpose, in the French Catholic mind, Orthodoxy was largely inseparable from notions of Russian imperial power. Thus, unless or until the Russian Church submitted to Rome or until there was a change in European power relations that made Russian imperial power look more attractive and less menacing, there were limits to how much the public image of Orthodoxy in France could improve. Nonetheless, in Russia the Orthodox press conveyed a sense that thanks to the founding of the church, Guettée’s Orthodox turn, Vasiliev’s polemics, and L’Union chrétienne, the light of Orthodoxy was dawning in the West.

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Guettée, Vasiliev, L’Union chrétienne, and the Public Image of Orthodoxy Read . . . the letter of Protopriest Polisadov about the journey of his grace Leonty to Paris, about the consecration of our Orthodox church there, and about the descriptions and judgments of the Catholic Abbé Guettée about this celebration and his beautiful panegyric to our Orthodoxy. It is interesting and comforting to read his judgments about the respect that our spiritual mission had in Paris. The metropolitan [Filaret Drozdov] it seems is very satisfied with this foreign reception, and even told me . . . that he recently received a letter from England from an English priest who turned to Orthodoxy and is asking to be confirmed in the ranks of the Orthodox clergy. —A. B. Neidgart to Archbishop Savva Tikhomirov, 1861

St. Alexander Nevsky Church and the polemical activities of Guettée and Vasiliev represented a multipronged effort to educate westerners about Orthodoxy, dispel anti-Orthodox prejudices, counter the proselytizing efforts of Russian converts to Roman Catholicism, expose papist errors, and pave the way for reunification of the churches. Portrayals of Guettée, Vasiliev, and L’Union chrétienne by their contemporaries shed light on Orthodoxy’s public image—as understood by westerners and as imagined by Russian publicists. In Russia, Guettée’s and Vasiliev’s Orthodox contemporaries saw providential significance in the Paris church, and believing the hand of Providence was at work, they exaggerated how influential Guettée, Vasiliev, and their periodical—charged with a lofty educating and ecumenical mission—really were. Orthodox publicists linked Guettée’s conversion, the polemical activity of both priests, and L’Union chrétienne to Russia’s national destiny and interpreted these developments as signs that Orthodoxy’s global prestige was on the rise. Yet while the activities of the priest-publicists in Paris reflected and contributed to the mood of religious nationalism, the confrontation with the Russian Church’s negative public image abroad also fueled reformist sentiment in Russia. 153

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Abbé Guettée: Self-Image and Public Image Naturally, there were differences in how Guettée, the Catholic press, and the Russian Orthodox press represented his evolution from the papal to the Russian fold. While Russian publicists tended to see the French priest’s Orthodox conversion as a sure sign that Orthodoxy’s international stature was rising, the Catholic press was quite silent, except for a few occasions when Guettée’s reception into the Russian Church provided another excuse for Orthodox-bashing. Russian publicists overlooked the fact that he could be a liability as well as an asset. Guettée saw himself as one of very few principled ecclesiastics in France. After he had become alienated from the most visible Catholic personalities of the 1850s, he portrayed them in his memoirs as opportunists who jettisoned their principles to advance their careers.1 Somewhat narcissistically, Guettée interpreted himself to be the victim of a conspiratorial “systematic silence,” and took the silence as evidence of his irrefutable argumentation against cowardly adversaries who wanted to “kill” his work.2 His career was fraught with harassment. Several episodes stand out: his problems with the Index that began in 1852, setting in motion the series of events that led to his reception in the Russian Church; the withdrawal of his permission to celebrate in Paris by Archbishop Morlot (archbishop of Paris from 1857 to 1862); and allegations that he was an interdicted priest and had been implicated in Jean-Louis Verger’s assassination of Archbishop Sibour. These episodes stained his reputation among Catholics, making him a somewhat problematic individual to entrust with the defense of Orthodoxy. After his history of the French Church was placed on the Index, Guettée became embroiled in a public controversy in January 1857. Immediately on succeeding the assassinated Sibour, Archbishop Morlot withdrew Guettée’s celebret—a special permission to serve mass outside his home diocese (Blois)— provoking a fierce appeal in which Guettée argued that without a trial and condemnation, depriving a priest of his authority to celebrate was an abuse of power and an act of episcopal despotism, contrary to all divine and ecclesiastical laws.3 He had not committed a sanctionable offense, as Morlot’s predecessor had even acknowledged in a letter to Guettée.4 Withdrawal of the celebret was not interdiction. Nonetheless, in the aftermath of this publicized case, some newspapers referred to Guettée as an interdicted priest when Guettée, known to be the author of a Gallican memorandum to Napoleon III that railed against the temporal power of the papacy, was suspected of being the author of another brochure sympathetic to a break between the French Church and Rome that appeared in January 1861.5 In response to the

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accusations, Guettée filed a successful libel suit (diffamatoire avec mauvaise foi) in the Civil Court of the Seine.6 He obtained a favorable judgment in April 1861 and the offending newspapers had to print corrections.7 In the interim between the start of his trouble with Morlot ( January 1857) and the settlement of his libel suit (April 1861), Guettée met Vasiliev and Sushkov, and they founded L’Union chrétienne (November 1859). Then Guettée joined the Russian Church in July 1862. According to a narrative originating with Guettée’s Souvenirs (1889) and repeated in both French and Russian sources subsequently, after becoming Orthodox, Guettée was insulted and reproached by Catholics. After he had “become Orthodox in order to become truly catholic,” he was attacked by his “enemies,” who “cried that I had become schismatic on entering a schismatic Church.”8 He responded to them by writing La Papauté schismatique ou Rome dans ses rapports avec l’Église orientale (The schismatic papacy or Rome in its relations with the Eastern Church, Paris, 1863),9 which obviously would not have endeared him to Catholic polemicists. Guettée recalled: “This publication made my enemies furious. I received a host of anonymous letters in which I was insulted in a most stupid manner.”10 Characteristically, Guettée expressed pride when Papauté schismatique was placed on the Index and was extremely gratified to receive a doctorate in theology (in 1864) from the Moscow Theological Academy in recognition for the work.11 The doctorate signified that Guettée was a fully credentialed Russian Orthodox publicist. There was little public discussion in France of Guettée’s entry into the Russian Church. He did not discuss his intention to join, nor his official reception into the church. He continued to sign many of his works “Abbé Guettée,” although by September 1862 he signed some articles in L’Union chrétienne with his Orthodox name Vladimir. Most likely, he did not discuss his formal reception in the Russian Church because he did not consider himself a convert. His faith had always been and remained Catholic as far as he was concerned. Most of his enemies after he joined the Russian Church were already his enemies beforehand. Guettée was cognizant of having joined a confession that was regarded negatively by his Roman Catholic compatriots. The flip side was that, to his Catholic critics, Guettée’s joining of the Russian Church did not improve the reputation of that church but further verified its bankruptcy. After his libel suit, if Guettée’s Catholic compatriots discussed him at all, they tended to censure him for his contempt for the papacy, anti-Jesuitism, alleged Jansenism, and staunch Gallicanism. One work referred to Guettée’s periodical Observateur catholique as a vestige of Jansenism that, since 1854 and the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, expressed

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“the perennial hatred” of the Jansenist party for Jesuitism and for the “successor of St. Peter, as temporal prince and infallible personage.”12 The author continued, “I don’t need to add that the paper and the journalist are not in the good graces of the court of Rome.”13 Guettée was publicly criticized for joining the Russian Church in a report in the Catholic Journal de Bruxelles.14 The same paper had criticized Guettée for Gallicanism and Jansenism and reproached the Russian Church for “not having a fixed doctrine about anything” and for opening its doors “to the Jansenists, to the Protestants, to all the sectarians of the world!”15 When Guettée spoke of his enemies in Souvenirs, he often had the Russian Jesuits, whom he dubbed “pseudo-Russians,” in mind, especially Gagarin and the Golitsyns. They might have been about his only new enemies after his entry into the Russian Church, except that Guettée tended to consider everyone he perceived to be hostile to Russia to be his personal enemy. With the exception of the “pseudo-Russians,” Guettée appears to have thought about his enemies much more than they thought about him. The Russian Jesuits defined him as a defector from the true faith. For example, Nikolai Borisovich Golitsyn, who wrote under the pseudonym Prince N. Boulgak, earned Guettée’s particular contempt.16 Boulgak responded to Papauté schismatique in an 1865 work characterized by silly accusations. He argued that the “new Russian priest” (Guettée), who taught his “erroneous system” with “audacity and haughtiness,” did not in fact belong to any church since he had disavowed the Catholic Church to become a member of the “Greco-Russian Church,” and since Papauté schismatique contradicted Russian liturgical texts that supposedly proved papal primacy.17 Boulgak’s critique suggested that he saw Guettée primarily as a lapsed Catholic, a defector, a person who stood only against something (Roman Catholicism), and not for something (the Eastern Church). Guettée’s reputation as a lapsed Catholic and his inability to shake the label that he had been interdicted flared up when Alexander II visited Paris in 1867. Outside the jurisdiction of the French courts, Journal de Bruxelles printed a report from its Paris correspondent noting that, on his arrival in Paris, the “czar” was immediately “taken to the Russian church, where the pope who serves it received him with all the ceremonial commonly used in similar circumstances.”18 The correspondent identified the pope as “none other than the ex-abbé Guettée who was formerly part of the Catholic clergy of Paris, who wrote a highly suspect History of the Church of France, and who was put under interdict by his ecclesiastical superiors.” He added that “the Czar made to M. Guettée a gift of 20,000 francs.”19 When Guettée found out about this report, he sent a corrective letter to the editor, pointing out that the Journal’s Paris correspondent knew perfectly

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well that it was Vasiliev who greeted the Russian emperor. He added that he considered it an honor that his Histoire de l’Église de France had been placed on the Index. Interpreting the report in Journal as an attempt of the French papist and pro-Poland party to slander him under the refuge of the foreign press, he objected to the allegation that he was a priest under the ban, and recounted the details of his libel case. He denied that the “magnanimous sovereign of all the Russias” had given him a gift of 20,000 francs, saying the emperor owed him nothing and knew he could not be bought.20 The editor of Journal de Bruxelles printed the letter with a nasty note. Guettée had to have been “touched . . . by the Muscovite grace” to use such expressions as the “magnanimous sovereign of all the Russias.”21 He could not understand why Guettée was so concerned to defend himself from the charge that he had been interdicted, when he considered it an honor “to profess doctrines incompatible with the obligations of the Catholic priest.” What did the sacerdotal integrity matter when one was in a state of “proud rebellion before the supreme head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy”? Then he closed with a series of final digs about Guettée and the “czar’s” visit to the Russian church, restoring to Vasiliev “the official role that devolved to him in the reception of the Czar and to Mr. Guettée the sad honor of devoting, with or without recompense, to the ‘magnanimous sovereign of all the Russias’ the obedience that his free convictions have not permitted him to guard for the Pope.”22 For the Journal de Bruxelles, Guettée and the Russian Church, both sullied, deserved each other. Guettée’s alleged interdiction resurfaced again when he applied to wear the insignia associated with his acceptance of Russian orders. In 1873 Alexander II bestowed on Guettée the Order of St. Anne, an honor given for civil or military service that confers noble rank on the recipient. Guettée applied to the French Legion of Honor for permission to wear the insignia of the order but was denied permission without any explanation. When he pursued the matter, Grand Chancellor General Vinoy said the decision was made with consideration of the opinion of the minister of worship, who had reported that Guettée’s “attitude . . . during the Verger trial, earned him a severe admonition from . . . the imperial prosecutor Waïsse [Vaïsse], and consequently, a sentence of interdiction from the part of the ecclesiastical authority.”23 So now it was alleged that Guettée had been implicated in the Verger affair, and that his supposed interdiction was tied to the Verger case. Verger was the interdicted priest who assassinated Archbishop Sibour at the Church of Saint-Etienne-du Mont in January 1857. He called Guettée as his witness, because, according to a transcript of the trial, in a conversation with Guettée, Sibour had called Verger a “bad priest” and Guettée responded that he had seen Verger twice and thought he seemed “very good.”

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The prosecutor wanted to know why Guettée would defend a priest who had printed “a libelous brochure in Belgium.” Guettée could only reply that he had not seen the brochure, that he would not defend it if he knew it was outrageous, and that he was having his own “difficulties” with Sibour at the time.24 Guettée interpreted the authorization to wear the insignia as a formality, an administrative matter, and the denial of the authorization as religiously motivated.25 In defending himself to the Legion of Honor, he argued that the Ministry of Worship had no jurisdiction over him, because he did not belong to any church recognized by the state; rather, he could only be viewed as a French citizen, and he was “an honorable citizen, enjoying all his civil and political rights.”26 Nonetheless, Guettée had to wait until after Vinoy died in 1880 to renew his appeal and receive permission.27 In that same interval between 1873 and 1880, Guettée received honorary Russian citizenship in 1875. His memoirs only mention this detail in passing, with no explanation.28 But his biographers have linked his honorary citizenship directly to his religious harassment, suggesting he accepted Russian citizenship “to escape the condemnation of his [Catholic] detractors” and because of “Catholic pressure on the State” in the monarchist-dominated 1870s.29 Sympathetic to Guettée and commemorating him just after his death, Émile Mopinot, a fellow French Catholic dissident who also turned to Orthodoxy, wrote in April 1892 that Guettée’s entry into Orthodoxy did not happen without earning him the “epithets of defector [transfuge] and of apostate.”30 With the exception of the Jesuits, who were perceived as nationless due to their avowed obedience to the pope, Guettée, his collaborators, and his enemies, tended to link national and religious identity; but it is not clear how Russian citizenship would have benefited him, furthered his work, or silenced his detractors.31 Guettée’s memoirs emphasized his persecutions, and how those persecutions continued after he joined the Russian Church. During the Second Empire, Guettée experienced firsthand what he considered the arbitrary power of the bishops, the Catholic press, and the Index. He recalled that harassment and attempts to censor him continued in the clerical-dominated years of the MacMahon presidency (1873–1879).32 French sources critical of Russia with respect to church-state relations or the empire’s treatment of Catholic minorities suggested that there was a higher degree of toleration and liberty and a lower degree of arbitrary authority in French society than in Russian society, true enough de jure. But Guettée understood all too well that Catholic dissenters faced formal ecclesial and informal censures, from interdiction to censorship. The press was not free in Second Empire France, but even

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apart from formal restrictions on the press, and even if legally the papal Index was not binding, views contrary to the prevailing winds of Catholic opinion were censored by publishers who did not want to take the risk of publishing viewpoints that were controversial (as Guettée experienced and as was upheld by a French court in the 1850s). Guettée found his freedom in the Russian Church. “From the time that I became a member of the Orthodox Church, it felt like a breath of fresh air. The Roman Church that I left has been for me only a prison where I was weighed down with chains, where there was recourse to the most hypocritical tortures to kill my learning and my reason.”33 Subject to arbitrary authority, the priests of the Roman Church were “slaves,” and Rome represented “a brutal despotism.”34 It was not based on deep knowledge of Russia but on his experience with the French milieu that Guettée, while traveling in Russia in 1865, could write to Vasiliev back in Paris that “there are some nations that speak much of tolerance, and that practice it much less than is done in Russia.”35 Liberty and toleration were at least somewhat relative, and de jure liberties did not preclude other forms of persecution or harassment. Guettée’s experiences explain why he gave himself wholeheartedly to uncritical defense of the Russian Church and government, although an alternative response would have been to defend freedom of conscience and freedom of the press and to condemn arbitrary authority on principle. He tended to repay fanaticism with fanaticism and extracted general rules from what was his very exceptional personal experience as a celebrated and privileged member of the Russian Orthodox Church. Once he became Orthodox, his status as a lapsed Catholic could not be divorced from his zealous support for a church of such ill repute. For Roman Catholic true believers, his entry into the Russian Church confirmed his bad theology and the Eastern Church’s decadence. Still, he was probably harassed more because he was such a vocal adversary of papism than for joining the Russian Church per se. The bottom line is that because he was such a controversial and contentious figure, he could not raise the standing of the Eastern Church in the opinion of most Roman Catholics. But outside the Catholic press, more balanced and less polemical portrayals of Guettée, and by extension, of the Eastern Church can be found. Among French encyclopedias published during Guettée’s lifetime, some followed the dominant narrative and spoke of him as having been interdicted for Gallican or Jansenist views,36 while others were more precise about Guettée’s circumstances and even adopted the nomenclature that the Orthodox publicists used for the Eastern Church.37 Guettée had the respect of other critics of papism. Shortly before Guettée joined the Russian Church, the Evangelical

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(i.e., Lutheran) pastor Edmond de Pressensé wrote in complimentary terms about him and Observateur catholique for their anti-ultramontane stance.38 Guettée maintained a close friendship and correspondence with the Old Catholic Eugène Michaud.39 He retained importance as a historian of the French Church and was frequently cited in works touching on French church history, though the ban of the Index had to be taken into account by writers who cared about Catholic officialdom.40 Guettée’s reputation in France depended on the theological, philosophical, and/or political stance of the parties involved. In Russia, high-ranking ecclesiastical and civil authorities and Orthodox publicists saw him as an asset who vindicated Orthodoxy’s claims to catholicity and who was uniquely qualified to defend Orthodoxy in the West, although there are indications that there was at least some ambivalence about Guettée’s Orthodox turn, ecumenism, and polemical style. Vasiliev first brought the Catholic dissident to the attention of high-­ ranking civil and ecclesial authorities. His intercessions were instrumental in getting Guettée recognized by the sovereign and by Russian religious authorities. Already actively courting Guettée, in 1860 Vasiliev asked the emperor to reward Guettée for his work on the Jesuits.41 When Guettée petitioned to be received in the church, Vasiliev pressed Bishop Leonty for a response. The delay of about eight months caused both Guettée and Vasiliev some anxiety.42 But once it was official, the archpriest wrote to Sushkov about the day of Guettée’s reception into the church as one of great joy, referring to Guettée as “our newly Orthodox.”43 When Guettée published La Papauté schismatique, Vasiliev interceded with Over-procurator Aleksei Petrovich Akhmatov, asking him to promote the work in Russia.44 The work came to Metropolitan Filaret’s attention, who, in turn, presented the work to the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, A. V. Gorsky. Gorsky was particularly impressed that Guettée had been exposing Roman or papal errors even before he joined the ­Orthodox Church and concluded that the work was worthy of a doctorate.45 With positive evaluations from the academy’s Conference, Filaret referred the matter to the Holy Synod, which approved the doctorate in May 1864. A diploma and doctoral cross were sent to Guettée, who received them in October (along with a salary commensurate with his rank).46 On receiving them, Guettée addressed an appreciative letter to Filaret, noting that the news compensated him “for the nasty feelings that some blind members of the Roman Church . . . sustain toward me” and provided him with “a strong incentive for new works in defense of our Apostolic Church, which is subjected to such slanders in the West.”47

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One of Guettée’s projects as an Orthodox publicist was a French translation of Dmitry Tolstoy’s two-volume work on Roman Catholicism in Russia (1863–1864). Tolstoy, who became over-procurator soon after this work’s appearance, began by suggesting that the collapse of the papacy’s temporal power, if it were accompanied by a decentralization of spiritual authority to the national churches, would have a beneficial impact on church-state relations. Predictably, the work was placed on the papal Index in 1866.48 Guettée quickly became famous in Orthodox circles. Contributing to his celebrity, he traveled to Russia in 1865, visiting Moscow, Petersburg, and the Holy Trinity Lavra. He served with Metropolitan Isidor [Nikolsky] in St. Petersburg, met the members of the Holy Synod, helped officiate at the funeral of Crown Prince Nikolai Alexandrovich (1843–1865), and had audiences with Alexander II, Metropolitan Filaret, and many other hierarchs, clergy, and lay people.49 His name was well-known among the educated public by the time Vasiliev died in late 1881. Obituaries and memoirs about Vasiliev routinely mentioned his success in leading key westerners, especially Guettée, to Orthodoxy. Guettée’s works, a number of which were translated into Russian, contributed to his fame, although in the Russian context, his antipapal polemics were not his most important works.50 Of the Orthodox journals, Vera i razum (Faith and reason, founded in 1884), attached to the Kharkov Theological Seminary, published the most of Guettée’s works and followed his career with interest. Although a predominantly Orthodox region in northeastern Ukraine, Guettée’s polemics may have had more propagandizing value in Kharkov than in central Russia, and his ideas about the national autonomy of churches may have appealed to Ukrainian churchmen in an era of emergent Ukrainian nationalism. Orthodox educated society attached special significance to Guettée’s reception into the Russian Church. It represented a turning point in Orthodoxy’s standing on the world stage and a hopeful sign that westerners were discovering the true merits of Orthodoxy. Strannik first reported the news in September 1862, observing that Guettée was a talented writer with “deep theological erudition,” a firm commitment to true Catholicism, and the ability to vigorously debate Roman Catholics. “The joining of such a person to Orthodoxy must have profound meaning and important consequences for the Church.”51 A follow-up article in December indicated that news of Guettée’s reception into the Russian Church produced excitement in some quarters, but skepticism in others. To illustrate the “impression which is made by this event on all true offspring of the Orthodox Church,” Strannik cited a letter from Artillery Colonel Apollon Erkovsky, who wrote to the editors of Strannik that on reading the news about Guettée he “cried out

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and leapt for joy.”52 He eagerly set out to share the good news and his joy with his acquaintances but discovered they did not have the same reaction, and “there were even people (Lutherans) who suspect that Guettée received a lot of money for this.”53 Undeterred, Erkovsky—who a year before had sent twenty-five silver rubles to the Paris church because it represented “the Dawn of Orthodoxy in the West”—dispatched eleven silver rubles to Paris requesting an intercessory prayer service for the “health and long life of the newly joined to Orthodoxy Fr. Vladimir.”54 Vasiliev’s daughter considered Guettée’s conversion her father’s “crowning achievement,” although she exaggerated the importance of the event and embellished it with Jesuit conspiracy motifs. “The joining to Orthodoxy of such a prominent writerpriest stunned and embittered the Catholic world, so that the Jesuits even tried to poison Guettée. This was the first joining to Orthodoxy of a Catholic priest and at the same time the crowning achievement of Father’s work abroad.”55 Russian lay and ecclesiastical authorities anticipated that the former Latin Catholic’s acceptance and public defense of Orthodoxy would raise the international profile of Orthodoxy, help curb the trend of émigré conversions to Catholicism, and even attract more westerners to the Eastern Church. They viewed the defense of Orthodoxy as a necessary step in the larger ecumenical project of uniting all the churches. In Guettée they found an ally and fervent publicist, and some of the same issues that discredited him in the eyes of many of his former co-religionists, especially his antipapal polemics, heightened his credentials as an Orthodox publicist. From the day of his reception into the church, it was understood by Guettée and his Russian Orthodox contemporaries that he had a specific mission—to nurture the seed planted in Paris at the Russian church’s consecration by educating western Europeans about Orthodoxy. In a letter to Metropolitan Isidor, Guettée promised to assist Vasiliev “in the holy cause undertaken by him—to acquaint the West with the Eastern Church and to refute the slanders not infrequently imputed to it.” Linking his mission with the imminent collapse of the papacy, he continued: “This undertaking is extraordinarily useful due to those critical circumstances in which the papacy now finds itself; and we must accept participation of Providence in those actions which reveal to the West the existence of the true Church at precisely the time when the papacy is prepared to disintegrate. With all its seeming insignificance, L’Union chrétienne strives in this respect to a truly lofty aim, and I am happy to have been able to assist with the founding of this paper.”56 In his memoirs, Leonty recalled his role in Guettée’s Orthodox turn, noting how Guettée, “by his publications acquainted and is acquainting

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foreigners with the Orthodox Church very successfully,” and was proving himself worthy of his doctorate.57 In December 1889—the twenty-fifth year jubilee of Guettée’s doctorate and fifty-year jubilee of his ordination—the Holy Synod recognized him for his decades of service by sending him a cross of St. Vladimir and a congratulatory certificate stating that the Holy Synod appreciated his zeal “for the good of the Orthodox Church and in particular the works of ecclesiastical scholarship published by him in defense of Orthodoxy.”58 For the jubilee, Istomin published a commemorative article in Vera i razum, announcing that Guettée’s Souvenirs would be published soon, which would “preserve many Orthodox from lightminded enthusiasm for the foreign” and “show the true worth of our native Orthodoxy.”59 By Istomin’s account, Guettée flourished only once he had repudiated western errors. Living in France, he initially knew of Orthodoxy only the common slanders against it that circulated freely among westerners. But then, through his relationship with Vasiliev, he changed his mind, thus representing living proof of “the great influence of our native Church.”60 When Guettée met Bishop Leonty in Paris, any remaining doubts he had dissipated. Leonty “pointed Fr. Vladimir to his lofty mission,” which was to “serve the great task of the union of all Churches” by “acquainting the West with Orthodoxy” and “refuting western inventions and the slanders of Latin writers about the Eastern Church.”61 While there was still much to be done to dissipate the “fog that with such a dense shroud covers the minds of western Christians in their judgments about the Eastern Orthodox Church in general and about Russia in particular,” Istomin lauded Guettée’s quarter-century of vigorous and steadfast defense of the Eastern Church, which was leaving “deep traces in the consciousness of right-thinking Christians” and belonged to “the annals of the noble efforts for the achievement of the great task of the union of all the Churches.”62 When Guettée died in Luxembourg on March 20, 1892, obituaries in the secular and ecclesiastical press reiterated these same themes. Guettée’s joining of the church was related to a broader movement—inquisitiveness about Orthodoxy and religious rapprochement—that started in Europe in the late 1840s and early 1850s.63 Guettée had a “great mission in the West” as an energetic “wrestler” for Orthodoxy. On one hand, Guettée spent thirty years exposing “Roman-Catholic fabrications and slanders of papist writers about the Eastern Church.” On the other hand, he worked for the “affirmative establishment of the truthfulness of Orthodoxy” and “the great cause of the joining of all the churches.”64 A publication of the Kharkov diocese reported the death of “one of the most remarkable representatives of Orthodoxy in

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the West,” a “torch bearer of Orthodoxy, who shined as such a bright and radiant star in the West.”65 Guettée’s last wish was to be interred in Russia, among his fellow believers, and “under the protection of the Orthodox Church,” which he had admirably defended for thirty years.66 His wish was not fulfilled for reasons that are not clear. Father Dmitry Vasiliev officiated at his burial at the Batignolles Cemetery in Paris in 1892.67 Guettée’s conversion furthered the Orthodox public relations campaign by ensuring the vigorous propagation of an Orthodox counternarrative in the West and by ensuring that anti-Orthodox propaganda, especially that of the Russian Jesuits, would not go uncontested. But a lot of his compatriots had already tuned him out before he joined the Russian Church. Guettée’s enemies transferred his tainted reputation to the Russian Church. Limited in the positive results that he could attain for the public image of Orthodoxy among Roman Catholics, he could still reach audiences from questioning Russians to Anglicans, Protestants, and Old Catholics.

Vasiliev as Appraised by His Contemporaries In 1865 Guettée wrote to Vasiliev from Moscow that “everyone speaks to me of you . . . in terms that could flatter anyone,” adding that he would be returning to Paris with “an enormous load of kindest regards, compliments, and respects” for the archpriest. “I feel very happy in Russia to be considered as your friend.”68 When Vasiliev died in 1881, obituaries in both the religious and secular press attested to the fame and importance of this “invincible wrestler for the Orthodox Church” who “raised high its banner in the West.”69 His eulogists remembered him as a highly esteemed and decorated representative of Russia’s white clergy and as an important public servant who dedicated his whole life to the benefit of the Orthodox Church. Religious education was the theme of his entire career, connecting his twenty years of public service in Paris with his work from 1867 until his death as the chairman of the Holy Synod’s Education Committee. As one obituary expressed it: “May you rest in peace, valiant servant of the Church, honorable and tireless toiler of religious education [prosveshchenie]!”70 The artist Vladimir Orlovsky unabashedly declared that no other member of the white clergy “enjoyed such broad fame or fully deserved celebrity” as Vasiliev, whose renown extended throughout Russia and western Europe.71 He added that it was universally felt in Russia that the country had lost an important public figure. Intelligent, tolerant, kind, strong, sincere, upright, a true Christian—such were the descriptors applied to this man of “titanic energy” and “amazing” activities.72

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Vasiliev’s eulogists reflected on his achievements: his pastoral care of POWs in France during the Crimean War; his work to prevent Russians from apostatizing and to counter the propaganda of the Russian converts to Catholicism; his correspondence with Jaquemet, Bonald, and Guizot—but especially with Jaquemet; his efforts to educate western Europeans about the Orthodox Church through his work on L’Union chrétienne; his role in joining Guettée and other westerners to the Russian Church;73 the founding of the Russian church in Paris; and his contributions to the reform of Russian ecclesiastical education on his return to Russia in 1867. Vasiliev had supported Popovitsky’s liberal (pro-white clergy) ecclesial newspaper.74 Popovitsky wrote about him in glowing terms, calling him “one of the most valiant representatives of the white clergy,” and their energetic and practically sole defender.75 All Vasiliev’s major achievements in Paris, as identified by his eulogists, were tied to one overarching goal: to enlighten the world about the truth of Orthodoxy, with the church on Daru Street as the pinnacle of his efforts to raise the international profile of Orthodoxy and Russia. One reason for Vasiliev’s appointment to the embassy chapel in Paris was to deal with concerns that Russians living in Paris were being seduced by Roman Catholicism.76 He was equipped to deal with this problem because he had been an outstanding student at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, where he had written a dissertation on papal primacy. Orlovsky stressed that one of Vasiliev’s main achievements was preventing Russians who lived in Paris from apostatizing: “It is possible to say, without fearing exaggeration, that many Russians in Paris, solely thanks to Iosif Vasiliev, were not Frenchified [ne ofrantsuzilis'] and did not convert to Catholicism. To achieve such results in Paris—the capital of Europe and the center of Catholic learning, where the most brilliant preachers and the most active Jesuits always were—a lot of talent and a lot of energy were necessary.”77 Avtonomova also addressed her father’s pastoral mission to keep Russians in Paris from turning to Catholicism. By her account, since Monseigneur Dupanloup was such a popular orator, and the Russians in Paris loved “everything brilliant” and “had a weakness for Catholicism,” Vasiliev attended Dupanloup’s orations at the bishop’s invitation, partly due to his own interest and partly in the interests of supervising his flock.78 She claimed that Vasiliev would debate with Dupanloup, adding her judgment that Dupanloup considered the Russian archpriest “an intelligent, knowledgeable and also somewhat liberal opponent.”79 Her account portrays Vasiliev as raising Orthodoxy’s stature by his good relations with Catholic clergy, although the evidentiary basis for her impressions is not clear. “Despite the difference of opinions and the polemic against Catholicism, Father was in excellent relations with the Catholic

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hierarchs, who respected Father for his intelligence, deep erudition, impartiality in judgments and fascinating conversation always in a benevolent tone, not at all insulting and not offending.”80 If one aspect of Vasiliev’s public service was to prevent Orthodox Christians in France from apostatizing, another aspect, recognized by all his eulogists, was outreach to counter anti-Orthodox attitudes and to educate westerners about Orthodoxy. He did so through L’Union chrétienne, a “special paper” to familiarize westerners with “a true understanding about the dogma and internal organization of the Orthodox Church” and “prepare the way for the desired rapprochement between the separated Christian confessions.”81 This periodical would not have been born without Vasiliev’s initiative, but it was also dependent on Guettée’s collaboration. Yet some Russian sources downplayed Guettée’s role as the actual owner and editor of the paper.82 Orlovsky emphasized how much “civic courage” it took for the knowledgeable Vasiliev to found the paper and to challenge “Catholic theologians in the center of Catholic learning.”83 It made sense to attribute the paper to Vasiliev in Russia, where it was possible to do so openly, even though the paper was registered in Guettée’s name. But the legal registration of the paper was not a formality. Although Vasiliev contributed several articles to the periodical, Guettée was the editor. While the collaborative nature of the work is evident in the first few years of the paper’s existence, Guettée’s strong presence is easy to spot and quickly evolved into predominance. The fact that Vasiliev’s eulogists minimized Guettée’s role and emphasized Vasiliev’s suggests that they had not scrutinized the periodical and failed to understand that L’Union chrétienne depended largely on Guettée. When it came to his journalism, Vasiliev was best known for his polemical letters to three individuals whom Vasiliev deemed guilty of publicly misrepresenting Orthodoxy, but especially Jaquemet. By all Russian accounts, Vasiliev’s polemic with the bishop of Nantes made a splash in the Russian press.84 Vasiliev’s son-in-law, the dogmatic theology professor Alexander Katansky, recalled that the letters “thundered throughout all Russia,” while Vasiliev’s eulogists remembered how they had “roused the general attention of the public both abroad and at home.”85 Polisadov considered Vasiliev’s exchange with Jaquemet remarkable because it was “the first open, printed attempt at a polemic by a representative of the Orthodox Church in a non-­ Orthodox land with one of the pastors of that land.”86 Publication of Vasiliev’s polemical letters in the major, though still fledgling, Russian ecclesiastical journals demonstrates that his contemporaries considered his defense of Orthodoxy and of Russia important.

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Yet Vasiliev’s particular arguments in defense of the Russian Church received little attention. His contemporaries extolled his letters to Jaquemet, Bonald, and Guizot not for the specific arguments he made but for what they represented, an “answer to a false accusation against the Russian Church.”87 Vasiliev had challenged “an extremely offensive opinion” about the Orthodox Church, refuted the prejudice that the tsar was the head of the church, and reiterated that the Orthodox Church recognizes only one head, Jesus Christ.88 He used “implacable logic” and “numerous facts” to refute the ultramontane view “that the Russian emperor is the head of the Russian Church in the same sense in which the pope is considered the head of Catholicism.”89 There was hardly any discussion of Vasiliev’s arguments in defense of the Russian Church, though there was private acknowledgment that he described church-state relations as they should be, not as they were.90 Whether his contemporaries generally agreed with his arguments, or just hesitated to openly debate the matter, the fact of his public defense of the Russian Church mattered more than the particulars. It signified that the Orthodox Church was becoming more visible and more audible in the West. Vasiliev was a Russian David standing up to the Roman Catholic Goliath. Vasiliev’s polemical letters symbolized a resilient Russia. In the context of the 1860s, given the uncertainty about the fate of the papacy, the moment was ripe for Orthodox publicists to entertain their aspirations that Russia would be at the forefront of the hoped-for reunion of the Christian churches, sans papal supremacy. After his death, Vasiliev’s eulogists stressed that Vasiliev had single-handedly raised Orthodoxy’s international prestige and, as such, had been the faithful servant of the church and the fatherland. Some did not hesitate to declare Vasiliev victorious in the polemic with Jaquemet.91 Barsov affirmed that “the most important articles” in L’Union chrétienne were “the celebrated letters” of Vasiliev to Jaquemet and Guizot. “The author triumphantly refuted the delusion concerning the teaching and organization of the administration of the Russian Orthodox church. The indestructible dialectics and wealth of erudition of our theologian were revealed in all their glory in these letters and they propelled him . . . to universal fame, since almost every religious press of Europe and America talked about this polemic.”92 Vasiliev’s daughter recounted that Vasiliev received a letter from Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, praising him for his letter to the bishop of Nantes, which sent shockwaves through the Catholic world since it was unheard of for a Catholic bishop to engage in polemics with a “schismatic.”93 The offprints of the correspondence sold like hotcakes, she claimed, and she clearly believed her father influenced Catholic opinion. “The activity of my

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father in Paris and the correspondence with the bishop interested the Catholic world which finally had to admit that the Orthodox Church was not a quantité negligeable, but the equivalent of the Catholic [Church].”94 Such sentiments reflect wishful thinking more than concrete results.95 Vasiliev made some headway, but the influence of his polemical letters was not the dramatic coup depicted in these Russian accounts. Although his polemical letters certainly contributed to Vasiliev’s fame and raised the international visibility of the Russian Orthodox Church, they were hardly cause for Orthodox triumphalism. The church on Daru Street, which was at the center of all Vasiliev’s efforts to raise the international profile of Orthodoxy, deserves more credit for enhancing not only the visibility but the reputation of Orthodoxy. Besides all the attention it received in the Russian press in 1861, Vasiliev’s initiative, personal sacrifices, and persistence in seeing this project through from start to finish were noted by every eulogist. Popovitsky’s obituary is revealing because it portrayed Vasiliev as having to struggle against the inertia of both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Vasiliev had to persuade Alexander II that it would not be too provocative for the Russians to build a church in Second Empire France. After receiving Metropolitan Filaret’s blessing, Vasiliev obtained an audience with Alexander II, “and, a remarkable fact!—the late Sovereign, from the first words of Iosif Vasilievich, expressed to him His fear: suppose the interference of the Russian government in the matter of the construction of an Orthodox church in Paris were to be interpreted by the government of Napoleon III in an unfavorable sense from the political point of view.”96 Vasiliev had “to persuade the Sovereign Emperor that the project he conceived was devoid of any danger whatsoever in the political respect and about its endless fruitfulness for the glory of the Orthodox Church and for the religious needs of the numerous sons of Orthodoxy who were living in Paris or visiting the capital of France. Then all obstacles were removed.”97 Popovitsky explained that Vasiliev also had to persuade the church authorities to send a bishop to Paris to consecrate the church, an idea they initially found inconvenient (neudobnyi).98 In life and in death Vasiliev was significant to his contemporaries as the archpriest who stood up for Orthodoxy in the “capital of Europe.” The eulogistic assessments of Vasiliev point to the conclusion that, for his contemporaries, Vasiliev’s polemical achievements (including L’Union chrétienne), like Guettée’s conversion which he facilitated, had mainly symbolic significance. Vasiliev’s public defense of Orthodoxy and his role in turning Guettée to Orthodoxy signaled that Russian Orthodoxy’s prominence was on the rise while Rome’s was declining. Orthodoxy’s prominence was arguably on the rise; but the decline of Rome, so much anticipated among Orthodox

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thinkers, did not accompany that rise. Nonetheless Vasiliev worked hard to raise the image of the Eastern Church in the minds of westerners and to root out prejudices. A magnificent church as a visible testimony about the Orthodox faith was the most effective way that he raised awareness about and heightened the prestige of the Orthodox Church.

The Reception of L’Union chrétienne L’Union chrétienne had a tiny niche audience in the West and was met with ambivalence in Russia, but it was portrayed by Guettée’s and Vasiliev’s eulogists as an important vehicle for the defense of Orthodoxy. L’Union chrétienne was seldom mentioned in the French press. When it first appeared, Hello critiqued it in Le Croisé as the nebulous paper—­neither Catholic nor Protestant—of Guettée.99 Early on, a couple of French sources— knowing Guettée to be the editor—associated the paper more with Gallicanism than with Orthodoxy. A liberal paper described it as “written under the influence of Gallican principles.”100 Writing for Le Monde, La Tour said L’Union chrétienne represented a sort of “semi-catholic, ultra-Gallican episcopalism,” adding that the periodical expressed an ecumenical tendency in the Russian Church that was a minority view in a church where “the great majority of the episcopate and the clergy remain very opposed to the Roman Church.”101 Once in a while the foreign correspondents for Roman Catholic newspapers revealed their impressions of the paper. One reporter in St. Petersburg commented, “L’Union chrétienne, Mr. Vasiliev’s organ, is very widespread here; our orthodox are very proud to see their principles printed in French characters, and imagine that they cause a lot of emotion in Paris.”102 Journal de Bruxelles’s correspondent in Russia attributed little importance to the paper in western Europe but believed its significance was in spreading anti-Catholic sentiment in St. Petersburg. He described how “animosity against Catholicism” in Russia was being “fueled by a paper that the Holy Synod devised to pay in Paris; this paper, that is probably not known there [Paris], but that is wreaking havoc here, is L’Union so-called chrétienne, written by this Abbé Guettée who is so sadly made famous in the trial of the assassin of Mgr. Sibour! Here’s where our Holy Synod is obliged to go fetch its advocate!”103 A few months later the same correspondent reported that while the radicals in Russia made Pierre-Joseph Proudhon look “retrograde” and Giuseppe Mazzini “moderate,” the Russian Church was powerless in the face of social disorder because “not having a fixed doctrine about anything,” it opened its doors to Jansenists, Protestants, and sectarians of all sorts. The correspondent blushed, he said, for the Russian clergy who could enlist no better

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“penholder” than Guettée in its cause. “Our so-called orthodox delight in L’Union chrétienne whose false and hate-filled language I have already noted. This sheet is directed by M. Guettée who is the sole defense witness to be presented in favor of the assassin of the Archbishop of Paris.”104 From another ideological perspective, to defend a Russian colleague (Grigory Nikolaevich Vyrubov)—“a young scholar too well-known already for his progressive ideas” who lived in a “still half-barbaric land”—the positivist Émile Goubert responded to an article Guettée published in L’Union chrétienne, referring to it as a “Russian paper, unknown to the rest,” read by a “meager public.”105 If the periodical was largely unknown or ignored in France, it did not fare all that well in Russia. When publication began, Sushkov provided copies of the paper and a list of names to Prince Sergei Urusov and asked that the state secretary distribute the copies to the people on the list. Urusov assured Vasiliev—who had expressed doubt about Urusov’s support—that he supported the paper, had distributed it as asked, and that all the people who received the paper instructed him “to sincerely thank the editorial board” and expressed the wish to subscribe.106 We can surmise that the people on the list were highly placed in St. Petersburg society, including representatives of the imperial and church administration. Khomiakov and Deacon Replovsky were early critics of the weekly. Khomiakov’s criticisms of L’Union chrétienne may have pushed the paper to become more explicitly Orthodox.107 Replovsky did not relent from his criticisms in Pravoslavnoe obozrenie. In March 1862 he conceded that the paper “more and more abandons the character of a weekly paper where amateurs agree to talk about how good it would be for everyone to unite, not having determined in advance the banner under which they stand and the terms on which they would be able to understand each other.”108 Nonetheless, even if the paper had become more decidedly Orthodox in tone (six months earlier Guettée had submitted his formal request to join the Russian Church), Replovsky remained unfavorably disposed to it. While admitting that L’Union chrétienne provided an important Orthodox perspective on the papal question and singling out Vasiliev’s works as the best in the paper on the topic, Replovsky argued that this “hot question” would ultimately be resolved in favor of one of the parties, and thus its interest was “transitory.” A second activity of L’Union chrétienne was to remain “on the watch for every aspersion about the Eastern Church, which so often Jesuits and non-Jesuits disseminate.” Here Replovsky discussed how the Russian Church was known to the West through anecdotes that people found amusing or tall tales related by travelers to Russia or “by our dear compatriots,” who trivialized and presented as absurd “important events and institutions.”109 While the paper

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struggled against these distortions of the truth, Replovsky did not think the paper could achieve “lasting and significant results” because it specialized in the “refutation even of trifles.” The paper repaid anecdotes with anecdotes instead of providing substantive refutations of errors or serious Orthodox works that exposed the hollowness of negative western characterizations of Orthodoxy. He concluded that “Orthodoxy, despite the two-year existence of the paper, . . . is terra incognita for the West.”110 The paper did not contain “a serious account” of Orthodoxy. To be an “actual and useful Orthodox voice,” it needed a change of program toward more “careful study of Orthodoxy” with help from more Russian collaborators.111 Replovsky continued to criticize the paper throughout 1862, elaborating on his view that L’Union chrétienne lacked the proper focus to educate westerners about Russia. He wanted to see the paper more explicitly and exclusively deal with the Russian Church. Instead of following developments in the Anglican Church—Vasiliev was at the forefront of ecumenical discussions with Anglicans—or polemicizing against the tendencies of modern rationalism, he thought that L’Union chrétienne needed a tighter focus on Russian church history and theology, with more Russian contributors. His vision was that the paper could publish translations of articles from the Russian theological reviews, which would demonstrate Russia’s interest in western church life while simultaneously educating westerners about Russia.112 Although Replovsky’s criticisms appear to be aimed against Guettée’s editorializing as well as against the ecumenical direction of the paper, possibly expressing skepticism about the Russian authorities anointing the former Roman Catholic priest as a leading spokesperson for Orthodoxy, Vasiliev did not appreciate Replovsky’s ideas about fundamentally altering the program of the periodical. He responded in the pages of L’Union chrétienne, and wrote to Sushkov that “I gave that windbag reformer the deacon Replovsky a good dressing down.”113 Vasiliev rejected Replovsky’s vision that the paper should explicitly be “an organ of the Russian Church,” and insisted that L’Union chrétienne would maintain its original ecumenical program, “the explanation of true Catholicism that is so well preserved in the Eastern Church.”114 He added: “The Russian Church is a very extensive branch of this church; an exposition of its teaching, its actual conditions, and refutations of prejudices that are scattered against it in the West will occupy an extensive place in its pages. But while testifying to other Christian churches that they strayed from the original structure of the Church, we will do justice to them concerning what they have of the good and the orthodox, and show them the elements of unity.”115 Replovsky’s response to this reaffirmation of the paper’s program was to accuse the paper of latitudinarianism. He pronounced his

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judgment that the Orthodox Church had “the right to expect straightforward services from its most important members.”116 He questioned how it served the cause of unity for Vasiliev to refute his (Replovsky’s) criticisms in L’Union chrétienne, since most of the readers of the Parisian paper would not have seen his critique in Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, and he rechristened the periodical The Parisian Union (Parizhskaia uniia), thereby attacking its orthodoxy.117 Though Replovsky remained a detractor, the periodical received affirmation from Greek quarters.118 Vasiliev reported to Over-procurator Akhmatov that after presenting a complete set of the periodical to Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim II, the editors received a congratulatory gramota (­certificate) from Joachim praising their good work.119 Vasiliev used this ­approbation and news of the positive reception of L’Union chrétienne among Greek ecclesiastics as leverage to press for financial support for the periodical from the Russian Synod, mentioning that he had received testimonials that the Greek hierarchs valued the Orthodox weekly. Vasiliev expressed the hope that his “native” bishops would also throw their support behind the endeavor. In addition to publishing the gramota in L’Union chrétienne, Vasiliev mentioned that it was being published in three French-language newspapers.120 While some of the Orthodox journals interpreted L’Union chrétienne as a sign that “the enemies of the Orthodox Church understand that now they cannot so overtly and with impunity make attacks on the Eastern Church, as often happened earlier,” meaningful support remained lacking.121 By early 1864, Vasiliev expressed his own frustrations with L’Union chrétienne. His grievances included difficulty in getting worthwhile contributions from the Russian clergy abroad, a deficit thanks to the mismanagement of the correspondent in Constantinople, people who wanted to bend the program of the paper (e.g., Replovsky), and the tardiness of financial support from the Synod.122 His daughter felt Vasiliev never received due recognition for L’Union chrétienne. Neither the Russian clergy abroad nor the Holy Synod lent strong support to the paper, which never had more than three hundred subscribers and had to “solicit a pitiful subsidy.”123 Avtonomova recalled that when she read the correspondence of her father as collected and published in 1915, her heart sank to learn of how he had to beg for an allowance (1,200 francs per year) for L’Union chrétienne.124 She said Vasiliev discontinued the edition after six years and indicated that her father wanted to return to Russia after the failure of the paper.125 The periodical was not discontinued, so her comment can only refer to Vasiliev’s active participation. There was some tension between Guettée and his Russian collaborators regarding authorship of certain articles. Besides that, given Vasiliev’s personality and reputation for tolerance,

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level-headedness, and civility, it would not be surprising if Guettée’s vitriolic tone and temperament tried the Russian archpriest’s patience.126 L’Union chrétienne was a landmark in Orthodox journalism because it was the first Orthodox periodical published in the West, it was published outside the Russian ecclesiastical censorship apparatus, and it represented an attempt by Orthodox publicists to promote understanding between Christian confessions. It provided a medium for ecumenical discussions between Orthodox, Anglicans, Protestants, and Old Catholics, and the ecumenical discussions of the late nineteenth century were built on interpersonal relationships and groundwork established in Paris and London in the era of Vatican I.127 Ideas flowed in multiple directions, and the magazine not only explained Orthodoxy to the heterodox but introduced Orthodox readers to developments in other Christian confessions.128 The periodical fits into a much broader framework of how the Russian clergy abroad in the nineteenth century—some of the brightest representatives of the white clergy—played a key role as intermediaries between Orthodoxy and other confessions by disseminating information about Orthodoxy in the West and information about other confessions and western European philosophy back in Russia. The periodical was not very successful in terms of its reception and support either among westerners or in Russia. Ambivalence about the paper in Russia exposed rifts in Orthodox circles between more and less inclusive definitions of Orthodoxy (or catholicism), on one hand, and more and less enthusiasm about ecumenism, on the other. Besides its Orthodox subscribers, the paper reached only a small contingent of Catholic dissidents (e.g., Old Catholics), Anglicans, Protestants, and of course the Russian Jesuits. Guettée’s and Vasiliev’s eulogists spoke highly of L’Union chrétienne, recalling how it “mercilessly castigated Latin deviations from universal truth.”129 But their praise was out of step with the lackluster attention and support the periodical received in either France or Russia. They included it among the priest-publicists’ significant accomplishments, but given the dearth of discussion about the contents of the paper, for them the paper’s significance was largely symbolic. Orthodox spokesmen had an organ and were raising their voice in defense of Orthodoxy. They had an audience, but a small one.

Reverberations and Reforms Events in Paris had direct bearing on calls for reform in Russia. Exaggerated as they were, criticisms of the Russian Orthodox Church emanating from the West were productive. They raised the awareness—of laypersons and ecclesiastics, secular and spiritual authorities alike—about the Orthodox Church’s

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lack of respectability abroad because of its reputation for being enslaved to the civil power. The struggle to improve Orthodoxy’s public image reflected and fueled reformist sentiment in Russia where it provoked consideration of church-state relations, the need for clerical, especially educational, reforms, and freedom of conscience.130 “It was sad for me to hear . . . unfavorable judgments . . . about our Russian Church,” Andrei Muraviev recalled. Referring to Theiner, he conceded: “At the bottom of my heart I sometimes realized that there are such accusations in which he has cause for reproach, and still other important shortcomings in the domestic life of our church which still have not been brought to light in the West.”131 In response to the criticisms of Roman Catholic polemicists, around mid-century Muraviev suggested to Metropolitan Filaret the idea of calling for a council to address issues of church administration.132 Then, with the publication of Vasiliev’s response to Jaquemet, the Russian press drew the educated public’s attention to Orthodox church-state relations as imagined by westerners (“If the Czar believes it necessary to change my creed and modify my religion, I am at his command”) and understood by Vasiliev, who functioned as an intermediary between western European polemicists, individuals in the Russian ecclesiastical and secular administration, and the Orthodox reading public. Vasiliev’s correspondence with the French bishops and Guizot made it abundantly clear that western Europeans either perceived the Russian Church to be completely enslaved to the state or were, as was Guizot, dismissive of Orthodoxy. Besides popularizing information about western perceptions, Vasiliev’s letters emphasized the Orthodox principle of church and state as separate, autonomous spheres.133 His appraisal of the Holy Synod as a canonical institution appeared while Russian theological study of canon law was in its infancy and before the matter of the Synod’s canonical status became a matter of debate among canonists.134 While there was little discussion of the substance of Vasiliev’s polemical letters, there are hints that the letters served as a springboard for a reappraisal of church authority. Archimandrite Feodor (Alexander Matveevich Bukharev, 1824–1871) published a mildly critical article about them in the secular press in 1862.135 Feodor affirmed that Vasiliev’s letters were “already well known among us in Russia where they have been read and are being read with lively interest.”136 He acknowledged that Vasiliev was doing important work by countering western ignorance about Orthodoxy, but Feodor did not think it was sufficient to emphasize the collective (conciliar) as opposed to individual (papal) nature of church authority. If those in authority lost sight of the fact that they were Christ’s instruments, a collective yet illegitimate “papacy” could develop.137 In short, even though Vasiliev affirmed

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the Orthodox doctrine of Christ as sole head of the church, Feodor thought his explanation of spiritual authority, tradition, and councils kept Christ at a distance, accessible only through intermediaries. It was necessary, Feodor argued, to counter the papal spirit with the idea of Christ’s ever-present action in the church. Hence, Feodor liked Vasiliev’s observation that Christ was the president of the Holy Synod.138 By the time Archimandrite Feodor wrote this commentary on Vasiliev’s letters, he was embroiled in the affair that led to his dismissal from the Spiritual Censorship Committee and his removal from St. Petersburg to a monastery in Vladimir Province.139 A year after his article on Vasiliev appeared, he was defrocked at his request and resumed life as a layperson. Besides expressing aspects of his Christology, Feodor’s article on Vasiliev’s polemical letters made a statement about what church authority should be and about the Christo-centric directives that should guide the action of the Holy Synod. If the article reflected his views on the de facto nature of the Synod (which is doubtful) as opposed to offering a corrective on what church authority in general and the Holy Synod in particular should be (which is more likely), it must have been painful for Feodor to see his works successfully censored and to be dismissed from his position by the conservative wing in the Russian Church. In any case, L’Union chrétienne printed a rebuttal in November 1862, attributed to Vasiliev (partially by Guettée?), that implicitly questioned the “very venerable” archimandrite’s Orthodoxy on some points.140 Archimandrite Feodor used Vasiliev’s letters to Jaquemet and Guizot as an opportunity to reflect on church authority, emphasizing that church authority, whether exercised by an individual or a council, could be abused. His critique illustrates that even though Vasiliev defended the synodal system as in accord with Orthodox teaching on church and state, his polemical letters could nonetheless serve as a catalyst for reevaluation of issues of church authority and church-state relations. Since they outlined what the boundaries were supposed to be between church and state, Vasiliev’s letters could be interpreted as containing implied criticisms and invited comparison between theory and practice. Under the lens of publicity at home and abroad, civil and ecclesial authorities faced pressure to examine matters of church authority and to consider the need for church reform. Vasiliev’s correspondence with Jaquemet put the issue of church-state relations in public view, and in the aftermath of his polemical letters and other reports from clerical and lay publicists, no member of Russian educated society could claim to be in the dark about the negative assessments of the Russian Church’s authority that were in vogue in the West. Ecclesiastics had plenty of leverage they could use to fend off state

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interference in church affairs. By the early twentieth century, there was widespread agreement among the Orthodox hierarchy and educated public that there needed to be a major realignment of church-state relations, though there was a lack of consensus about the precise nature of reforms.141 Questions remain, however, regarding whether Vasiliev’s argument that the divine constitution of the Russian Church was not altered either by the creation or dissolution of the patriarchate (letters to Jaquemet) and his defense of the Orthodox idea of harmony between church and state (letters to Guizot) noticeably shaped the subsequent debates or had more fleeting value as the literary sword of the archpriest who stood up for Russia. Besides the sphere of church-state relations, there cannot really be any doubt that the criticisms coming out of the West about the ignorance of the white clergy (popes), lack of preaching, and lack of missionary efficacy were driving attempts at further ecclesial reforms, especially educational reforms and the elimination of the clerical caste, in the 1860s and subsequent decades. Figures with ties to Paris pushed for change. For example, Dmitry Tolstoy assumed the mantle of an Orthodox publicist and as over-procurator of the Holy Synod and minister of education, worked closely on educational projects with Vasiliev, who chaired the Synod’s Education Committee after his return to Russia in 1867. After Polisadov left foreign service and became the head priest at SS Peter and Paul Cathedral in Petersburg, he began preaching regularly on Sundays and called for the abolition of censorship of sermons. It is evident that Polisadov worked for this measure partly in response to criticisms in the West about the lack of preaching in the Orthodox Church and partly to counter the Catholic preaching of Father Souaillard in St. Petersburg.142 It is no coincidence that other high-profile members of the Russian clergy abroad, fully cognizant of how western Europeans perceived their church, also advocated for higher standards for Russian clergy and promoted educational reforms.143 Freedom of conscience was another front in the battle for Orthodoxy’s international reputation. Blaming coercive state policies for aggravating sectarian movements in the Russian Church, Muraviev used the foreign press to make the case for freedom of conscience in his 1859 work Le Raskol. About a decade later, Ivan Aksakov published a letter in Moskva (Moscow)—part of a polemic between him and Pogodin regarding freedom of conscience. For Aksakov, as for all the leading Slavophiles, coercion in matters of faith was anathema. As “the most forceful and prolific popularizer of Russian Panslavism,” Aksakov’s commitment to freedom of conscience reflected his belief that Russia was in need of internal regeneration if it was to be the spiritual and cultural center of Slavic unity.144

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If Orthodoxy was experiencing a new heyday in the West, Aksakov argued it was because of freedom of the press and freedom of conscience: Every year the Orthodox Church acquires new offspring and new adherents both in western Europe and across the Ocean . . . in the free American States. . . . These peaceful victories of the word gave and will give much consolation to our entire church, from the highest hierarchs, from the Synod, to the last layman. . . . But how have these acquisitions happened? These victories are gained thanks to what? . . . Isn’t it thanks to the principle of “freedom of conscience,” to this essential condition of the faith, without which faith is not faith,—isn’t it thanks to this principle that has become the cornerstone of European civil legislation, that the unrestricted preaching of Orthodoxy became possible in the Catholic and Protestant countries and that we have acquired some souls there? Isn’t it on the strength of this principle that all who were mistaken, after confessing their error, can without hindrance come to the light? Isn’t it by leaning on this law that nationals of the French, English, and Prussian states dare, not being liable to any prosecution from the side of their governments, profess aloud in the middle of the non-Orthodox world, the truth of Orthodoxy that they have found? Isn’t it by the fruits of the religious freedom, allowed in foreign and non-Orthodox states, that the Russian Church is propagated in these cases, and shouldn’t the Russian Church therefore give thanks to and praise the fertile strength of religious liberty?145 Aksakov discussed the growth of favorable attitudes to Orthodoxy in the West. Orthodoxy’s growing prestige was evident in the realm of print media and from its increasing number of adherents. As examples of Orthodoxy’s rising stature he mentioned the brochures Khomiakov had published abroad in the 1850s, L’Union chrétienne, The Orthodox Catholic Review founded in London in 1867 by Joseph Julian Overbeck (another westerner, reportedly influenced by Vasiliev and Guettée, who joined the Orthodox Church), and a “conscientious work” published in France by a Protestant, Louis Boissard’s L’Église de Russie (The church of Russia, Paris, 1867).146 Aksakov described L’Union chrétienne as a paper “founded by the Russians, with Russian money,” that for a decade had been working to “promote that ‘joining of the churches’ for which arises every day the prayer in our temples, and to promote to European, chiefly French society, the truth of Eastern Orthodoxy.”147 Under the impression that Guettée had recently assumed the editorship of this Russian Orthodox paper, Aksakov explained that Guettée was formerly a Catholic priest who had become Orthodox, and who “openly and

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harshly, in Paris itself, the capital of Catholic France, both in the pages of his paper and his numerous works, denounces the falsehood and disease of Roman church structure—and not only openly and harshly, but chiefly, without constraints.”148 The fact was, Aksakov argued, Orthodoxy was benefiting from freedom of conscience in western Europe and the United States, though this freedom was not allowed in Russia. Russia had a double standard, and while people were coming to the light of the Orthodox faith where freedom of conscience was granted, “the Russian conscience” remained in bondage to the dominant church.149 Specifically mentioning Guettée’s joining to Orthodoxy, he observed that if France had apostasy legislation like that in the Russian penal code, Vasiliev and Guettée would both have been subject to harsh punishments.150 He cited the Russian legislation at length, noting that even if many of the provisions were no longer enforced, they were nonetheless contrary to the spirit of liberty of conscience that was vital to religious faith. “It is precisely because our faith is true that it must be by true faith, i.e., by the free will of the spirit, as the Orthodox Church also teaches: it must demand of its children only sincere, i.e., fully free and not hypocritical belief.”151 Aksakov’s observations highlight the reciprocity between events in Paris and Russia, indicating that what was happening abroad exposed tensions and contradictions in Russian society. Like other Russian contemporaries of Guettée and Vasiliev, Aksakov had the sense that Orthodoxy was becoming more visible around the world and that western opinion about Orthodoxy was undergoing positive changes. He saw that it was the comparative freedom of the press and the principle of freedom of conscience that allowed Orthodox publicists to openly practice and profess their faith abroad, to challenge anti-Orthodox prejudices, and to receive heterodox individuals into their fold. Once again, St. Alexander Nevsky Church and the activities of the embassy clergy in Paris advanced the conversation about freedom of conscience. Of course, Aksakov was right that Russians were benefiting from freedoms in the West that were absent from Russia, but it might also be worth pointing out that freedom of conscience became the pattern in western Europe gradually and through a process of bitter struggle; while Aksakov mentioned that it had become the law of the land in France, Britain, and Prussia, the application of the principle was contested in and beyond the 1860s, especially when Pope Pius IX rejected freedom of conscience as a universal principle, most famously in The Syllabus of Errors. With the notable exception of the liberal Catholics, Catholic polemicists were certainly not at the forefront of the fight for freedom of conscience in western European nations; hence

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the political alliances that sometimes formed between religious minorities and liberals, and hence the anti-Catholic legislative programs of the 1870s and 1880s.152 Aksakov implicated both the dominant church and the state for the fact that Russia lacked freedom of conscience and was concerned that the Russian clergy would be resistant to the principle.153 He was starting to understand something that most Catholic polemicists probably did not: in the postNikolaevan era, Russian state interference in ecclesiastical affairs pushed for more tolerance of the heterodox, contrary to what some key Orthodox churchmen would have liked.154 Some of what foreign observers of the Russian situation interpreted as state interference in ecclesial affairs was actually ecclesiastics actively seeking state patronage to ensure that the Orthodox Church retained its privileged position within the empire. To an educated public preoccupied with Russia’s international reputation, events in Paris fed religious nationalism at home. Guettée, Vasiliev, and L’Union chrétienne mattered because they defended and promoted Orthodoxy abroad, symbolizing that Orthodoxy was gaining ascendancy at precisely the moment when the papacy seemingly faced implosion. For Orthodox publicists and eulogists, Guettee’s turn to Orthodoxy demonstrated that even if Orthodoxy was misunderstood, misrepresented, and slandered in the West, it was gaining prominence, influence, and respect. Vasiliev was appointed to the Paris embassy church in part to counter Russians’ “lightminded enthusiasm for the foreign” (to borrow Istomin’s expression), and Guettee’s turn to Orthodoxy was proof that “the foreign”—that is, Roman Catholicism—was not superior to Orthodoxy. Some Russian writers interpreted Guettée’s Orthodox turn as a sign of a new sea change in western opinion, oblivious to the facts that it was a relatively isolated event, a real change in attitudes was still in embryonic stages, and Guettée was a controversial figure and not a total boon to Orthodoxy. While any Orthodox triumphalism was misguided, Guettée’s and Vasiliev’s eulogists were right to see their work as important. Guettée and Vasiliev were representatives of a relatively new phenomenon among the clergy abroad— the Orthodox priest-publicist. They began doing for Orthodoxy in the West what Catholic and Protestant clergymen, including Guettée, had already been doing: using the press to promote their faith and to discuss the important issues of the times. For the public image of Orthodoxy, it was significant that they did so in the international language of the day. For Guettée, already a seasoned journalist, the transition from Gallican to Orthodox publicist was seamless. But Vasiliev was breaking new ground by venturing into French-language

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journalism in his capacity as a Russian priest, although his efforts were part of a broader movement among the clergy abroad to educate westerners by translating Orthodox liturgical and theological works into western European languages.155 The clergy in foreign service joined outspoken Orthodox laymen who took it on themselves to defend Russia and the Orthodox faith in the West. As priest-publicists, Guettée and Vasiliev contended with antiOrthodox sentiment, defended the Eastern Church as catholic, and sought better mutual understanding with anti-ultramontane Christians of other confessions. They deserve credit for raising the awareness of those westerners who, amid the controversies over the papacy that divided Catholics and troubled statesmen, wanted to know more about the history and teaching of the Eastern Church. While there was not an abrupt shift in western opinion, they had some success at reshaping French attitudes about the Eastern Church, as was already evident in the 1860s.

Conclusion If we can still not celebrate the solemnities of the Catholic liturgy on the occasion of the funeral of the Tsar, we will pray in our heart of hearts for the repose of his soul. How can we not address to the Savior a fervent prayer for the powerful Emperor who brought his glory to assure the peace of the world and proved to be the faithful ally of France? —Richard, cardinal and archbishop of Paris, 1894

Vasiliev sensed that in order to combat its negative reputation in the West, the Orthodox Church needed a visual testimony. With the educational infrastructure that accompanied it, St. Alexander Nevsky Church had important results for the public image of Orthodoxy at home and abroad. In the West, the new church and the media campaign provided a springboard for making Orthodoxy better understood, leading to the gradual acceptance of alternative narratives about the Eastern Church in some quarters. Meanwhile, in Russia, the perception that the Orthodox publicists were having so much success provided an impetus for ramping up Orthodoxy’s international visibility. While it was only after the Russian Revolution that Russian émigrés were successful at dispelling “prejudices and misunderstandings concerning ­Orthodoxy,”1 the groundwork was laid by the clergy abroad in the nineteenth century. The Orthodox public relations campaign coincided with a broader opposition movement—aimed against the centralizing tendency in Roman Catholicism—that impelled dialogue between, and better understanding among, Christians of anti-ultramontane proclivities. Russia’s clergy abroad were also in contact and conversation with their Roman Catholic religious counterparts and spoke to them about all the false information about Russia and the Eastern Church in the Catholic press.2 Through these dialogues, the Russian embassy clergy in general, and the priest-publicists in Paris in 181

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particular, had some successes when it came to reshaping attitudes about Orthodoxy. Having had extensive interactions with Orthodox lay and clerical thinkers, Palmer, who acknowledged that a lifetime would not be enough to gather “all the slanders expressed by the West” about the Eastern Church since the schism, claimed that he corrected Pius IX when the pope alluded to the Russian Church’s dependence on the secular authority.3 In print, the most important and successful work was Description de l’Église russe de Paris, which was the basis for broad dissemination of factual information about Orthodoxy in the mass press and tour guides. Beyond that, Vasiliev’s and Guettée’s efforts bore the most fruit among anti-ultramontanes of different stripes.4 Aksakov mentioned Louis Boissard’s work as evidence that Orthodoxy’s stature was rising in the West. This minister of the Evangelical Church produced a two-volume work on the Eastern Church based on a stay of ten years in Russia, and his study of Orthodox sources including Filaret, Metropolitan Makary (whose works on Orthodox theology Vasiliev translated into French in the late 1850s), Vasiliev, Muraviev, and L’Union chrétienne.5 Boissard considered the claims that the Russian Church and its clergy lacked independence to be propaganda spread by a rival (i.e., Roman Catholic) church that had tried unsuccessfully to subject the Eastern Church to its authority. He accepted Vasiliev’s explanation of Russian church administration. The widespread belief that “attributes a Caesarian papacy to the emperor of Russia” was an error, according to Boissard. Civil and spiritual authority was separate in Russia: “There is a very clear line of demarcation between the civil power and the ecclesiastical authority, which enjoys a complete independence in the government of the Church. In Russia there is not even a minister of worship, which is regarded as irreconcilable with the spiritual liberty of the Church.”6 The free-thinking encyclopedist Larousse reviewed Boissard’s study in his Grand dictionnaire. The work filled a gap in French theological literature, Larousse wrote, and would be very useful for anyone wanting to understand the Eastern Church. Yet Larousse thought Boissard overlooked intrusions of the civil power in ecclesial affairs in Russia and was “a chronicler rather than a historian,” since “the critical element is completely lacking.”7 Nonetheless, owing to closer ties between Orthodox publicists and Protestants, the dominant Roman Catholic narrative was being challenged. About twenty more years passed before a French Catholic scholar significantly revised the portrayal of the Russian Church. In the 1880s the liberal Catholic publicist Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu provided a nuanced treatment of the Russian Church in his L’Empire des tsars et les Russes (The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians) that significantly blurred the lines between Russia and the rest of Europe.8 Leroy-Beaulieu’s study

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may provide the most sympathetic treatment of the Russian Church published in French by a Catholic author since Haxthausen’s study of Russia (published before the Crimean War). In the first volume (1881) he suggested that Christianity should have linked Russia with Europe but had not done so because of Russia’s connection with Byzantium rather than Rome. Because of the complexity of the issue of Eastern Christianity’s value as a civilizing force in Russia, he devoted an entire volume to religion, which appeared in 1889.9 In this third volume, Leroy-Beaulieu posed and answered the question of whether the Russian people were Christian, attributing the idea that they were not truly Christian to Russians like the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky and the positivist Grigory Vyrubov rather than to his compatriots and coreligionists. In spite of all the elements of a dual faith and the persistence of superstitious and magical beliefs and practices—not unique to Russia but similar to other places and times, even in Europe—he concluded that Russians were nonetheless Christian, not only in rite but in their souls, because they apprehended the Christian virtues of love and humility and above all, love of the cross.10 Russia and its religion were not outside Europe but belonged to Europe of the Old Regime.11 In his treatment of Russian church-state relations Leroy-Beaulieu rejected the excesses of the Catholic polemicists—the tsar-pope myth, the church’s enslavement, the idea that with the elimination of the patriarchate there were no longer any checks on autocratic power—while still adhering to the belief that only in the Latin tradition could an established church retain independence. What western polemicists described as the dependence of the Russian Church on the state was really a mutual interdependence of church and state. The religious beliefs of the people in all states serve as a check on a ruler’s, even a despot’s, power.12 Nowhere in Europe was the link between church and state as close as it was in Russia. This fact meant that the Russian Church enjoyed special prerogatives and the protection of the state on one hand, but at the price of considerable subservience to the civil power on the other.13 While Leroy-Beaulieu acknowledged that there could not be a “free church in a state where nothing is free,” the autocratic rulers, even Peter I, exercised restraint when it came to the church. If the abolition of the patriarchate—“the greatest act of interference in church matters”— disposed of an institutional check on the autocrat’s power, Peter’s power was nonetheless checked by the canons that linked all Orthodox people, the need for the Russian Orthodox Church to remain in communion with the other Orthodox patriarchs, and the need not to offend “the faith of the people.”14 The manners, spirit, and customs of the people checked state power.

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Furthermore, Leroy-Beaulieu addressed the tsar-pope myth directly, dismissing it as a false idea that foreigners had about Russia and affirming that the Orthodox would acknowledge that their church had only one head—Jesus Christ. “The foreigner represents the tsar as the head of his Church, as a sort of national pope. No Russian, no Orthodox accepts similar views. Eastern Orthodoxy recognizes only one head, Christ, only one authority to speak in the name of Christ, the ecumenical councils.”15 The tsar only had an external, administrative authority in the church, and no authority in matters of dogma.16 Leroy-Beaulieu used a noteworthy expression in this discussion: “We pay attention to what the Russians say, to what their Church teaches. It sees in the tsar only a protector, a defender, qualities that Christian traditions attribute to every Christian monarch.”17 What is more, Leroy-Beaulieu noted that “a Frenchman is humiliated to discover” that the Russian catechisms of Platon (Levshin) and Filaret (Drozdov) do not contain “in the way of adulation and servility” anything comparable to “the duties towards the Emperor” spelled out in the catechism of Napoleon.18 Thus, Leroy-Beaulieu concurred with Russian Orthodox theologians and publicists, accepting points that were laid out in Vasiliev’s letters to the bishop of Nantes—which Leroy-Beaulieu may or may not have been familiar with. Leroy-Beaulieu’s conclusions were based on firsthand experience with Russians and research in Russia that he conducted in the 1870s.19 Between Vasiliev’s time in Paris and Leroy-Beaulieu’s time in Russia, it would not be surprising if the two crossed paths, but even if Vasiliev was not LeroyBeaulieu’s direct source, the Russian archpriest represented the school of Orthodox thought that Leroy-Beaulieu drew on. Boissard and Leroy-Beaulieu provide evidence that Orthodox publicists had some success at changing western mentalities. The Russian Church was not as independent as Vasiliev made it out to be, but it was also not the enslaved monolith that its critics often reduced it to for ideological reasons. With all the twists and turns in Russian church-state relations that have followed, perhaps this point should be kept in mind. There are indications that Orthodox publicists and statesmen felt they were acting boldly, maybe even audaciously, by making their religion so public in Paris. They specifically wanted to avoid the perception that the church of Paris was political, so they proceeded cautiously, notwithstanding the spectacle surrounding the consecration. Their focus was educational, and their activities were largely defensive: to defend their religion from ridiculous caricatures; to preserve Orthodoxy as the basis of Russian national identity; to discourage travelers and expats from drifting toward “foreign” religious and political influences, especially in a center of Roman Catholic

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proselytism, where Russian converts to Roman Catholicism were promoting a different vision of Russian identity; and to some extent, to defend Russia’s position as a great power in the European system. They were clamoring to be recognized as Christians and part of civilized society, while many French publicists across the political spectrum practically denied them the appellations of “Christian” and “civilized.” Although Russian triumphalist attitudes about Orthodoxy’s ascendance in the West were exaggerations—reflecting a thirst to believe in a resurgent Russia following the Crimean War and tied to expectations about Providence and the papacy that were not borne out—there was nonetheless truth behind the perception that the new church in Paris represented the “dawn of Orthodoxy in the West.”20 The sense among Orthodox publicists that the Paris church was such a resounding success and the crux of a providential plan to reunite the churches fueled efforts to build more Orthodox churches. The church on Daru Street was significant in bridging the gap between the theoretical and the practical when it came to Russian religious nationalism. It was a major landmark in what became a larger program of Russian church building abroad and in the western borderlands between 1855 and 1917, based on the conviction that Orthodoxy preserves catholic Christianity and tied to a concerted effort to enhance Orthodoxy’s and Russia’s public image. The Russian Foreign Ministry considered building a new, freestanding church in London in the 1860s but settled for a major rebuilding of the existing embassy church at 32 Welbeck Street, funded by the ministry and a subscription.21 To serve the religious needs of Orthodox people abroad, but also to raise Russia’s international profile, churches went up all over Europe, including Geneva (1863–1866), Pau (1867), Dresden (1872–1874), Prague (1874, founded with the assistance of a Panslav organization),22 Ems (1874–1875), Copenhagen (1881–1883), Biarritz (1887), Menton (1892), Carlsbad (1893), Cannes (1894), Stuttgart (1895), Vienna (1893–1899), and Florence (1899– 1903).23 By the turn of the twentieth century, there were dozens in Europe’s major cities and health resort towns, besides which the globalization of Russian Orthodoxy was not confined to Europe.24 Nonetheless, in his report for 1908–9, Over-procurator Peter Izvolsky commented that there was not “an abundance of Russian churches on European territory.”25 The number of churches fell short of the requests directed to the Holy Synod because ecclesial and lay authorities expected the parishes to be self-supporting and recognized that in some areas, the number of Orthodox Christians was too insufficient to maintain a church and support its clergy.26 But among the growing number of churches abroad, Russian authorities understood that the Paris church had special importance.27

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Russia’s religious and political authorities still see it as a priority to maintain an imposing church in Paris as evidenced by the decision to spend 170 million euros for the new Holy Trinity Cathedral and Russian cultural center prominently located on Quai Branly. When the cornerstone for the church on “Cross Street” (Rue Daru) was laid in 1859, Vasiliev referred to it as the “Orthodox Holy Trinity Alexander Nevsky Church,” though on completion the main altar was dedicated to the Russian saint.28 At a time when a public Orthodox church was a novelty in western Europe, Vasiliev could never have foreseen that one day there would be two Russian cathedrals in Paris, St. Alexander Nevsky and Holy Trinity, representing (at least temporarily) two rival archdioceses, or that St. Alexander Nevsky would become entangled in a tug of war between the Moscow and Ecumenical patriarchates. How did this happen? The All-Russian Church Council of 1917–1918 revived the patriarchate that had been eliminated by Peter I, electing and enthroning Tikhon (Bellavin) in November 1917, just as the Bolsheviks assumed power. Leading the church during the first years of the communists’ vigorous antireligious campaigns, in 1921 Patriarch Tikhon appointed Archbishop Evlogy (Georgievsky) to oversee Russia’s patriarchal churches in western Europe. This decision, and Evlogy’s move to Paris in January 1923, created de facto a new archdiocese centered in Paris, eventually raising St. Alexander Nevsky Church to cathedral status.29 Following Tikhon’s death in 1925, the Soviet regime suppressed the Moscow patriarchate (until 1943) and continued to persecute the church. After Sergei (Stragorodsky), acting as self-appointed patriarchal locum tenens, tried to oust Evlogy for participating in ecumenical prayer services in London and Paris for Christians persecuted by the Soviet regime, Evlogy (by this point a metropolitan) placed the western European parishes under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1931.30 With the exception of a few years when the archdiocese’s jurisdictional status fluctuated (1945–1946, 1965–1971), St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral has served as the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe from 1931 until November 2018, when Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew unexpectedly announced the dissolution of the archdiocese.31 For the last two decades, reunion with émigré parishes and the recovery of lost imperial-era churches has been part of Russia’s program of reasserting itself as a major political and spiritual power on the global stage.32 The process has been pursued through reconciliation between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (2007), attempted

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persuasion, and litigation (e.g., Dormition Cathedral in London, St. Nicholas in Nice). Under French law, St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral belongs to its worship association (association cultuelle) established in 1923, meaning in effect that it is the property of its parishioners, who have the right to determine which jurisdiction they belong to.33 The parish (and archdiocese) chose to stay under the Ecumenical Patriarchate until Patriarch Bartholomew decided to fold the independent archdiocese into the patriarchate’s other western European dioceses. Opposed to the dissolution of the diocese, Archbishop-Exarch Jean Renneteau, along with the clergy and parishes under his jurisdiction, sought a new canonical home, bringing the diocese, and most likely “a majority of its parishes, especially those in France, under the Moscow Patriarchate as a semi-autonomous ecclesial entity.”34 The events since November 2018 notwithstanding, after the fall of the Soviet Union Moscow was unable to recover its most important prerevolutionary church in western Europe. Hence the Russian Federation funneled an enormous sum of money into the construction of the controversial Holy Trinity Cathedral, which serves as the seat of the diocese of Korsun and a newly created Patriarchal Exarchate of Korsun and of Western Europe.35 Funding by the Russian government should guarantee that Holy Trinity will always remain under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. In important respects, the founding of Holy Trinity Cathedral does not resemble the founding of St. Alexander Nevsky or mirror the goals of ­nineteenth-century Orthodox publicists. Unfortunately, Holy Trinity Cathedral (and Patriarch Kirill’s reconsecration of the Dormition Cathedral in London) are very public manifestations of an ongoing power struggle between the Moscow and Ecumenical patriarchates that intensified in October 2018 when Moscow broke communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This conflict, in turn, is exacerbating the jurisdictional controversies among Orthodox Christians that began with the Russian Revolution and have flared up many times since. While jurisdictional disputes may be multifaceted, reflecting ideological differences among Orthodox believers on sociopolitical and spiritual matters,36 ultimately the unity and credibility of Orthodoxy is at stake. Vasiliev sought to project and promote unity among Orthodox peoples. He envisioned a church that would serve all Orthodox peoples in Paris. Besides being recognized by Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim II for his defense of Orthodoxy in 1862, he was decorated by King Otto I of Greece in 1863 for his service to Greeks in Paris, which included allowing the Greeks to serve liturgies in their own language in the church on Daru Street.37 His pan-Orthodox vision remained an important element of parish identity at

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St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral for a century and a half.38 It remains to be seen whether a canonical realignment will significantly alter the orientation of the historically inclusive church. Furthermore, although all Orthodox churches are sacred spaces where the faithful pray for the salvation of their souls and the peace of the whole world, there was a solid religious raison d’être for St. Alexander Nevsky Church, while the raison d’être of Holy Trinity Cathedral is more political than spiritual.39 In theory, the new church was necessary because the existing parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate were inadequate to serve the large number of Russians living in Paris. Russia is in the throes of a demographic decline, with ethnic Russians constituting the third largest diaspora in the world and accounting for 2–5 percent of the population of major cities like Paris, Berlin, and New York.40 In light of Russia’s large diaspora, perhaps new parishes in Paris would be justifiable. But Holy Trinity is not just a church. It is a prominent cathedral built on prime real estate to serve as the administrative and spiritual center of ecclesiastical turf being reclaimed by the Moscow Patriarchate. Besides, by funding the church-building project, the Russian government differentiated itself from other nations that have large diasporas.41 The controversial raison d’être of Holy Trinity can also be considered in light of the fact that Strasbourg, the seat of the European Parliament, is now home to a brand-new Russian Orthodox church and cultural center. A minor consecration of All Saints Church by Bishop Nestor of Korsun in December 2018 was followed by a grand consecration on May 26, 2019, by Patriarch Kirill. The websites devoted to the project—including a video showing the church’s location in relation to the European Parliament, European Court of Human Rights, and Council of Europe—discuss its “strategic nature” in one of Europe’s major political centers.42 Considering this broader context, the spate of criticism about the Russian Orthodox Church as Putin’s puppet or partner in a neo-imperial Russian culture war with the West is likely to continue. Although Holy Trinity Cathedral is inextricably tied to the Russian government’s commitment to funding programs “to promote understanding and peace in the world by supporting, enhancing and encouraging the appreciation of Russian language, heritage and culture,”43 behind the soft power diplomacy, Holy Trinity is, as St. Alexander Nevsky was, more a symbol of revival after a national crisis (or crises) than a measure of Russia’s political muscle. This point brings us to a major parallel between the story of St. Alexander Nevsky Church and that of Holy Trinity Cathedral. Reflecting the persistence of Russian providentialism, both churches were built on the heels of Russian national crises and are tied to narratives of

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national resurgence. St. Alexander Nevsky was accompanied by the narrative of the “dawn of Orthodoxy in the West.” For the Moscow Patriarchate, Holy Trinity Cathedral, in the context of other Russian Orthodox churches being built around the globe, is tied to a broader narrative about Russia’s postSoviet religious revival and the remarkable growth of the Russian Orthodox Church in the last two decades.44 Furthermore, the creation stories of both churches reflect attempts to fashion Russian identity and to define Russia’s relationship vis-à-vis western Europe. But a major shift has taken place since the founding of St. Alexander Nevsky Church. In the mid-nineteenth century, imperial Russia and its church were seen as threats to European civilization from the standpoint of liberalism (and every ideology further to the left) and Roman Catholicism. Now, however, the joint agreement signed by Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis in February 2016 suggests an alignment of the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches on many issues. Specific to European identity, these two preeminent religious leaders express concern for the religious freedom of Christians in the face of “very aggressive secularist ideology” and affirm Christianity as the basis for European integration. They call for Europe to “remain faithful to its Christian roots” and for “Christians of Eastern and Western Europe to unite in their shared witness to Christ and the Gospel, so that Europe may preserve its soul, shaped by two thousand years of Christian tradition.”45 Their language can be contrasted with the preamble to the Lisbon Treaty that has governed the member states of the European Union since December 1, 2009. The treaty draws its inspiration from “the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe,” calling for European integration on the basis of the “universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law.”46 As the Russian church on Daru Street has since the mid-nineteenth century, the cathedral on Quai Branly sits at the intersection of contested Russian, French, and European identities.

Notes

Introduction

1.  Gregory L. Freeze has challenged this model. On the imperial period, see Freeze, “Handmaiden of the State? The Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 1 (1985): 82–102; on the contemporary situation, see Freeze, “Russian Orthodoxy and Politics in the Putin Era,” Task Force on U.S. Policy toward Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia White Paper, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 6, 2017, http://carnegieendowment. org/2017/02/09/russian-orthodoxy-and-politics-in-putin-era-pub-67959. 2.  Kirill reconsecrated the Cathedral of the Dormition in London and consecrated Holy Trinity Cathedral in Paris. For perspectives on what is at stake, see Andrew Higgens, “In Expanding Russian Influence, Faith Combines With Firepower,” New York Times, September 13, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/world/eu rope/russia-orthodox-church.html; Erasmus, “A New Orthodox Church Next to the Eiffel Tower Boosts Russian Soft Power,” The Economist, December 5, 2016, http:// www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2016/12/ecclesiastical-diplomacy; and Sergei Chapnin, “The Demolition of the Church Legacy of Russian Emigration: How It Is Done,” November 15, 2016, https://www.wheeljournal.com/blog/2016/11/15/ sergei-chapnin-the-demolition-of-the-church-legacy-of-russian-emigration-how-itis-done. 3.  According to Robert C. Blitt, the basis for close cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state was established in national security directives from 2000 and 2008. See Blitt, “Russia’s ‘Orthodox’ Foreign Policy: The Growing Influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Shaping Russia’s Policies Abroad,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 33, no. 2 (2011): 363–460. 4.  Alberto Melloni, a professor of church history, suggests that there is “strong evidence Putin imposed the meeting of Patriarch Kirill with Pope Francis” (quoted in Victor Gaetan, “Pan-Orthodox Council: Russian Absence Saves Ecumenical Patriarch’s Status—for Now,” National Catholic Register, June 29, 2016, http://www. ncregister.com/daily-news/pan-orthodox-council-russias-absence-saves-patriarch ate-of-constantinoples). Leonid Bershidsky writes that by signing a joint declaration with Patriarch Kirill, Pope Francis treated the Russian Church “as an independent institution, not an arm of the Putin state and a pillar” of Putin’s regime. “The only thing Pope Francis achieved is a diplomatic success for Putin’s ‘conservatism,’ which he uses to make common cause with extreme right and religious groups throughout the world. He may be naive about this, but Patriarch Kirill and his Kremlin patron are not” (“Pope Francis Handed Putin a Diplomatic Victory,” Bloomberg View, February 13, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/

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articles/2018-05-15/-who-lost-russia-is-more-than-just-an-academic-question). The Economist reported that Patriarch Kirill could not have met Pope Francis without Putin’s “blessing”: “Mr. Putin has emphasised that Orthodox Christianity is a pillar of Russia’s national identity, appealing to conservative religious values to shore up his rule. When speaking on world affairs, the church is not an independent institution but, to some degree, an extension of the Russian state” (“Did the Pope Just Kiss Putin’s Ring?” The Economist, February 15, 2016, http://www.economist. com/news/europe/21693071-russia-wants-its-people-believe-western-publics-arenot-hostile-their-leaders-pope). See also Mark Woods, “Why Patriarch Kirill Is Really Consecrating Cathedrals in London and Paris,” Christianity Today, October 19, 2016, http://www.christiantoday.com/article/why.patriarch.kirill.is.really.consecrating. cathedrals.in.london.and.paris/98421.htm; and Alexander Baunov, “The Pope and the Patriarch: Russia’s Search for the Right West,” February 15, 2016, http://car negie.ru/commentary/?fa=62772. 5. The idea for a new Russian Church in Paris was broached in a meeting between President Sarkozy and Patriarch Alexei in 2007 (Blitt, “Russia’s ‘Orthodox’ Foreign Policy,” 417; Vincent Jauvert, “L’Affaire de la cathédrale du Kremlin à Paris,” L’Obs, May 28, 2010, http://globe.blogs.nouvelobs.com/archive/2010/05/28/index.html). 6. Angela Charlton, “Russian Patriarch Blesses New Paris Church, a Putin Project,” Associated Press, December 4, 2016. Charlton characterized the consecration as “primarily a religious event,” but with “strong political overtones.” See also Hélène Combis-Schlumberger, “A Paris, une nouvelle cathédrale . . . pas très orthodoxe?” France Culture, March 31, 2016 (put online October 12, 2016), https://www.france culture.fr/architecture/paris-une-nouvelle-cathedrale-pas-tres-orthodoxe. 7. Higgens, “In Expanding Russian Influence, Faith Combines With Firepower”; John Lichfield, “Paris Welcomes Kremlin-funded Russian Orthodox Cathedral—as French Court Tries to Seize Its Assets,” Independent, March 18, 2016, https://www. independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sainte-trinite-paris-welcomes-kremlinfunded-russian-orthodox-cathedral-as-french-court-tries-to-a6939601.html. 8. The Diocese of Korsun includes the Russian Orthodox churches of France, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland that recognize the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate (official website of the Diocese of Korsun, https://www.egliserusse.eu/ Quelques-mots-sur-le-diocese-de-Chersonese_a15.html). 9. Combis-Schlumberger, “A Paris, une nouvelle cathédrale.” 10. Ibid. 11. Cited in Lichfield, “Paris Welcomes Kremlin-funded Russian Orthodox Cathedral.” 12. Ibid. 13. On the multivocality of Russian society and the patriarchal church, see Freeze, “Russian Orthodoxy and Politics in the Putin Era”; and Gregory L. Freeze, “The Russian Orthodox Church: Putin Ally or Independent Force?” Religion and Politics, October 10, 2017, https://religionandpolitics.org/2017/10/10/the-russian-orthodoxchurch-putin-ally-or-independent-force/. 14. July 14, old style. 15. Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes 1830–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 185. 16. Adrien Dansette suggests that in France, the liberal Catholic opposition to the infallibilist movement was a stronger force than specifically Gallican opposition. See

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Dansette, Religious History of Modern France, vol. 1: From the Revolution to the Third Republic, trans. John Dingle (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961), 300–305. Jean Maurain notes that even ultramontane bishops were concerned about the growing tendency of clergymen to circumvent their bishops with direct appeals to Rome. See Maurain, La Politique ecclésiastique du Second Empire de 1852 à 1869 (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1930), 809–10. 17. Christopher Clark, “The New Catholicism and the European Culture Wars,” in Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 39. 18. Mgr. [Louis-Victor-Emile] Bougaud, Le Christianisme et les temps presents, vol. 4: L’Église, 2nd ed. (Paris: Poussielgue frères, 1882), 270. Bougaud (1823–88) was vicar general of Orléans (1861–1886) and bishop of Laval (1886–1888). In this volume, Bougaud introduced the “dead and dying” branches cut off from the Roman Catholic Church: the “Greek schism” and Protestantism. The first he dispensed with in a paragraph before spending ninety pages on Protestantism. For Germain IvanoffTrinadtzaty, Guettée’s conversion invalidates Bougaud’s claim. See his L’Église russe face à l’Occident (Paris, 1991), 142. 19. Joseph de Maistre formulated a law of schismatic churches: “It is impossible to adduce an instance of a separated church that is not subject to the absolute dominion of the civil power.” He applied this law to the Gallican Church as well as others in The Pope; Considered in His Relations with the Church, Temporal Sovereignties, Separated Churches, and the Cause of Civilization, trans. Rev. Aeneas McD. Dawson (London: C. Dolman, 1850), 50; Du Pape, 2nd ed. (Lyon: Rusand and Paris: Librairie ecclésiastique, 1821), 1:99–100n1. Du Pape was originally published in 1819 and was frequently reprinted thereafter. Citations to the French edition follow the English, separated by a semicolon. 20. William Palmer pointed out the need for reforms in the Russian Church and the differences between the Greeks and Russians when it came to receiving converts. See Palmer, Dissertations on Subjects Relating to the “Orthodox” or “Eastern-Catholic” Communion (London, 1853). This work was also published in Greek (1852–54). It does not appear to have been translated into French, but it was discussed in the French Catholic press immediately after its appearance by the Russian convert to Jesuitism Ivan Gagarin in “Variétés,” L’Univers, April 24, 1853. Gagarin considered the work Protestant in orientation, although the author appeared almost Roman Catholic at points. On Palmer, see Robin Wheeler, Palmer’s Pilgrimage: The Life of William Palmer of Magdalen (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006). Decades prior to the Palmer affair, de Maistre wrote that it was “erroneous” to confound the Russian and Greek Churches, since the Russian Church was as isolated from the Greek patriarch as from the pope and all schismatic churches inevitably become national churches. See de Maistre, Pope, 50; Du Pape, 1:99–100n1. 21. Christopher Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen: The Three Hundred Year History of a Russian Orthodox Church in London ( Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014), 113–20. 22. Ibid., 117. 23. Ibid., 113–14. 24. Ibid., 117. When Stephen Hatherly converted in January 1856, Tolstoy hoped he would be ordained as an Orthodox priest and establish mission churches with services in English.

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25. Despite these plans, only in Japan did the Russian Orthodox Church really become a center of missions (ibid., 120–21). 26. Mgr. Dupanloup, “Lettre de Mgr. L’Éveque d’Orléans,” quoted in Jean-Louis de Rozaven, De la réunion de l’Église russe avec l’Église catholique (Paris, 1864), xviii. 27. “All through the 1850s the French government and the French Church were united in Catholic policy. All through the 1860s the French government and the French Church were at loggerheads with each other, partly because the Emperor let down the Pope in 1859–60, and even more because the realization of what the Emperor was like enabled the old oppositions to reappear” (Chadwick, History of the Popes, 160). 28. Guettée wrote to Prince Augustin Golitsyn, who had embraced Roman Catholicism: “I have my reasons for being purely and simply catholic. In the creed I read that the Church is catholic and apostolic; I do not read that it must be Roman. If by this word one meant that the western Church has for its first bishop that of Rome, I would have nothing to say; one could be at the same time catholic and Roman; but as one can deserve today this last title only by submitting to new dogmas and to all the autocratic pretensions of the court of Rome, I do not want to be Roman, because I could not be [Roman] without ceasing to be catholic. I would say then, as St. Optatus of Milevis: ‘Christian is my name, catholic is my surname;’ and I would add with this great theologian that I am catholic because I believe in the complete revealed doctrine without omission and without addition. You are too much a theologian, monsieur prince, not to understand that it is impossible to be apostate when one always professed and still professes this doctrine which is that of the Church Fathers.” See RenéFrançois Guettée, Lettre à M. le prince Augustin Galitzin (Paris, 1862), 10. In his memoirs, Guettée explained that he had always been orthodox except for having accepted “the so-called divine authority of the pope” as it was taught in the church into which he was born. Acceptance of this error led to other errors of fact. He described himself as a victim of “ultramontane eccentricities” until his examination of the papal system revealed all the errors connected with it. “On all other questions, the teaching of the great western theologians was orthodox, and I was orthodox with them.” See Guettée, Souvenirs d’un prêtre romain devenu prêtre orthodoxe (Paris, 1889), 355. 29. Sometimes Russians called it “Cross Street,” an aptly named site for their church. The church’s address is 12 Rue Daru. 30. For a comprehensive parish history, see Nicolas Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine: L’Église russe de Paris et ses fidèles des origins à 1917 (Paris: Cerf, 2005); and Ross, SaintAlexandre-Nevski: Centre spirituel de l’émigration russe, 1918–1939 (Paris: Syrtes, 2011). 31. For example, Lynn Marshall Case argued that the French press and public opinion were not aligned regarding support for the Crimean War and that the conflict “was not caused by the pressure of French public opinion” in French Opinion on War and Diplomacy during the Second Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954), 49. Nonetheless, when it comes to policy making, the opinions that are publicly expressed are the ones that matter most, even if they represent the view of a minority. See John Howes Gleason, The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain: A Study of the Interaction of Policy and Opinion (New York: Octagon Books, 1972), 279. 32. See Birchall’s discussion of the “priest and diplomat” Iakov Smirnov, embassy priest in London from 1780 to 1840, and his successor, Popov, in Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen, 27–48, 57–58, 70–80. Oderova notes that Smirnov represented a

NOTES TO PA GES 8 – 1 1     195

transition in the role of the clergy abroad because during a break in Anglo-Russian relations in 1800–1801, he officially became a chargé d’affaires in England, setting a precedent sometimes followed later. In France, Oderova links the establishment of a permanent embassy church in 1816 to Alexander I’s vision of himself as the savior and leader of the Christian world and the defender of legitimacy. Russia’s first embassy chaplain in Paris served from 1724 to 1727. A permanent embassy chaplaincy was established in 1742, although there was not a fixed location and there were disruptions, as during the Napoleonic period. See M. V. Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' pri russkom posol'stve v Parizhe (1816–1917 gg.)” (Candidate of Sciences diss., University of Moscow, 2009), 28–29, 34, 54–55; Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 8, 27–37. 33. Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' pri russkom posol'stve,” 21–22, 79, 99–101; M. V. Oderova, “Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev: Nastoiatel' pravoslavnoi tserkvi pri russkom posol'stve v Parizhe,” Istoriia, part 8, no. 2 (2008): 56–57. 34. Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' pri russkom posol'stve,” 61–62. 35. On the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy” as authored by Gallicans, see Emmanuel Tawil, “Civil Religion in France: The Gallican Hypothesis,” George Washington International Law Review 41, no. 4 (2010): 827–38. 36. My definition of “Russophobia” is narrow, referring to intense vilification of Russia as an existential threat to western European nations or Christian civilization. J. S. Mill and Richard Cobden both used the term “Russophobia” in 1836 to criticize English statesmen like David Urquhart who favored aggressive policies against Russia. See “Russophobia,” Oxford English Dictionary; and Pierre Larousse, “Richard Cobden,” Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1866–1877), 4:495. 37. Cited from an unpublished letter in Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' pri russkom posol'stve,” 46. 38. Nadieszda Kizenko, “ ‘Vitriny samoderzhaviia’: Russkaia tserkovnaia arkhitektura za granitsei,” in Petr Andreevich Zaionchkovskii: Sbornik statei i vospominanii k stoletiiu istorika, ed. L. G. Zakharova, S. V. Mironenko, and T. Emmons (Moscow, 2008), 451. As Kizenko notes, outside the empire, Russian churches “propagandized the Russian spirit and Orthodox faith in locations where both these phenomena were perceived as foreign and exotic” (451). Oderova adopts Kizenko’s analysis in her dissertation, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' pri russkom posol'stve.” For a survey of Russian church-building efforts around the globe, also emphasizing the imperial ideological significance of the churches, see Piotr Paszkiewicz, “In the Service of the Russian Empire 1721–1917: Functions and Ideological Contents of Russian Sacral Architecture in the Western Borderlands of the Empire and Beyond Its Confines (Summary),” in Paszkiewicz, W Słuz˙bie imperium Rosyjskiego 1721–1917: Funkcje i tres´ci ideowe rosyjskiej architektury sakralnej na zachodnich rubiez˙ach cesarstwa i poza jego granicami (Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1999), 289–324. Paszkiewicz tends to link Russian church-building efforts to broader Russian goals of aggrandizement. 39. “Public nationalism” in post–Crimean War Russia took religious, secular, imperial, Panslav, Great Russian, statist, and populist forms. See Olga Maiorova, From the Shadow of Empire: Defining the Russian Nation through Cultural Mythology, 1855–1870 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 6–12. 40. C. S. Phillips writes that proclamation of the dogma represented “in fact, a direct and deliberate exercise of that ‘infallibility’ which was to be formally sanctioned

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by the Vatican Council of 1870.” See Phillips, The Church in France, 1848–1907 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1936), 55. 41. Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 119. 42. Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 297. 43. Ibid., 298–99. 44. On the controversies surrounding the Vatican Council and papal infallibility, see Chadwick, History of the Popes, 181–214. 45. Maurain, Politique ecclésiastique du Second Empire, 809–10. 46. “Decrees of the First Vatican Council,” Papal Encyclicals Online, http://www. papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm. 47. Phillips, Church in France, 158–65. 48. Stephen K. Batalden, Kathleen Cann, and John Dean, eds., Sowing the Word: The Cultural Impact of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1804–2004 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2004). 49. Batalden, “The BFBS Petersburg Agency and Russian Biblical Translation, 1856–1875,” in ibid., 169–70, 179, 182. 50. Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen, 96. 51. Alexander II granted Neale a gift of £100 and Filaret sent him icons (ibid., 96–101). 52. For a treatment of papal primacy and Greek Orthodox theological responses to Vatican I, see Maximos Vgenopoulos, Primacy in the Church from Vatican I to Vatican II: An Orthodox Perspective (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013). For a recent study on Roman Catholic-Orthodox debates about papal primacy, see A. Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 53. On another “trophy” convert, see D. Oliver Herbel, “A Catholic, Presbyterian, and Orthodox Journey: The Changing Church Affiliation and Enduring Social Vision of Nicholas Bjerring,” Zeitschrift für neuere Theologiegeschichte/Journal for the History of Modern Theology 14, no. 1 (2007): 52. 1. Roman Catholicism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Russophobia in France, 1830–1856

1. For an overview of European perceptions of Russia covering a span of five hundred years, see Iver B. Neumann, “Russia as Europe’s Other,” Journal of Area Studies 6, no. 12 (1998): 26–73. Common dichotomies drawn between Europe and Russia include civilized-barbarian, European-Asiatic, and democratic-totalitarian (ibid., 9). 2. See Catherine Evtuhov’s discussion of François Guizot’s influence on Ivan Kireevsky: “Guizot in Russia,” in The Cultural Gradient: The Transmission of Ideas in Europe, 1789–1991, ed. Catherine Evtuhov and Stephen Kotkin (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 55–72. 3. See Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, “Introduction: The European Culture Wars,” in Culture Wars, 3. 4. Andrzej Walicki, “The Religious Westernism of Ivan Gagarin,” in Cultural Gradient, 33. Walicki takes this characterization from Vladimir Soloviev’s periodization in his article on Westernism (“Zapadniki, zapadnichestvo”) in the Brokgauz-Efron Encyclopedia.

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5. Marquis de Custine, Russia (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1854), 497. 6. W. J. Sparrow-Simpson, French Catholics in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1918), 15, 45–46. 7. Ibid., 18, 24–25. The three founders of democratic ultramontanism published one of Europe’s first Catholic newspapers, L’Avenir (1830–1831). Lamennais, a Catholic priest, sought to reconcile Catholicism and democracy, but opposed by the French hierarchy and the pope, he broke with the church and became an influential Christian socialist. 8. Philip Spencer, Politics of Belief in Nineteenth-Century France (New York: Howard Fertig, 1973), 82, 85–88. Spencer considers Napoleon the “obstetrician” of ultramontanism. 9. Ibid., 145–46. 10. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), 390–92; on Veuillot, see Phillips, Church in France, 13–16, 65–73; Dansette, Religious History of Modern France, 1:279–82. 11. Spencer, Politics of Belief, 145. On the struggle between Sibour, Veuillot, and Pius IX over L’Univers, see Phillips, Church in France, 65–70. 12. Spencer, Politics of Belief, 147–48. Liberal Catholics were not liberals in the theological sense. They were “as ready as any Intransigents to stamp on independent examination of Church history or biblical texts” (ibid., 152). The liberal Catholics dominated the academies and their principal organ was La Correspondant. 13. Geoffrey Cubitt, The Jesuit Myth: Conspiracy Theory and Politics in NineteenthCentury France (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 42. 14. Ibid., 41. 15. The “liberal” and “ultramontane” labels were moving targets in the nineteenth century, but in the post-1848 period, as a rule, liberal Catholics were more amenable to “modern civil and political liberties” than ultramontanes. Transigent ultramontanes accepted state prerogatives in the temporal sphere, while intransigent ultramontanes were more theocratic and hostile toward the modern state than transigents. See Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX, 1831–1859: Catholic Revival, Society, and Politics in 19th-Century Europe, as cited in Emiel Lambert, ed., The Black International/L’Internationale noire (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002), 11–12. 16. In the aftermath of the Paris Commune, Pius IX said he feared the Communards less than “this Catholic liberalism, which is our true scourge” (Clark, “New Catholicism and the European Culture Wars,” 39). Clark cites G. G. Franco, Appunti storici sopra il Concilio Vaticano (1870), ed. G. Martina (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1972). 17. On ideas about Russia in early modern Europe, see Marshall T. Poe, “A People Born to Slavery”: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–1748 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000). Poe suggests, on the basis of his review of about ninety descriptions of Russia published between 1549 and 1700, that Europeans had an exaggerated sense of tsarist authority and the slavishness of Russian society. He does not see these ideas as stemming from a Russophobic orientation but from “sometimes confused and inaccurate observations” (ibid., 116). 18. See Orlando Figes, The Crimean War: A History (New York: Picador, 2010), 4–5, 61–99. “Russophobia . . . was arguably the most important element in Britain’s outlook on the world abroad” (ibid., 70).

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19. The purported “Testament” was supposedly discovered and obtained by the Chevalier d’Eon, a French secret agent sent to Russia during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). See Dimitry V. Lehovich, “The Testament of Peter the Great,” American Slavic and East European Review 7, no. 2 (1948): 111–24; Raymond T. McNally, “The Origins of Russophobia in France: 1812–1830,” Slavic Review 17, no. 2 (April 1958): 173–89; Albert Resis, “Russophobia and the ‘Testament’ of Peter the Great, 1812– 1980,” Slavic Review 44, no. 4 (1985): 681–93; and Hugh Ragsdale, “Russian Projects of Conquest in the Eighteenth Century,” in Imperial Russian Foreign Policy, ed. Hugh Ragsdale and Valerii Nikolaevich Ponomarev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 75–102. Translations of the “Testament” are included in Lehovich and Ragsdale. The “Testament” was also important for the emergence and proliferation of Russophobia in Britain. On English Russophobia, see Gleason, Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain; and Figes, Crimean War, 70–72. 20. M. L[esur, Charles Louis]. Des progrès de la puissance russe depuis son origine jusqu’au commencement du XIX siècle (Paris, 1812). For the introduction to and summary of the “Testament,” see 176–79. 21. Ibid., 178. 22. Ibid., 90, 386. 23. Ibid., 89. 24. Ibid., 90–91, 436. 25. Ibid., 435. 26. Ibid., 435. 27. Michel Cadot, La Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française 1839–1856 (Paris: Fayard, 1967), 9–10. By the late 1820s Russophobia was gaining traction in England, where some pamphleteers began calling for a preventive war against Russia and the partitioning of the Russian Empire. One work was by Lieutenant-Colonel George de Lacy Evans, On the Designs of Russia (London, 1828), translated into French by Prosper Gauja as Des projéts de la Russie (Paris, 1828). De Lacy Evans was the first to argue Russia was a threat to India (Figes, Crimean War, 49, 73–74). 28. Michael Boro Petrovich, The Emergence of Russian Panslavism 1856–1870 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), 172–73. 29. On anti-Russian indignation in Britain, Figes writes: “Sympathies for Turkey, fears for India—nothing fuelled Russophobia in Britain as intensely as the Polish cause” (Crimean War, 78). 30. Ibid., 84. 31. Cadot, Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 10–11. McNally suggested that Russophobia was “merely reburnished after the Polish Revolution of 1830,” though the “tenor of Russophobia changed radically” after Nicholas I ascended to the throne (“Origins of Russophobia in France,” 183, 188). 32. Hans Kohn, Pan-Slavism: Its History and Ideology, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage, 1953), 75–80, 121–22. 33. Ibid., 47. 34. Andrzei Walicki, Russia, Poland, and Universal Regeneration: Studies on Russian and Polish Thought of the Romantic Epoch (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1991), 159. Walicki cites Adam Gurowski, La Cause polonaise sous son véritable point de vue (Paris, 1831), 31.

NOTES TO PA GES 2 2 – 2 4     199

35. Adam Gurowski, Russland und die Civilisation (Merseburg, 1833; published in French as La Civilisation et la Russie in St. Petersburg, 1840) and La Verité sur la Russie et sur la revolte des provinces polonaises (Paris, 1834); Russland und die Civilisation “excited much discussion on the Continent” (Figes, Crimean War, 89). 36. Walicki, Russia, Poland, and Universal Regeneration, 160–65. 37. Ibid., 169, 173, 178. Gurowski also published Le Panslawisme (Florence, 1848). 38. On the rejoining of Uniates to the Russian Church, see Theodore R. Weeks, “Between Rome and Tsargrad: The Uniate Church in Imperial Russia,” in Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, ed. Robert P. Geraci and Michael Khodarkovsky (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 70–91; and Chadwick, History of the Popes, 413–14. 39. The German original appeared as Augustin Theiner, Die neuesten Zustände der katholischen Kirche beider Ritus in Poland und Russland seit Katharina II. bis auf unsere Tage (Augsburg, 1841). The French translation of Theiner included a preface by Montalembert: Vicissitudes de l’Église catholique des deux rites en Pologne et en Russie, 2 vols. (Paris, 1843). Cadot does not discuss either Horrer’s or Theiner’s work in detail, but he mentions their importance and places them within a broader framework of French public opinion on the Polish question (Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 461–65). 40. Cadot, Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 10. 41. Figes, Crimean War, 88. 42. Horrer’s review of Custine was one of the earliest and appeared in Correspondant, August 15, 1843 (Cadot, Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 243). 43. Marie Joseph Horrer, Persécution et souffrances de l’Église catholique en Russie (Paris, 1842), 3–4. 44. Ibid., 59–60. 45. Ibid., 1, 3. 46. De Maistre, Pope, 50; Du Pape, 1:99–100n1. Du Pape (1819) was written in response to Alexander Sturdza. Ideologist for Alexander I, Sturdza was one of the architects of the Holy Alliance, and Alexander I paid him to write an important policy document—Considerations sur la doctrine et l’esprit de l’Église orthodoxe (Stuttgart, 1816)—“to justify before western public opinion the religious policy [the Holy Alliance] of St. Petersburg.” Although he did not have much success publishing in western venues, Sturdza may rightfully deserve to be called Russia’s first Orthodox publicist. See Stella Ghervas, Alexandre Stourdza (1791–1854): Un intellectuel orthodoxe face à l’Occident (Geneva: Éditions Suzanne Hurter, 1999), 30, 62–65; and Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte-Alliance (Paris: Champion, 2008). 47. Horrer, Persécution et souffrances, 16–17. 48. Ibid., 60–63. Horrer also served on the editorial board of L’Univers. See Eugène Veuillot, L’Église, la France et le schisme en Orient (Paris, 1855), 87. 49. One can practically choose any page at random and find one of these themes (Custine, Russia, especially 50, 264). When describing St. Basil’s in Moscow, Custine refers to the “minarets” that rise above the structure. “The effect of the whole dazzles the eye, and fascinates the imagination. Surely, the land in which such a building is called a house of prayer is not Europe; it must be India, Persia, or China!—and the

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men who go to worship God in this box of confectionary work, can they be Christians?” (ibid., 284). 50. Ibid., 187, 273, 495–96. See also the discussion of Custine in Veuillot, L’Église, la France et le schisme en Orient, 92. 51. Marquis Astolphe de Custine, La Russie en 1839 (Paris, 1843), 4:188. 52. Prince K was Peter Kozlovsky, who shared Custine’s view that “Russia’s barbarity” was tied to its “deviant religious faith.” See Robin Buss, “Introduction,” in Letters from Russia, by Marquis de Custine (New York: Penguin, 2014), Google e-book, no page. Elena Pavlovna Romanova, Nicholas I’s sister-in-law, received Kozlovsky and Custine at her salon. See Marina Soroka and Charles Ruud, Becoming a Romanov: Grand Duchess Elena of Russia and Her World (1807–1873) (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), 144–49. 53. Custine, Russia, 28. 54. Ibid., 273. 55. Ibid., 193–94. While Custine argued that the Russian Church was enslaved to the temporal power, he followed Pierre Charles Levesque and clarified that Peter “did not declare himself head of the church, but he virtually became so by means of the oath which the members of the new ecclesiastical college took. It was to this effect: ‘I swear to be a faithful and obedient servant and subject of my natural and true sovereign. . . . I acknowledge him to be the supreme judge of this spiritual college.’ ” Levesque, as cited in Custine, Russia, 272–73. Levesque suggested that the abolition of the patriarchate took away an important “barrier” between the people and the emperor, strengthening Russian despotism. See Levesque, Histoire de Russie: Tirée des chroniques originales, des pièces authentiques, and des meilleurs historiens de la nation, new ed. 8 vols. (Hamburg, 1800), 5:94–96. First published in 1782, Levesque’s work saw its fourth edition by 1812. 56. Custine, Russia, 472. 57. The church music had an “absolutely celestial” effect, causing him to forget about despotism momentarily (ibid., 91). Later he wrote: “Sometimes I feel ready to participate in the superstition of this people. Enthusiasm becomes contagious when it is, or appears to be, general; but the moment the symptoms lay hold of me, I think of Siberia, that indispensable auxiliary of Muscovite civilization, and immediately I recover my calmness and independence” (ibid., 239). 58. Ibid., 461–62. See also 496–98. 59. Montalembert, “Avant-propos” to Vicissitudes de l’Église catholique, by Theiner, ii–iii. 60. Ibid., vii. My emphasis. 61. Theiner, Vicissitudes de l’Église catholique, xviii–xxiii; Montalembert, “Avantpropos” (ibid., i–iii). 62. Theiner, Die Staatskirche Russlands im Jahre 1839 nach den neuesten Synodalberichten (Schaffhausen, 1844); translated into French as L’Église schismatique russe, d’après les relations récentes du prétendu Saint-synod (Paris, 1846). 63. The same goes for Custine (Cadot, Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 240, 242). 64. L’Église schismatique russe was based on the 1836–1839 reports of the over-­ procurator of the Holy Synod, Protasov, to Nicholas I. It purported, as anti-Orthodox polemicists liked to claim, to describe the conditions of the Russian Church based not on personal opinions but on “impartial” readings of Russian sources. Adding to its value as a bible of anti-Orthodoxy, Theiner’s work cited Protasov at length and included translations of twelve pieces of “documentary evidence” to support

NOTES TO PA GES 2 6 – 2 8     201

Theiner’s stance on the Russian Church. The documents included Peter I’s letter to the patriarch of Constantinople (seeking approval for the creation of the Holy Synod), the patriarch’s letter to the Holy Synod (in response), and tables from Protasov’s reports with statistics on the Russian population and the numbers of churches, monasteries, clergy, and conversions in Russia. Perhaps because Theiner opposed the Jesuits and papal infallibility and adopted such a harsh tone toward Russia, the Jesuit convert Ivan Gagarin later claimed that Theiner’s judgments lacked merit and that the only value of his work was the inclusion of these documents. See Ivan Sergeevich Gagarin, review of Tableau d’une Église nationale d’après un pope russe, by Abbé Delière, Études religieuses, historiques et littéraires 7 (1862): 686. On Theiner, who released a few too many documents that he found in the Vatican archives and may not have reconciled himself to the decisions of the Vatican Council, see Klemens Löffler, “Augustin Theiner,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), retrieved from New Advent, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14565b.htm. 65. Luquet, “Aux évêques de Russie,” in L’Église schismatique russe, by Theiner, xi, xiii. One pet theme of Roman Catholic polemicists was to cull phrases from the eastern liturgy that appeared to corroborate the idea that the Orthodox church, in its “primitive doctrines,” recognized the special status of the see of Peter as the center of unity in the church. Luquet repeats some of these ideas in his letter to the Russian bishops (ibid., xlvii–lii). 66. Ibid., cxl–cxli. 67. Ibid., cxliv. 68. Ibid., cxlv. 69. On subordination to temporal power as divine punishment, see especially Theiner, L’Église schismatique russe, 12. 70. See Horrer, Persécution et souffrances, 6, 8–15; 71. Theiner, L’Église schismatique russe, 1–2. 72. Ibid., 159. 73. Ibid., 66. 74. Ibid., 260. 75. Ibid., 102. 76. Ibid., 102. 77. Ibid., 88. 78. Ibid., 95. Using statistical tables from the Holy Synod’s reports for 1837, he argued that the material conditions are “infinitely miserable” for white clergy in the towns and “insupportable” for rural priests. He linked the material poverty of the clergy to their widespread immorality (ibid., 123–24, 135–37). 79. Ibid., 208. Theiner noted that the heresies in Russia resembled those that ravaged the Greek Church in the first centuries,” adding that “the Asiatic churches have always produced” schisms and heresies “in abundance.” 80. Ibid., 316. 81. Revelations of Russia is cited and incorrectly attributed to Haxthausen in JustJean-Étienne Roy, Les Français en Russie: Souvenirs de la campagne de 1812 et de deux ans de captivité en Russie (Tours, 1856). Roy also drew on Custine. The Caesaropapist despot-slave narrative is pronounced in this work. 82. Pierre Larousse, “Robert (Cyprien),” Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, 13:1253.

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83. Charles Frederick Henningsen, Revelations of Russia or the Emperor Nicholas and His Empire in 1844. By One Who Has Seen and Describes, 2 vols. (London, 1844). Translated into French as Révélations sur la Russie, 3 vols. (Paris, 1845). Certain peculiarities of the French version are suggestive. Henningsen used the spelling “tsar,” while the French defaulted to the “czar” spelling. While Henningsen’s picture of the Russian clergy was not flattering, a detailed table of contents in the French edition supplies the heading “enslavement of the clergy” (Révélations sur la Russie, 2:326). These changes suggest that by the mid-1840s there were some established categories for thinking about Russian power and about the Russian Church. 84. Kohn, Pan-Slavism, 47; Cyprien Robert, “Les Deux Panslavismes,” Revue des deux mondes, new series, 16 (October–December 1846): 452–83. 85. Cyprien Robert, “Le Monde gréco-slave,” Revue des deux mondes, new series, 9 ( January–March 1845): 444, 450. 86. Henningsen, Revelations of Russia, 1:298–300. 87. Ibid., 299–300. Henningsen attributed the emperor’s headship over the church to Peter I. “Peter utterly abolished the patriarchal office, and declared himself the head of the church” (ibid., 320). 88. Ibid., 301–10. Montalembert also put the number of Uniates at three million (“Avant-propos,” iv–v). 89. Henningsen, Revelations of Russia, 1:310–11. 90. Ibid., 315–16. 91. Ibid., 316–19. Robert added only four explanatory footnotes to the chapter on Russia’s national church. One was to dispute the claim that the persecution of the Jews (which he considered administrative and fiscal) under Nicholas was greater than the religious persecution of the Catholics. Another was to correct Henningsen’s mistaken idea that the Greek Church accepts the doctrine of predestination. Incidentally, Robert also supplied critical comments to a French version of the “Testament” of Peter I. See Cyprien Robert, ed., Testament de Pierre le Grand, ou Plan de domination européenne, laissé par lui à ses descendants et successeurs au trone de Russie, déposé dans les archives du Palais de Péterhoff, prés Saint-Pétersbourg (Paris, 1860). It contains midnineteenth-century documents concerning Russia’s aims and ambitions in Europe. 92. Henningsen used the language of “caste” to describe the white clergy, whom he also portrayed as “corrupt, ignorant, and debauched,” resorting to the most “unscrupulous” methods to earn a living. The upper ranks of the clergy, however, he described as having some pious men “of considerable erudition and learning.” His descriptions of Russian religious architecture and art presented motifs that were also found in Custine, and that were later echoed in the French press about the Russian church in Paris. Russian churches were picturesque with their “mosque-like domes” and “semi-Asiatic architecture” (Henningsen, Revelations of Russia, 1:323–27). 93. Mother Makrena was subsequently unmasked as a fraud. See Roman Koropeskyj, Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 380. Figes accepts the story as authentic. In any case, the story contributed to anti-Russian feeling in both France and England in the years just prior to the Crimean War (Figes, Crimean War, 85–86). 94. “Plutôt mille fois le Turc ou le Tartar, que le Grec ou le Russe!” Luther’s rendition was: “A thousand times better the Turk or the Tartar than the mass.” See “Correspondance particulière de l’Univers,” L’Univers, August 23, 1846. The subheading reads:

NOTES TO PA GES 3 0 – 3 2     203

“On the preservation of Turkey. How we understand it, and in what manner it is beneficial to Catholicism.” The editorial introduction and the text of the letter both show that the Constantinople correspondent’s ideas were considered controversial among Catholics. The Veuillot brothers continued to trumpet the theme that Turkey was preferable to Russia in subsequent years, as did the ultramontanist editor ( JeanBaptiste-Victor Coquille) of Le Monde. 95. R. C. Lane, “The Reception of F. I. Tyutchev’s Political Articles in Russia and Abroad, 1844–1858,” European Studies Review 1, no. 3 (1971): 228. 96. Cadot, Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 376–77; Lane, “Tyutchev’s Political Articles,” 205–31. 97. Figes, Crimean War, xxii–xxiii. 98. See, for example, Prosper Fleury de Villecardet, “France et panslavisme” (Senlis, 1849). 99. V. de Mars, “Histoire politique: Chronique de la quinzaine. 14 juin 1849,” Revue des deux mondes, new period, 2 (April–June 1849): 1052–56. 100. Fr[anz] de Champagny, “De la question slave,” Ami de la religion, January 13, 1850, 169–70. 101. A. V. Myrikova, F. I. Tiutchev: Osobennosti politicheskogo diskursa (Moscow: Izdatel' Borob'ev A.V., 2003), 26. 102. Ibid., 28–29. Tiutchev was working on a treatise, Rossiia i zapad (Russia and the West). His first political article was a letter to the editor (Kolb) of Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung published in the March 21, 1844, issue. His second article, “La Russie et la révolution,” was not widely distributed but was excerpted by the French diplomat Paul de Bourgoing in Politique et moyens d’action de la Russie (Paris, 1849) and discussed in Mars, “Histoire politique,” 1053–56. Bourgoing was actually trying to dismiss Russophobic ideas. He portrayed Tiutchev as full of Panslav zeal but Emperor Nicholas I as committed to peace and the Concert of Europe. 103. Fyodor I. Tiutchev, “La Russie et la révolution,” as cited in W. Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1989), 251. 104. Mars, “Histoire politique,” 1054–55. 105. Significantly, Tiutchev served as an adviser to Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov from 1857 to 1873 (Myrikova, F. I. Tiutchev, 8). 106. The Russian emperor sought better relations in part as a prerequisite for a potential marriage of his daughter Olga to a Hapsburg (Soroka and Ruud, Becoming a Romanov, 176). 107. The pope sought freedom of worship for Catholics and Uniates, their freedom to communicate directly with Rome, restoration of confiscated property, reversal of decrees on mixed marriages, and permission for the Holy See to have a representative in Russia. See Elena Astafieva, “Le Concordat de 1847 entre l’Empire russe et le Saint-Siège: Origines, contenu et suites,” in Le Droit ecclésiastique en Europe et à ses marges (XVIIIe–XXe siècles), ed. Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet and François Jankowiak (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 52–53. 108. The concordat did not solve the most pressing problems, which remained “insoluble” because they involved Orthodox canon law (ibid., 56). 109. “Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848,” Orthodox Christian Information Center, http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/encyc_1848.aspx; on Khomiakov’s

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response, see Edward Every, “Khomiakoff and the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs in 1848,” Sobornost', series 3, no. 3 (1948): 102–4. 110. On the relationship between the revolutions and Russophobia, see Figes, Crimean War, 92–99. 111. Myrikova, F. I. Tiutchev, 27; Chadwick, History of the Popes, 85–91. 112. Tiutchev, “La Papauté et la question romaine au point de vue de Saint-­ Petersbourg,” Revue des deux mondes, new period, 5 ( January–March 1850): 117–33, 124. 113. Myrikova, F. I. Tiutchev, 50, 152. 114. Tiutchev, “La Papauté,” 122–23, 127. 115. Ibid., 133. 116. Ibid., 133. 117. See Kohn, Pan-Slavism, 150–51; and Myrikova, F. I. Tiutchev, 150–58. 118. Tiutchev, “La Papauté, 117. On Laurentie as the author of these opening remarks, see Lane, “Tyutchev’s Political Articles,” 213–14. 119. Laurentie, preface to Tiutchev, “La Papauté,” 117. 120. Ibid., 118. 121. Ibid., 118. 122. Ibid., 118. My emphasis. 123. Ibid., 118. 124. Myrikova, F. I. Tiutchev, 26–27. 125. Lane, “Tyutchev’s Political Articles,” 213. As a result of the reception of his articles published in the West, Tiutchev abandoned his work on Rossiia i zapad (Myrikova, F. I. Tiutchev, 28–29). 126. Cadot, Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 379. 127. Cadot says that Tiutchev’s piece resonated with some legitimist papers, but he does not cite any specifically (ibid., 378). 128. I. V. Vasiliev to K. S. Serbinovich, June 4/16, 1850, in Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev, Parizhskiia pis'ma protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'evicha Vasil'eva k ober-prokuroram Sviateishago Sinoda i drugim litsam s 1846 po 1867 gg., ed. L. K. Brodskii (Petrograd, 1914), 134. 129. Ibid., 134. 130. Ibid., 134. It is not clear whether Vasiliev knew that Laurentie was responsible for having Tiutchev’s article published or for writing the editorial introduction. On Laurentie’s role, see Cadot, Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 379. 131. On the reactions to Tiutchev, see Cadot, Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 376–81; Lane, “Tyutchev’s Political Articles.” 132. On his outlook toward Russia, see Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie, Souvenirs inédits publiés par son petit-fils J. Laurentie (Paris, n.d.), 193–212. 133. Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie, La Papauté: Réponse à M. de Tutcheff, conseiller de Sa Majesté l’Empereur de Russie (Paris, 1852), 6. Laurentie drew heavily on de Maistre, a writer lacking Russophobic vitriol but who called the eastern bishops “sad playthings of the temporal authority that commands them as it commands soldiers.” See Joseph de Maistre, “Lettre à une dame russe sur la nature et les effets du schisme” (1810), cited in Laurentie, Papauté, 108. A decade later, with emancipation of the serfs in view, Laurentie pointed out that the Russian Church was not a force that could guide the emancipated peasants in the proper use of liberty because the Russian Church and clergy were serfs. See Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie, Le Pape et le Czar (Paris, 1862), 10, 19–20.

NOTES TO PA GES 3 6 – 3 8     205

134. Aleksei S. Khomiakov, Quelques mots d’un chrétien orthodoxe sur les communions occidentales, à l’occasion d’un article de M. Laurentie (Paris, 1853), 11–12; reprinted in A.-S. Khomiakoff, L’Église latine et le protestantisme au point de vue de l’Église d’Orient (Lausanne, 1872), 3–88. Khomiakov’s brochure was also discussed in the “Chronique de la quinzaine. 30 novembre 1853,” Revue des deux mondes, new period, 2nd series, 4 (October–December 1853): 1031. 135. [Andrei Nikolaevich Murav'ev], Question religieuse d’Orient et d’Occident: Parole de l’orthodoxie catholique au catholicisme romain (Paris, 1853). Muraviev discussed the temporal power of the papacy as an abuse and affirmed that Peter I’s creation of a permanent council in place of a patriarch was canonical (ibid., 28–38, especially 38). Neale reprinted parts of this work in a collection of documents intended to counter Roman Catholic portrayals of the Eastern Church. See John Mason Neale, ed. and trans., Voices from the East: Documents on the Present State and Working of the Oriental Church (London, 1859). 136. Alexander Popovitsky, introduction to Question religieuse d’Orient et d’Occident, by Murav’ev, 3. 137. Ibid., 3–4. 138. Ibid., 4. 139. De Maistre had called on Catholic writers to use the designation “Photian” when writing about the eastern churches as a continual reminder of their Protestant origins. He argued that Photius, Luther, and Calvin were all born in unity with the church, until they protested and fell into schism. De Maistre explained why the designations “Greek,” “Russian,” “Orthodox,” or “Eastern” (orientale) were all problematic (Pope, 310–14; Du Pape, 180–86). Laurentie followed de Maistre. In response, Khomiakov argued that Protestantism had its origins in “Romanism,” when the local church of Rome elevated itself above the universal church (Quelques mots d’un chrétien orthodoxe, 26–27). 140. Muraviev added, “We have praised the zeal that the Romans display among the pagans; but we cannot keep silent about their lack of justice toward their brothers in Muslim lands” (Question religieuse d’Orient et d’Occident, 39). Ivan Gagarin refuted Muraviev in La Question religieuse en Orient, réfutation d’un écrit intitulé: “Parole de l’orthodoxie catholique au catholicisme romain” (Paris, 1854). 141. Vasiliev to Serbinovich or Protasov, October 18/30, 1852, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 146; Michon, La solution nouvelle de la question des Lieux saints (Paris, 1852). 142. Michon, Solution nouvelle de la question des Lieux saints, 6, 46–47, 93, 96. 143. Vasiliev to Serbinovich or Protasov, October 18/30, 1852, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 146. Kiselev gave 150 francs. Vasiliev sent the over-procurator a set of the paper’s issues. 144. See V. K. Ronin, “Russkaia publitsistika v Bel'gii v seredine XIX veka,” Slavianovedenie, no. 4 ( July–August 1993): 3–4; see also Cadot on the Russian responses to Custine (Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 230–40). 145. Vasiliev to Serbinovich or Protasov, October 18/30, 1852, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 147. 146. Vasiliev says Louis-Joseph’s two sons were Evgeny and Iosif ( Joseph), not Vladimir. For whatever reason he seemed to think the younger Pelleport (Vladimir) was named Joseph like his father (Louis-Joseph) (ibid., 147–48). Pelleport (Artamov) translated Goncharov’s Oblomov into French and wrote La Russie historique, monumentale, et pittoresque, with the collaboration of J.-G-D. Armengaud, 2 vols. (Paris, 1862–1865).

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His treatment of the Russian Church in the latter differs significantly from the attitude he expressed in some of his polemical works. 147. M. V. Nechkina, ed., Golosa iz Rossii: Sborniki A. I. Gertsena i N. P. Ogareva (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), book 10, part 4, 23. 148. Comte de la Fitte de Pelleporc [Pelleport], “Le Tzar est-il, en Russie, chef d’Église?,” La Voix de la verité, June 2, 1853, 1. La Voix de la verité reprinted the article from La Presse religieuse. 149. Michon identified Pelleport simply as a person who lived in Russia for a long time (La Presse religieuse, May 24, 1853). 150. Pelleporc, “Le Tsar est-il, en Russie, chef d’Église?,” pt. 1, La Presse religieuse, May 24, 1853. 151. Ibid. 152. Ibid., pt. 2, La Presse religieuse, May 26, 1853. 153. Ibid. 154. Jacques-Paul Migne, La Voix de la verité, June 2, 1853. 155. Abbé Michon, letter to the editor, La Voix de la verité, June 6/7, 1853. 156. On the evolution of Russophobia in the 1850s, see also Kohn, Pan-Slavism, 102–22. 157. Hippolyte Desprez, “L’Église d’Orient,” Revue des deux mondes, new period, 2nd series, 4 (October–December 1853): 847–48. 158. Ibid., 847–48. 159. Ibid., 842. 160. Ibid., 860–64. 161. Ibid., 864. 162. Terletsky was born in western Ukraine, moved to western Europe, became a Catholic priest of the eastern rite and a missionary who sought to reunite the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. He founded the Byzantine rite church of SS Cyril and Methodius in Paris in 1850. If he was a thorn in Vasiliev’s side in 1850, Terletsky nonetheless subsequently returned to the Russian Empire, rejoined the Orthodox Church, and became an archimandrite in Odessa in 1881; he died there in 1888. See Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky, “Terletsky, Ipolit Volodymyr,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath= pages%5CT%5CE%5CTerletskyIpolitVolodymyr.htm. 163. “Statuts de la Société orientale pour l’union de tous les Chrétiens d’Orient” (Paris, 1852), 3–5; Archives nationales (France), F/19/6237, folder “Société orientale pour l’union de tous les Chrétiens d’Orient,” 1852–1854. For an English translation of Pius IX’s letter to the eastern bishops, see https://orthocath.files.wordpress. com/2010/11/pope-and-patriarchs-letters-of-pope-pius-ix-and-orthodox-patriarchs.pdf. 164. Vasiliev to Serbinovich, January 25/February 6, 1850, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 118–19. 165. Vasiliev to Serbinovich, April 8/20, 1850, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 124–25. Vasiliev cites Lacordaire’s sermon of April 14, 1850, which was published in Polish but was evidently not published in French: Kazanie P. O. Lacordaire miane w katedrze paryzkiéj dnia 14 kwietnia 1850 roku, na rzecz zatozenia kaplicy, greko-stowiansko-katolickiéj (Paris, 1850). 166. Archives nationales (France), F/19/6237, folder “Société orientale pour l’union de tous les Chrétiens d’Orient,” 1852–1854. The minister of public instruction and

NOTES TO PA GES 4 1 – 4 2     207

worship, Hippolyte Fortoul, sought direction and, if appropriate, financial support from the minister of foreign affairs, Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys. 167. McNally, “Origins of Russophobia in France,” 173; Lehovich, “Testament of Peter the Great,” 113, 119. Despite Catholic agitation over the Near East, Foreign Minister Drouyn de Lhuys said Napoleon III’s purpose behind the Crimean conflict was to “split the continental alliance,” for which the Eastern question merely provided a pretext (Soroka and Ruud, Becoming a Romanov, 192). 168. Mandement de Monseigneur l’Archévêque de Paris, qui ordonne les prières publiques pour le succès de nos armes en Orient (Paris, 1854). Scholars of France and Russia interpret Sibour’s pastoral letter as an official policy document. See L. V. Mel'nikova, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov' i Krymskaia voina 1853–1856 gg. (Moscow: Kuchkovo pole, 2012), 61–64. This epistle provoked a response from Khomiakov. In his polemic with Laurentie, Khomiakov had argued that it had been “moral fratricide” for the West to change the creed unilaterally. The logical progression of the West’s “moral fratricide” was the “material fratricide” of the war (Cadot, Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française, 380–81). 169. Lettre pastorale qui ordonne des prières pour le succès de nos armes en Orient (May 10, 1854), cited in Jean-Paul Besse, Un précurseur, Wladimir Guettée: Du gallicanisme à l’orthodoxie (Lavardac: Monastère orthodoxe Saint Michel, 1992), 79. 170. The Palmer affair seemed to corroborate the notion that the Greek and Russian religion could not be the same, if the Greeks did not accept the validity of heterodox baptism and the Russians did. Henningsen recognized only an administrative and not a doctrinal separation between the Russian and Greek churches. His view appears to be largely consistent with de Maistre’s. The idea that the Greek and Russian churches did not share the same faith was perpetuated by Desprez, Eugène Veuillot, Roy, and the Russian convert to Catholicism Augustin Golitsyn, who, citing the example of baptism, wrote: “one makes a mistake in confusing the Russian church with the Greek church. No link unites these two churches, formerly so flourishing, still so full of future.” See Augustin Golitsyn, introduction to Document relatif au patriarcat moscovite, 1589, traduit pour la premièr fois en Français par le Prince Augustin Galitzin, by Arsenios [Archbishop of Elassona, 1550–1626] (Paris, 1857), 5. 171. Veuillot, L’Église, la France et le schisme, 75, 85, 95. Russia claimed its special rights to protect the schismatics, and Nesselrode liked to refer to the “Greco-Russian worship.” Veuillot thought “Greco-Russian worship” was a misnomer. Although prior to 1852 the Turks had not distinguished between the Christian sects in their empire, Veuillot believed Russian policy had changed that. “They make today a great distinction between the Catholics, the Franks, and the co-religionists of the czar.” The former supported the Ottoman government while the latter opposed it. Thus, Veuillot thought the influence of the Latins was growing within the Ottoman Empire (ibid., 422–62, especially 450, 455, 461–62). 172. While the Russian ambassador and most of the Russian colony left Paris, Vasiliev remained, under the protection of the Saxon envoy Baron Albin Leo von Seebach, to tend to the spiritual needs of Russian POWs, numbering about fifteen hundred in 1855. For his service during the war, he was awarded the Order of St. Ann, second degree, and became a well-known figure in Russia. See P. Sh., “Protoierei pravoslavnoi tserkvi pri russkom posol'stve v Parizhe Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev

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(biograficheskii ocherk),” Illiustratsiia: Vsemirnoe obozrenie, October 23, 1858, 257–58; V. Orlovskii, “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich,” Zhivopisnoe obozrenie, no. 8 (1882): 123; and Oderova, “Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev,” 60–61. 173. Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 133–38. For archival documentation, see Archives nationales (France), F/19/10933, folder “Charente Interieur. Culte Russe. Guerre de Crimée. Designation d’un aumonier pour assister les prisonnieres russes à l’ile d’Aix,” November 1854–March 1855. Oderova cites memoirs of Russian POWs on how Polish émigré and Catholic clergy would try to proselytize among the Russian soldiers and persuade them to join the foreign legion (“Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 149–55). 174. Archives nationales (France), F/19/10933, “Charente Interieur. Culte Russe. Guerre de Crimée,” Clement to Fortoul, November 24, 1854. 175. Seebach interceded with Napoleon III on Vasiliev’s behalf. Napoleon III wanted to meet the archpriest, who reportedly impressed the emperor with a bold, energetic, intelligent, and eloquent speech (Sh., “Protoierei pravoslavnoi tserkvi pri russkom posol'stve v Parizhe,” 257). According to Vasiliev’s daughter, the archpriest’s “passionate” and “brilliant” speech “made a deep impression on Napoleon and stunned him by its unexpectedness.” At the end of the speech, the French emperor “burst into compliments” for Vasiliev, apologized “for the suspicions of espionage,” and “dismissed all the accusations as slander. ‘Now that I know you personally I don’t believe a word of it.’ ” See L. I. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia o zhizni i deiatel'nosti protoiereia I. V. Vasil'eva,” Istoricheskii vestnik 145 (August 1916): 309. Vasiliev’s correspondence is silent on the issue of his temporary ban from the island, except that he indicated in December 1854 that he planned to return to the island for Nativity services, but he did not return until Holy Week. His letter about the commemoration of Holy Week and celebration of Pascha reported that the French military authorities were accommodating of all his requests and even allowed him to celebrate the Resurrection with a midnight service according to the Orthodox custom (Vasiliev to Protasov, December 1/13, 1854, and Vasiliev to Alexander Ivanovich Karasevsky, May 18/June 1, 1855, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 166, 167–71). 2. The Archpriest as Publicist and Polemicist

1. The addition of a second priest made the Paris church unique among the other churches abroad (Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 53, 68). 2. [Muraviev], Le Raskol: Essai historique et critique sur les sectes religieuses en Russie (Paris, 1859). Raskol was a sequel to Muraviev’s work (published anonymously) Raskol oblichaemyi svoeiu istorieiu (St. Petersburg, 1854), which focused on edinoverie (unity of faith), an arrangement pursued by ecclesiastics, Catherine II, and Paul in the late eighteenth century to bring schismatics back into the official church by allowing them to adhere to the old rituals. Muraviev supported the edinoverie arrangement. 3. Filaret, however, accepted “the legality and the canonicity of the Petrine synodal structure.” See John D. Basil, Church and State in Late Imperial Russia: Critics of the Synodal System of Church Government (1861–1914) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 10, 153n20. 4. [Muraviev], Le Raskol, 3, 10. Muraviev entered the Russian service in 1823 and held a variety of posts in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs and the Holy Synod.

NOTES TO PA GES 4 6 – 4 7     209

He was also a member of the Academy of Sciences. See Vasil'ev, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 151n2. 5. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, January 15/27, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 186. 6. [Muraviev], Le Raskol, 256–58. 7. Laurentie, L’Union, March 4, 1859. Laurentie linked his critique of Le Raskol with the suppression of Dominican Jean-Marie Souaillard’s preaching in St. Petersburg, seeing the suppression of Catholic preaching as a further testimony of the unfortunate moral condition of the Russian Church. Vasiliev sent the March 4 and 5 issues of L’Union to the over-procurator, because they reported on the laying of the cornerstone (March 3) for the new Russian Church in Paris. See Brodsky’s commentary in Vasil'ev, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 189n2. The Holy Synod was not in the dark concerning western perceptions of the Russian Church. In referring to Haxthausen, Laurentie had his discussion of Russian sects in mind. Haxthausen saw it as problematic that Russia did not have an independent, central authority (the pope) who could arbitrate doctrinal disputes. Yet his description of Russian sects was detached and informational, rather than polemical. Haxthausen’s picture of Russia contrasted markedly with the Russophobic accounts discussed in the previous chapter, and even with the Russophile Laurentie’s depiction. Haxthausen did not portray the Russian people or clergy as servile. When in Russia, he was struck by the religious devotion of the Russian people and emphasized that, in contrast with western Europeans, people of all ranks expressed their devotion in public without the least shame. Furthermore, he commented on the absence of rank and complete equality that he observed at Russian religious services. His discussion of church-state relations bears some resemblance to other accounts by western Catholics, but is more nuanced. Haxthausen considered the patriarchate a weak institution created by the tsar and subject to the will of the civil power even during the reign of Nikon. Since the patriarchate never really had deep roots, it was easy for Peter I to dispense with it. Haxthausen accepted the idea that the temporal and spiritual powers were combined in the emperor’s hands, but the emperor was “not the Head of the Church in the same sense as the Pope of Rome.” The tsar only governed the external affairs of the church and “has never arrogated to himself the right of deciding theological and dogmatic questions.” The Russian people were deeply religious but poorly instructed on doctrinal matters. Regarding the common belief that the Russian popes—he used the term to refer to the parish clergy, and not in a derogatory ­manner—were not respected by the people, Haxthausen argued it was a half-truth: Russians had “unlimited love and veneration” for good priests and a lack of respect for those who neglected their flock. See Auguste de Haxthausen, The Russian Empire, Its People, Institutions and Resources, trans. Robert Farie, 2 vols. (London, 1856), 1:94– 95, 257–59; 2:218–26. For the French edition, see Études sur la situation intérieure, la vie nationale et les institutions rurales de la Russie, 3 vols. (Hanover, 1847–1853), vol. 1, chap. 11; vol. 3, chap. 3. 8. Laurentie, L’Union, March 4, 1859. 9. Vasiliev to Serbinovich or Protasov, October 18/30, 1852, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 145. 10. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, January 15/27, 1859, and March 8/20, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 183–87 and 193–94. In the second letter he noted that Shuvalov was working on three compatriots. Besides Shuvalov and Gagarin, Vasiliev discussed works by Nikolas and Augustin Golitsyn.

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11. [Grigory Petrovich, a.k.a. Père Agostino Maria, Barnabite] Schouvaloff [Shuvalov], My Conversion and Vocation, trans. Father C. Tondini (London, 1877), viii. 12. Ibid., 59. 13. Ibid., 137. 14. Ibid., 237–38. 15. Ibid., 294. 16. Ibid., 198–99, 295. 17. Ibid., 197–98. 18. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, March 8/20, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 193–94. 19. Gagarin became Roman Catholic in 1842, joined the Jesuit order in 1843, and became a priest in 1849. In 1857 Gagarin and Charles Daniel began publishing Études de théologie, de philosophie et d’histoire. Gagarin’s publications between 1856 and 1859 included “Les Starovères, l’église russe et le pape,” Études de théologie, de philosophie et d’histoire 2 (1857): 2–83 and La Russie sera-t-elle catholique? (Paris, 1856). Andrzej Walicki calls this latter work Gagarin’s “true credo,” although he adds that the work was mostly unnoticed in France. Haxthausen had it translated into German and promoted Gagarin’s program for uniting the churches (Walicki, “The Religious Westernism of Ivan Gagarin,” 37, 45). Provocatively, Gagarin translated into French Gregory XIII’s profession of faith for “Greeks” wanting to join the Roman Catholic Church (Profession de foi publiée par ordre du pape Grégoire XIII, à l’usage des grecs qui veulent entrer dans la communion de la Sainte Église catholique, apostolique et romaine [1858]). For a study of Gagarin from a Roman Catholic point of view, see Jeffrey Bruce Beshoner, Ivan Sergeevich Gagarin: The Search for Orthodox and Catholic Union (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002). 20. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, January 15/27, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 184. One of the Russian-language responses to Gagarin’s La Russie sera-t-elle catholique? was Artamov’s Iezuity krasnago petukha nam pustili ili razvratitsia-li Rossiia v latinskii katolitsizm? (Paris, 1859). It was published in the Russian Miscellany Abroad (Russkii zagranichnyi sbornik) series, edited in Paris by A. Franck. This series published works across the political and religious spectrums. It provided an outlet besides the semiofficial Le Nord or Herzen’s radical journal Kolokol for Russians to publish in the West, outside the bounds of Russia’s civil and ecclesial censorship systems. For a characterization of the series as “liberal,” see A Herzen Reader, ed. and trans. Kathleen Parthé (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012), 88–89, 89n4. 21. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, January 15/27, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 185. In 1857 a response to Gagarin’s La Russie sera-t-elle catholique? was published in Athens: Jugement sur les discours du jésuite Gagarin, concernant l’Union (de l’Église Russe). This work was evidently translated into Russian as Suzhdenie pravoslavnago greka o sposobe soedineniia tserkvei kakoi predlagaet Gagarin v svoeiu broshiurke: “La Russie sera-t-elle catholique?” (St. Petersburg, 1858). Vasiliev and A. P. Tolstoy corresponded in 1859 about Vasiliev’s preparation of a French translation of Suzhdenie pravoslavnago greka for publication in Paris. In January, Vasiliev explained that publication was delayed by the reticence of the publisher, A. Franck (cf. preceding note). Even when the publisher was ready to move forward, he recommended publishing the work in Leipzig and then importing it to France, but Vasiliev did not want to take the risk of having it printed and then not being able to import it (Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, January 15/27, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 185). The publication was delayed until June, and in August Vasiliev sent

NOTES TO PA GES 4 8 – 5 2     211

Tolstoy ten copies (Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, August 4/16, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 201–2). The French translation from Russian contains some embellishments such as a reference to Gagarin as a “defector from the national religion” of Russia: Orthodoxie et papisme: Examen de l’ouvrage du Père Gagarin sur la réunion des Églises catholique grecque et catholique romaine. Par un grec membre de l’église d’orient (Paris, 1859), 1. 22. [Sergei Sushkov], Confédération italienne: Le Pouvoir temporel des papes devant l’Évangile et les hommes (Brussels, 1859); Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, August 4/16, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 202–3; Sergei P. Sushkov, “Vospominaniia o deiatel'nosti zashchitnikov pravoslaviia v Parizhe, v shestidesiatyikh godakh,” pt. 1, Tserkovnyi vestnik, no. 22 (1890): 370. 23. Elena Pavlovna’s father converted to Catholicism shortly before his death in Paris in 1852. On her attitudes toward Orthodoxy and other religious confessions, see Soroka and Ruud, Becoming a Romanov, 222–31, 236–37. 24. Ibid., 225. 25. Charles Deulin, “Cérémonie du mariage en Russie,” Le Monde illustré, December 1, 1860, 366. According to Oderova, she also gave Vasiliev money and copies of an Orthodox prayer book, asking him to improve on the translation and oversee its publication (“Pravoslavnaia tserkov’ v Parizhe,” 158). 26. The first issue appeared on October 8, 1859, and the paper was published weekly through June 30, 1860. The program was explained in the inaugural issue (H. Stouf, “France et Russie,” Gazette du Nord, October 8, 1859). 27. Some of their articles, or versions of them, also appeared in L’Union chrétienne. 28. Vasiliev, “La Russie religieuse,” Gazette du Nord, October 8, 1859. 29. Ibid. 30. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, August 25/September 5, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 209. 31. Francois Laurent, Principes de droit civil (Paris, 1869–1878), 24:277–78. The Court of Commerce of the Seine ruled that the placing of the work on the Index was “sufficient cause for the termination of the covenant” because, although the Index was not formally binding in France, the publishers were running an ecclesiastical library and Guettée, as an ecclesiastic, was writing for an ecclesiastical public. See L’Ami de la religion 158, October 16, 1852, 130–31. The report in L’Ami was reprinted from Gazette des Tribuneax. 32. Larousse, “Église,” Grand dictionnaire universel, 7:251–52. A polemic about Guettée’s history of the French Church took place between him and Abbé Jager in L’Ami in 1857, in volumes 175–76. 33. The Gallican minister of worship, Gustave Rouland, told Guettée that the emperor would not allow proceedings to be brought against the archbishop of Paris (Guettée, Souvenirs, 323–38; Besse, Un précurseur, 85–86). 34. Sushkov, “Vospominaniia,” pt. 1, 368; Guettée, Souvenirs, 354. 35. Sushkov, “Vospominaniia,” pt. 1, 370. 36. Ibid., 370. 37. Ibid., 370. 38. Ibid., 370. 39. Archives nationales (France), F/18/422, Ministère de l’Intérieur, Presse parisienne et agences de presse, folios 234–36, November 1859. 40. Vasiliev to Urusov, December 25, 1859/January 6, 1860, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 214. In his letter of October 19/31, 1862, to A. P. Akhmatov, Vasiliev requested “timely

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help,” in the form of 2,000 francs, for the continuation of the paper, having already invested his own time and material resources in its success. He believed that the periodical was especially timely given the crisis threatening Catholicism (Parizhskiia pis'ma, 258–59). 41. See Vasiliev’s letters to A. P. Tolstoy of August 4/16, and August 25/September 5, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 204, 205–10. 42. “Judging by the silence of Your Excellency and of Count A. P. [Tolstoy], it is obvious that L’Union chrétienne is met by you with distrust” (Vasiliev to Urusov, December 25, 1859/January 6, 1860, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 213). 43. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia,” Istoricheskii vestnik 146 (November 1916): 317; Oderova, “Protoierei Vasil'ev,” 63. 44. Vasiliev to Urusov, December 25, 1859/January 6, 1860, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 213. Urusov assured Vasiliev that he was supportive of L’Union chrétienne (ibid., 237). Tolstoy’s ambivalence may have been expressed in personal conversations between Tolstoy and Vasiliev when Vasiliev was in Russia in 1861. Vasiliev continued to justify the publication in his correspondence and was clearly very attached to the project. See his letters to A. P. Tolstoy of December 20, 1861/January 1, 1862 and February 28/ March 12, 1862, ibid., 253, 255. 45. Vasiliev to Urusov, December 25, 1859/January 6, 1860, ibid., 213. Le Croisé had a conservative Catholic but pro-imperial bent. See Roger Bellet, Presse et journalisme sous le Second Empire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), 302. Louis Veuillot was an inspiration to and collaborator of Ernest Hello, the founder of Le Croisé. 46. Hello, “L’Union chrétienne,” Le Croisé, November 19, 1859, 189–90. 47. Vasiliev to Urusov, December 25, 1859/January 6, 1860, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 213–14. 48. Vasiliev to Urusov, November 25/December 7, 1860, ibid., 237–38. 49. Ibid., 237–38; René-François Guettée, Histoire des jésuites (Paris, 1858–59). 50. Vasiliev to Urusov, November 25/December 7, 1860, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 237–38. Rewards were forthcoming, including an honorary doctorate conferred on Guettée by the Moscow Theological Academy in 1864. 51. René-François Guettée, The Papacy: Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations (New York, 1866), xix. 52. Khomiakov’s first contribution was a response to Christian Karl Josias Bunsen’s translation of the scriptures (1860). He requested that Guettée publish both his opinion about the paper and his response to Bunsen. Guettée published only the latter, signed Ignotus (Unknown one), without publishing Khomiakov’s objections to L’Union chrétienne. See Aleksei S. Khomiakov, “Lettre à M. Bunsen, précédé d’une lettre au rédacteur du journal L’Union chrétienne,” in L’Église latine et le protestantisme, 312. 53. Aleksei S. Khomiakov, “Lettre au rédacteur de L’Union chrétienne à l’occasion d’un discourse du Père Gagarine, Jésuite” (1860), in ibid., 391. 54. Ibid., 391. 55. Vasilii P. Polisadov, “O novoi Parizhskoi gazete l’Union chretienne (Khristianskoe edinenie),” Strannik (November 1860), Bibliografiia, 78–101. Polisadov referred to Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, no. 1 (1860). Strannik was founded by Archimandrite Vitaly Grechulevich (1822–1885) in 1860 and was attached to the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. 56. Ibid., 92n2. 57. Ibid., 101. Polisadov probably referred to Fedor Andreevich Buhler, who was born in 1821, served in the Senate, traveled abroad from 1847 to 1850, and then

NOTES TO PA GES 5 6 – 6 0     213

entered the foreign service. Vasiliev added a different dimension to this episode. He indicated that Buhler sought permission from the Russian authorities before attempting to publish his response to Lacordaire. On seeing a draft of Buhler’s response, Nicholas I commented that “a polemic with Lacordaire is not necessary” (Vasiliev to Serbinovich, April 8/20, 1850, and June 4/16, 1850, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 124–26, 132). Lacordaire’s offensive sermon was given at a benefit for Terletsky. 58. Polisadov, “O novoi Parizhskoi gazete,” 80. 59. Ibid., 85. 60. Ibid., 86. 61. Ibid., 89. 62. Ibid., 91–92. 63. Ibid. 92. Here Polisadov inserted a long footnote about Lacordaire’s insulting sermon. 64. Ibid., 89. 65. Ibid., 90 66. Ibid., 90. 67. Ibid., 93. 68. Ibid., 100. 69. Yousouff, as cited in ibid., 94. 70. Ibid., 94–95. The editor added a footnote to clarify that the veterans of the Middle Ages referred to L’Univers and its editors. 71. Ibid., 99–100. 72. “Pis'mo protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu Alexandru Zhakme,” Strannik (May 1861): 113. 73. L’Empereur Napoléon III et l’Italie (February 4, 1859), Le Pape et le congrès (December 22, 1859), and La France, Rome et l’Italie (February 1861). 74. Jean-Mamert Cayla, Pape et empereur (Paris, 1860), 24. 75. Victor Martin, Vie de Monseigneur Jaquemet, évêque de Nantes (Paris, 1889), 446. 76. Antoine-Matthias-Alexandre Jaquemet, “Mandement de Monseigneur l’évêque de Nantes pour le saint temps du carême de l’an de grace 1861 sur les dangers du schisme,” Archives diocésaines de Nantes, Serie E 1E06/0118, 1861–01–29, 4. 77. Ibid., 6–7. 78. Ibid., 7. 79. Ibid., 7. 80. Marcel Launay, Le Diocèse de Nantes sous le Second Empire: Monseigneur Jaquemet, 1849–1869 (Nantes, 1982), 2:710–11. By veiling his indictment of Napoleon III, Jaquemet avoided the troubles that soon after afflicted his colleague, Monseigneur Louis-Édouard Pie, Bishop of Poitiers. In early 1861, Pie was called before the Council of State on charges of abuse of power for a criticism leveled against Napoleon III in his Mandement de Mgr. l’évêque de Poitiers au sujet des accusations portées contre le Souverain Pontife et contre le clergé français dans la brochure intitulée “La France, Rome et l’Italie” par M. A. de La Guéronnière (Paris, 1861). Pie’s prosecution provoked the indignation of the French episcopate. For Pie’s Mandement of February 22, 1861, see [Monseigneur LouisÉdouard] Pie, Oeuvres de Monseigneur l’évêque de Poitiers (Paris, 1883–84), 4:145–65. 81. Martin, Vie de Monseigneur Jaquemet, 445–46. 82. Ibid., 448. Vasiliev’s response to Jaquemet appeared as “Réponse aux attaques de M. l’évêque de Nantes contre l’église de Russie” in L’Union chrétienne, April 14,

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1861, 185–89; it was reproduced in Le Nord, April 27, 1861, and in Guettée’s antiultramontane periodical: “Lettre à M. l’évêque de Nantes en réponse à ses attaques contre l’église de Russie,” L’Observateur catholique 12 (April–October 1861): 61–73. 83. The first issue appeared on July 1, 1855. According to Ronin, Russians in the West like Herzen and Turgenev, who were critical of the paper and saw it as a government organ, nonetheless read it faithfully. Under the direction of Nicholas Petrovich Poggenpol', Le Nord was not very successful at convincing people that it was “objective” and “independent,” but the paper still made important contributions by disseminating information about Russia in the West (Ronin, “Russkaia publitsistika v Bel'gii,” 11–12). See also M. K. Lemke’s commentary in A. I. Herzen, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (St. Petersburg, 1919), 8:362–71. 84. Le Gaulois, January 31, 1892, and August 4, 1893. According to the entry for Nikolai Poggenpol' in the Brokhaus-Efron Encyclopedia, many of Le Nord’s articles published abroad were strictly censored in Russia. La Presse spoke very favorably of Poggenpol', rendering him “supreme homage” when it reported the journalist’s death in April 1894. He “struggled for forty years of his life in favor of ideas that are dear to us and that have today become those of two great peoples, arbitrators of the world.” See La Presse, April 11, 1894. See also Le Temps, April 11, 1894. 85. Martin, Vie de Monseigneur Jaquemet, 446. My efforts to locate where the Mandement was published have been unsuccessful. Generally, La Civiltà Cattolica is regarded as the official paper of Rome, but it does not appear to have been published there in 1861. Journal de Rome and L’Osservatore romano are also sometimes considered official organs of Rome, but I have been unable to access the former due to a lack of extant copies, and the latter entered publication only in July 1861. 86. According to Ralph Gibson, data for the diocese are plentiful, and in the 1860s, over 80 percent of men and women communed at Easter (A Social History of French Catholicism 1789–1914 [London: Routledge, 1989], 115–16, 170–75). Nantes was also generous when it came to collecting funds to support the papal cause, and about 11 percent of French zouaves were volunteers from this single diocese. See Launay, “Les Splendeurs de l’église de Nantes et les grands affrontements (1849–1914),” in Le Diocèse de Nantes, ed. Yves Durand (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985), 216–51. 87. Vasiliev’s letters appeared in L’Union chrétienne, April 14, 1861, 185–89; May 26, 1861, 233–40; June 2, 1861, 241–48; and June 16, 1861, 257–62. He also compiled his correspondence with Jaquemet into a booklet. See Antoine Mathias Alexandre Jaquemet and J. Wassilieff, Discussion entre Mgr. l’évêque de Nantes [i.e., A.M.A. Jaquemet] et M. l’archiprêtre J. Wassilieff au sujet de l’autorité ecclésiastique dans l’église de Russie (Paris, 1861). 88. In early 1861 Guettée was involved in a successful libel suit that he initiated against several papers, including L’Esperance du peuple de Nantes, that referred to him as an interdicted priest, which he was not. Since Jaquemet’s epistle does not appear to have been published in the main Parisian Catholic dailies, I suspect that Guettée saw it, perhaps in the diocesan L’Esperance, and brought it to Vasiliev’s attention. 89. “Lettre de Mgr. l’archevêque de Bonald et réponse de M. L’archiprêtre Wassilieff,” L’Union chrétienne, July 6, 1862, 282. 90. Le Nord, April 27, 1861; Vasil'ev, “Otvet na lozhnoe obvinenie protiv pravoslavnoi tserkvi russkoi,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie (April 1861): 541–57; Vasil'ev, “Otvet na pis'mo nantskogo episkopa,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie ( July 1861): 235–71, and

NOTES TO PA GES 6 1 – 6 3     215

(August 1861): 385–421; Vasil'ev, “Pis'mo Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu,” Strannik (May 1861): 113–24; Vasil'ev, “Vtoroe pis'mo protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu Alexandru Zhakme,” Strannik ( July 1861): 28–60; Vasil'ev, “Tolki russkoi tserkvi vo Frantsii,” Tserkovnaia letopis', May 13, 1861, 306–15; Vasil'ev, “Pis'mo nastoiatelia russkoi posol'skoi tserkvi v Parizhe o. protoiereia I. Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu Zhakme,” in Khristianskoe chtenie, pt. 1 (1861): 421–36 (published with a note saying it was extracted from the Journal de Saint-Petersbourg); and Vasil'ev, “Vtoroe pis'mo nastoiatelia russkoi posol'skoi tserkvi v Parizhe o. protoiereia I. Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu Zhakme,” Khristianskoe chtenie, part 2 (1861): 110–54, 213–54. Khristianskoe chtenie included a translation of Jaquemet’s letter to Vasiliev in the footnotes. 91. “L’Union chrétienne . . . declared war on M. Jaquemet the bishop of Nantes. . . . In a letter addressed to his diocesans, this bishop took the Tsar for the spiritual head of the Orthodox Church. I enlisted the archpriest I. Vasiliev to respond to him. He could not write in French at that time. I took it upon myself to respond to the bishop of Nantes, and Mr. I. Vasiliev agreed to sign my work.” Guettée added that Augustin Golitsyn suspected him of being the author (Souvenirs, 366). At another point, Guettée simply said that Vasiliev was not used to writing in French, so Guettée edited his submissions to L’Union chrétienne (ibid., 359). 92. “How could a Russian priest, occupying an honored official position, very intelligent, learned, diligent, and fervently committed to his church, entrust the execution of the holy duty of defending it against the hostile slanders brought against it to a French priest not even belonging [as of 1861] to the Orthodox Church!” (Sushkov, “Vospominaniia,” pt. 2, Tserkovnyi vestnik, no. 23 [1890]: 387). 93. Ibid., pt. 1, 369. See also S. A. Vengerov, Kritiko-biograficheskii slovar' russkikh pisatelei i uchenykh (St. Petersburg, 1889–1904), vol. 4, part 2, 161. 94. Sushkov, “Vospominaniia,” pt. 1, 369; pt. 2, 386–87. 95. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (September 1916), 604, 606. 96. I suspect that Vasiliev was the primary author of the first letter, which was quite short, and that Guettée wrote more of the verbose second letter. Sushkov’s observation that Guettée could not have written the letters because they displayed Vasiliev’s style (concision, a tranquil and polite tone), which contrasted markedly with Guettée’s style (harsh and irritable toward adversaries) is more apropos of the first letter than of the second (Sushkov, “Vospominaniia,” pt. 2, 386). 97. Wassilieff, “Réponse aux attaques,” L’Union chrétienne, April 14, 1861, 186. 98. Ibid., 186. 99. Ibid., 186–87. 100. Ibid., 187. The Russian version in Pravoslavnoe obozrenie was a little toned down here, saying the church did not regard the emperor as having “any high authority in matters of faith” (Vasil'ev, “Otvet na lozhnoe obvinenie,” 547). 101. Wassilieff, “Réponse aux attaques,” 187. 102. Ibid., 189. A. Golitsyn actively spread propaganda claiming that Dmitry was the true tsar and a Catholic martyr by publishing an edition of Barezzi’s 1606 work Discours merveilleux et veritable de la conqueste faite par le jeune Demetrius (Paris, 1858). 103. Ibid., 189. 104. Of the Catholic papers, Le Monde had the greatest circulation, with 13,000 subscribers in 1860–1861, more than double the circulation of L’Ami (6,000), and

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substantially more subscribers than L’Univers (7,700) (Bellet, Presse et journalisme, 312–13). 105. L’Ami, April 25, 1861, 215. 106. Catholics complained that the Poles of the village of Dziernowicz in Warsaw diocese had been subject to persecution since 1858. The Russian government claimed that the deportation of prelates from the region was punishment for political crimes, not an example of religious persecution. See Frédéric de Rougemont, La Russie orthodoxe et protestante (Paris, 1863), 102. 107. L’Ami, April 25, 1861, 215–16. 108. Le Rebours, letter to the editor, Le Monde, April 30, 1861. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid. Le Rebours was conscious of the polemical connotations of the language that he and Vasiliev used. He spoke of the “Greek” or “Russian” church but noted how Vasiliev called it “eastern catholic.” Similarly, the vicar-general preferred the term grecs-unis, as Uniats was a term tied to the Russian point of view. 111. Ibid. 112. Ibid. 113. Wassilieff, “Réponse aux attaques,” 189. Vasiliev argued that if the Uniates were forcibly joined to the Russian Church, like the Catholic polemicists argued, then having been raised in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, they should have resisted this unwelcome intrusion of secular authority on the practice of their faith. 114. Le Rebours, letter to the editor, Le Monde, April 30, 1861. 115. “Mauvaise foi de L’Ami de la Religion et de M. Augustin Galitzin à propos de la lettre de M. J. Wassilieff à M. L’évêque de Nantes,” L’Union chrétienne, May 5, 1861, 209–13; see also L’Union chrétienne, May 19, 1861, 225. 116. Jaquemet and Wassilieff, Discussion, 8. 117. Ibid., 8–9. 118. Ibid., 10–11. 119. Ibid., 12. 120. Ibid., 13–14. 121. Martin, Vie de Monseigneur Jaquemet, 448. 122. Ibid., 447–48. 123. Jaquemet and Wassilieff, Discussion, 17. 124. Ibid., 17–21. 125. Ibid., 25. 126. Ibid., 27. 127. Ibid., 31. 128. Ibid., 35. This idea echoes what Pelleport wrote in his 1853 article debunking the idea that the tsar was the head of the Russian Church. Vasiliev noted that history provided examples of individuals who were courageous and willing to stand up to political authorities; likewise, there were examples of the weak and cowardly, who succumbed to all sorts of indiscretions. The history of the papacy provided examples of both types of individuals and could rival Russia in figures who abused authority or were easily subjugated to those who abused authority. Thus, as suggested by the Ecclesiastical Regulation, placing power in the hands of a council was preferable to placing it in the hands of an individual (ibid., 37–39).

NOTES TO PA GES 6 8 – 7 1     217

129. Vasiliev explained that the only difference was that the Synod was a standing council, rather than a council that met biannually, a difference that he did not consider significant. 130. Ibid., 39. 131. Ibid., 48. 132. Ibid., 51. 133. Ibid., 52. Golitsyn had also inserted the word “master.” 134. Ibid., 58–59. 135. Ibid., 55–58. 136. Ibid., 60–61. 137. Ibid., 60–61. 138. Ibid., 63–64. Guettée’s involvement is felt here, although Vasiliev had conducted a historical study of French law on church-state relations. Anyone who read the Paris newspapers in the spring of 1861 would know about Monseigneur Pie’s prosecution in the Council of State for abuse of power. Such state interference with the French Church contributed to the rise, growth, and success of ultramontanism in the first place. Although Launay characterizes Jaquemet as Gallican, Napoleon III’s Italian policies drove a wedge between the emperor and many formerly Gallican clergy (Diocèse de Nantes, 1:212–22 and 2:703). 139. Jaquemet and Wassilieff, Discussion, 63–64. 140. Ibid., 66. 141. Ibid., 66–72. 142. Ibid., 73–74. Adolphe Crémieux was minister of justice from February to June 1848 and was not minister of worship. His appointment evidently explains why the Ministry of Worship was separated from the Ministry of Justice in 1848 and combined with the Ministry of Public Instruction. 143. Ibid., 74–75. 144. Ibid., 76. 145. Ibid., 76. 146. Ibid., 76–77. 147. Ibid., 86. 148. Bonald was named a cardinal in 1841 and was appointed to the French Senate in 1852. Guettée had already polemicized against Bonald in the mid-1850s. See Besse, Un précurseur, 81. 149. L. B. Bonjean, Discours sur le pouvoir temporel des papes (Paris, 1862). Bonjean argued that there was a fundamental tension between the spiritual and temporal powers, that spiritual authority was paramount, and the temporal power contradicted Christ’s words: “My kingdom is not of this world” (ibid., 37). While arguing that the temporal power of the papacy was not necessary for maintenance of its spiritual power, and that historically the temporal power had been more harmful than beneficial, Bonjean did not suggest that the pope could be the subject of another political authority or that the papacy should not remain in Rome. 150. Ibid., 38. 151. Louis-Jacques-Maurice de Bonald, Discours que S. Ém. Mgr. le cardinal archevèque de Lyon devait prononcer devant le sénat dans la discussion de l’adresse (Lyon, 1862); Le Monde, March 22, 1862. 152. Bonald, Discours, 2.

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153. Ibid., 2. 154. Ibid., 7. 155. S. V. Rimsky suggests that the letter to Archbishop Bonald has a different tone from the letter to Monseigneur Jaquemet. By pointing out Bonald’s mistakes, Vasiliev portrayed Bonald as an “incompetent man.” See S. V. Rimskii, Rossiiskaia tserkov' v epokhu velikikh reform (Tserkovnye reformy v Rossii 1860–1870-kh godov) (Moscow, 1999), 36. The tone of the letter probably points to Guettée as its primary author. 156. Iosif Vasil'evich Vasiliev, “À son éminence Monseigneur de Bonald cardinal archevêque de Lyon,” L’Union chrétienne, March 30, 1862, 169–71; Vasil'ev, “Perepiska protoiereia I. V. Vasil'eva s arkhiepiskopom Lionskim Bonal'dom,” Strannik ( July 1862): 276–81, and (September 1862): 396–403. 157. Vasiliev, “À son éminence Monseigneur de Bonald,” 170. Valery Valerievich Skripitsyn, Russia’s former director of the Department of Religious Affairs of Foreign Confessions, also sent a letter to the editor of L’Union chrétienne in response to Bonald. He stressed, first, that there was a difference between a procurator and a minister, and second, that ministers have personal power while procurators just enforce the laws. He noted that while most European states had a minister of worship, Russia only had a procurator (L’Union chrétienne, March 30, 1862, 195). 158. Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev, “Lettre de Mgr. l’archevêque de Bonald et reponse de M. l’archipretre Wassilieff,” L’Union chrétienne, July 6, 1862, 281. 159. De Maistre popularized the idea that Russian liturgical texts acknowledged the supremacy of St. Peter and his successors in Du Pape. Mgr. Luquet discussed papal primacy in Russian liturgical texts in his introduction to Theiner’s L’Église schismatique russe, xlvii–lii, citing an 1841 pastoral letter of the Uniate bishop of Ruthenia, Michel Lewicki (Mykhajlo Levitsky, 1774–1858, archbishop of Lviv). Gagarin developed the argument that the Russian state’s long history of refusal to recognize the authority of Rome was out of step with Orthodox liturgical tradition. See Gagarin, “Starovères, l’église russe et le pape.” Sushkov refuted Gagarin in “Examen de l’argument que les ultramontains pretendent trouver dans la liturgie russe en faveur de leur systeme papal,” L’Union chrétienne (published in several parts between March 30 and September 28, 1862). Gagarin responded with “La Primauté de Saint Pierre et les livres liturgiques de l’église russe,” in Études religieuses, historiques et littéraires (May–June 1863): 525–49. 160. “Lettre de Mgr. l’archevêque de Bonald et reponse de M. l’archiprêtre Wassilieff,” 281–84; “Perepiska protoiereia I. V. Vasil'eva s arkhiepiskopom Liunskim Bonal'dom” (September 1862), 396–403. 161. Vasiliev’s “À Monsieur Guizot, Membre de l’Academie Française,” was published in L’Union chrétienne beginning with the November 17, 1861, issue and concluding in the February 2, 1862, issue. In Russian: “Pis'mo protoiereia I. V. Vasil'eva k g. Gizo, chlenu frantsuzskoi akademii,” trans. A. I. Popovitskii, Strannik (May 1862): 156–84, and ( June 1862): 219–39; and “Pis'mo o[tets] protoiereia I. Vasil'eva k g. Gizo, chlenu frantsuzskoi akademii,” Khristianskoe chtenie 1 (1862): 805–72. 162. François Guizot, L’Église et la société chrétienne en 1861 (Paris, 1861), 6, 263–64. 163. Ibid., 95–96. There was arguably more in this statement to provoke Guettée than Vasiliev. 164. Ibid., 7. 165. Ibid., 94.

NOTES TO PA GES 7 3 – 7 9     219

166. Wassilieff, “À Monsieur Guizot,” November 17, 1861, 17–18. 167. Ibid., 17–18. 168. Ibid., December 1, 1861, 35. 169. Ibid., December 15, 1861, 52. 170. Ibid., January 19, 1862, 90–91. 171. “The ultramontanes regard the sovereigns of the whole world as the vassals and servants of the Papacy” (ibid., 89–90). 172. Ibid., December 29, 1861, 68. 173. Ibid., January 26, 1862, 99. 174. Ibid., 100. 175. Vasiliev rejected Guizot’s idea that church governance had moved from a democratic through an aristocratic to a monarchical phase. Church governance was ­collective from the beginning, guided by the Holy Spirit (ibid., December 1, 1861, 34). Guizot’s idea that authority in the church had evolved through these three phases was expressed in Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe (Paris, 1828). Guettée also rejected this aspect of Guizot’s thought some years before he was associated with Vasiliev. See Guettée, Souvenirs, 80. In tracing the history of the council as the locus of authority, Vasiliev wrote that the apostles “established councils [­sobory] that in their minds, represented the collective authority of the Church; consequently, it is justly said that the structure [ustroistvo] of Christian society is a structure essentially sobornoe.” See Vasil'ev, “Pis'mo protoiereia I. V. Vasil'eva k g. Gizo” (May 1862), 169. 176. Vasil'ev, “Pis'mo protoiereia I. V. Vasil'eva k g. Gizo” ( June 1862), 235–37. 177. Ibid., 238. 178. Savva Tikhomirov, Khronika moei zhizni: Avtobiograficheskiia zapiski vysokopreosviashchennago Savvy, arkhiepiskopa Tverskago i Kashinskago, 9 vols. (Sergiev Posad, 1898–1911?), 6:532. On the 9,000 rubles as Vasiliev’s salary as head of the Education Committee of the Synod (1867–1881), see Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 168n492. 179. Rimskii, Rossiiskaia tserkov', 35. Citing the imperial Russian law code (Svod zakonov, 1857) which recognized the emperor as the “defender” of the church, the “custodian” of its dogmas, and the “guardian of right belief ” (pravoverie), Rimsky follows the predominant view that the Petrine reform subordinated the church to the state, claiming that by the end of the Nikolaevan epoch, the church did not have a shred of independence left (ibid., 31, 34). Rimsky adds that Vasiliev’s polemical letters pleased the emperor, were considered “successful” in the Holy Synod, and contributed to Vasiliev’s reputation as an “adroit” man in Russian society (ibid., 36). Oderova accepts Rimsky’s conclusions about church-state relations in the synodal period in general and about Vasiliev’s letter to Jaquemet in particular (“Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 167–69). 180. Rimskii, Rossiiskaia tserkov', 37. 181. Wassilieff, “Réponse aux attaques,” 187. 182. L’Ami, May 18, 1861, 403–6. 183. Ibid., June 27, 1861, 748. 184. The editorial introduction to Vasiliev’s letter to Jaquemet in Tserkovnaia letopis' (Church chronicle) noted that remarks about the Russian Church and its priests being “submissive and silent slaves of the secular authority” had been around since

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the Western Church broke with the true Christian Church; and while the bishop of Nantes’s judgment was nothing new, it attracted attention “because the question about the Church is currently a topical question in France.” See the introduction to Vasiliev’s “Tolki o russkoi tserkvi vo Frantsii,” Tserkovnaia letopis', May 13, 1861, 306. 185. Augustin Golitsyn and Guettée continued the polemic. See Un Grec-Uni, “De l’émancipation du clergé russe,” L’Ami, August 27, 1861, 483–90; Journal de Bruxelles, August 20, 1861; and L’Union chrétienne, October 6, 1861, 385–86. See also Deacon N. R-Beloff ’s series on the history of the Russian patriarchate in L’Union chrétienne, July 7, 1861, 283–85, and July 14, 1861, 294–96; and other articles in the July 28 and August 4 and 11, 1861, issues. 186. Rougemont, Russie orthodoxe et protestante, 21; L. Boissard, L’Église de Russie, 2 vols. (Paris: J. Cherbuliez, 1867), 1:xi–xii, 231–35, and 2:511–12. Theologisches Literaturblatt, Karl Zimmermann’s review in Darmshtadt, published Ianyshev’s German translation of Vasiliev’s letters and spoke positively about the tone and argument of Vasiliev’s correspondence with Jaquemet, with the caveat that the Russian Church was neither as free from the influence of the civil power as Vasiliev suggested, nor was as “shamefully dependent” as Jaquemet’s initial attack suggested. See “Zagranichnyi zametki,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, June 1862, 64–66. 3. The “Byzantine Firework” of Paris

1. The feast day is August 30 on the Julian calendar, and since the start of the twentieth century has fallen on September 12. The church’s location in the eighth arrondissement, an area renovated by Haussmann, explains his presence. Russian observers did not seem to attach particular significance to his attendance. 2. Conseil Paroissial de Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky, La Cathédrale Saint-AlexandreNevsky de Paris: Centenaire 1861–1961 (Paris: Conseil Paroissial de Saint-AlexandreNevsky, 1961), 31. 3. Church building was distinct from the practice that had been going on since the seventeenth century of assigning priests to embassies, consulates, or diplomatic missions and having some designated place for worship in a home or apartment. There were Russian chapels in Europe’s major cities by 1861, but these were home churches or private chapels. The Parisian church was preceded by the “Greek chapel” of Wiesbaden, an impressive Russian Orthodox church that Adolf of Nassau built between 1849 and 1855 as a burial chapel dedicated to his wife, Grand Duchess of Russia and Nassau, Elizabeth Mikhailovna. The eighteen-year-old grand duchess died in childbirth on her first wedding anniversary in January 1845. Simultaneously with the building of the Paris church, a Russian chapel was erected in Nice, founded by Empress Alexandra Fedorovna (consecrated in 1859). Nice did not become part of France until 1860. For typologies and locations of Russian churches abroad, see Kizenko, “ ‘Vitriny samoderzhaviia,’ ” 456–64; Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 21; Vladimir Cherkasov-Georgievskii, Russkii khram na chuzhbine (Moscow: Institut vseobshchei istorii RAN, 2003). 4. They described the Paris church as having a more slender, elegant, and less heavy appearance than the Byzantine style per se. See [I. F. Vasiliev and V. A. Prilezhaev,] Description de L’Église russe de Paris (Paris, 1861), 5–6.

NOTES TO PA GES 8 0 – 8 1     221

5. On the decree, see Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 244n35. On the “Moscow-Byzantine style” as the preferred architectural style of the second half of the nineteenth century, see also Kizenko, “ ‘Vitriny samoderzhaviia,’ ” 454, 463. 6. Originally, use of the term had less to do with direct borrowing of Byzantine architectural models than with the ideas, characteristic of the age of Romanticism, that Russian culture had its roots in Byzantium and that there was an inseparable link between national and confessional identity. See E. I. Kirichenko, Russkii stil': Poiski vyrazheniia natsional'noi samobytnosti narodnost' i natsional'nost'. Traditsii drevnerusskogo i narodnogo iskusstva va russkom iskusstve XVIII–nachala XX veka (Moscow: Galart, 1997), 85–89, 420. 7. Paszkiewicz, “In the Service of the Russian Empire,” especially 299. Wortman stresses that under Alexander III, the style of sacred architecture shifted again, to emphasize that there was a Russian national style, based on seventeenth-century prototypes. The competition for the church to be built on the site of Alexander II’s assassination produced many plans in the Byzantine-Russian style, all of which were rejected by Alexander III in favor of a plan modeled directly after the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and with a highly distinctive Moscow-Yaroslavl style. Wortman also connects Russian church building in the borderlands with Russifying and proseletyzing efforts (Scenarios of Power, 2:244–48, 252–55). See also Kirichenko, Russkii stil', 420. 8. See Anna Navrotskaya, “Aleksandr Nevskii: Hagiography and National Biography,” Cahiers du monde russe 46, no. 1/2 (2005): 299–300; and Nadieszda Kizenko, “The Church-War Memorial at Shipka Pass, 1880–1903,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 16–17 (2003): 245. Quotation from Kizenko. 9. Vasiliev and Prilezhaev, Description de l’Église russe de Paris, 8n1. 10. Kizenko writes that dedicating churches built abroad before 1917 to SS Alexander Nevsky or Nicholas—the patron saints of all the nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Russian emperors—demonstrated “a wish . . . to extol and ‘publicize’ the name of the ruling emperor” and reflected the notion that these saints represented the “embodiment of the divine defense and protection of Russia and its rulers” (“ ‘Vitriny samoderzhaviia,’ ” 454). 11. Regarding a royal chapel in Warsaw dedicated to St. Alexander Nevsky and consecrated in 1846, Piotr Paszkiewicz writes that because of Nevsky’s symbolism as “a defender of Russia and her Orthodox faith against the attempts of Western Europe to convert her to Roman Catholicism,” dedicating a chapel “in the heart of Catholic Poland, to the militant saint of the Orthodox Church had no doubt a strong political and propaganda impact” (“The Beginnings of Orthodox Architecture in Warsaw,” Polish Art Studies 10 [1989]: 53). Paszkiewicz’s work highlights Orthodox churches and monuments in Poland as manifestations of the reassertion of Russian imperial authority after the 1830 and 1863 rebellions, respectively. New large-scale Orthodox building projects became prominent in Poland after 1863, especially from the mid-1870s on. See Paszkiewicz, “An Imperial Dream: The ‘Russification’ of Sacred Architecture in the Polish Lands in the 19th Century,” Ume˘ ni, ve˘d. 49 (2001): 531–45; and Paszkiewicz, “Russian Monuments in the Western Borderlands of the Romanov Empire and Their Political Contents,” in Art and Politics: The Proceedings of the Third

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Joint Conference of Polish and English Art Historians, ed. Francis Ames-Lewis and Piotr Paszkiewicz (Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1999), 61–70. 12. Vasiliev to Serbinovich, June 6/24, 1847, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 30–31. Archpriest Dmitry Stepanovich Vershinsky was still in charge of the embassy church when Vasiliev arrived, though he returned to Russia shortly after. 13. Vasiliev to Serbinovich, June 6/24, 1847 and October 5/17, 1847, ibid., 30–31, 44; Vasiliev to Protasov, December 28, 1847/January 9, 1848, ibid., 49–50. 14. Vasiliev to Protasov, December 28, 1847/January 9, 1848, ibid., 50–54. 15. Ibid., 51. 16. Ibid., 51. 17. Ibid., 51. 18. Vasiliev to Protasov, January 8/20, 1853, ibid., 148–49. 19. Polisadov began his foreign service in Geneva in 1847, was second priest in Paris from 1849–1853, and then transferred to Berlin where he served until 1858 (Oderova, Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe, 225). On returning to Russia, Polisadov accepted posts as Professor of Theology at St. Petersburg University and as Archpriest of the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. 20. “Iz arkhiva professora i rektora Moskovskoi Dukhovnoi Akademii prot. K. S. Smirnova,” Bogoslovskii Vestnik, no. 10–11 (1914): 449, as cited in Oderova, “Protoierei Vasil'ev,” 62. 21. Vasiliev to Baron Philipp Ivanovich Brunnov, September 6/18, 1856, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 173. Vasiliev sent a copy of this letter to Over-procurator Alexander Ivanovich Karasevsky on September 13/25, 1856, ibid., 171–72. 22. Anglicans maintained only private chapels in Paris until 1824, when a more visible embassy chapel was established on Rue Marboeuf. See http://www. stgeorgesparis.com/contact-map/history-of-st-george-s-paris. The website cites Roger Greenacre, The Catholic Church in France: An Introduction (London: Council for Christian Unity, 1996). 23. Vasiliev to Brunnov, September 6/18, 1856, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 174–75. 24. Vasiliev and Prilezhaev, Description de L’Église russe de Paris, 4. Not long afterward, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry and Holy Synod approved a request brought by Andrei Mikhailovich Tsitsovich to take up a subscription for a Church of the Ascension in Dalmatia (in the Austrian Empire). In the ministry, the project was deemed “useful” because it would strengthen Orthodoxy “in a land where the insufficient condition and poverty of Orthodox churches facilitates the successes of Catholic propaganda” (Kizenko, “ ‘Vitriny samoderzhaviia,’ ” 466–67). Taken with other evidence, this example suggests a concerted effort by secular and ecclesiastical authorities to counter Catholic hegemony but also suggests these measures were defensive—that is, aimed at preserving the Orthodox flock more than at proselytizing. 25. [Alexander I.] Popovitskii, “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” Tserkovnoobshchestvennyi vestnik, no. 155 (December 30, 1881), 2. 26. Not all historians would agree with this characterization. Figes describes Gorchakov as a practitioner of Realpolitik (Crimean War, 434). Kohn says he knew how to appeal to the national and Panslav “mood” of educated society while following in Nesselrode’s footsteps (Pan-Slavism, 126). 27. Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 43.

NOTES TO PA GES 8 4 – 8 7     223

28. Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 88–89. 29. Archives nationales (France), F/19/5590 (Cultes), folder 55, “Églises nationales étrangeres/Église anglicane, grecque et russe,” doc. 64, Milonas to Prince-President Louis Napoleon, May 3, 1852. 30. He also hoped Louis Napoleon would encourage the sultan to adopt the Napoleonic Code in the Ottoman Empire (Milonas to Prince-President Louis Napoleon, May 3, 1852, ibid., folder 55, doc. 67). Milonas, who signed his memo “Former Consul in the East,” had served as an officer in the French army and had a varied career that included service for the First Empire, Britain (after he left Napoleon’s service), and Russia. He ended up as one of the Greek refugees in France and founded a journal, Revue de l’Orient, in 1838, that printed just one issue. He then left France for Great Britain but returned to France in 1847. See Jean Savant, Napoléon et les Grecs: Sous les aigles impériales (n.p., 1946), 278, 283. 31. Archives nationales (France), F/19/5590, folder 55, doc. 68, Milonas to Fortoul, 1852. 32. Ibid. 33. Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 89–90. 34. There is no mention of Milonas in Vasiliev’s Parisian correspondence, but there is a two-year gap in the published correspondence between June 1850 and September 1852. 35. Archives nationales (France), F/19/5590, folder 55, doc. 67, Milonas to PrincePresident Louis-Napoleon, May 2, 1852. 36. See Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 90–91. For the archival documentation, see Archives nationales (France), F/19/10933, folder “Culte grec. Demande en autorisation de célébrer les culte grec à Paris. 1853.” 37. Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 90; Archives nationales (France), F/19/10933, folder “Culte grec. Demande en autorisation de célébrer les culte grec à Paris. 1853.” 38. Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 90–91; Vasiliev to Protasov, October 8, 1853, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 151–53. 39. Vasiliev to Protasov, October 8, 1853, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 152. 40. Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 91. 41. Figes makes no mention of the church but discusses France’s efforts to mediate a conflict between Britain and Russia between mid-November 1856 and January 1857. Russia was able to weaken the Anglo-French-Austrian alliance by offering support for French aims in Italy (against Austria) (Crimean War, 435–36). Approval for the church was sought and obtained simultaneously with these diplomatic developments. See also W. E. Mosse, The Rise and Fall of the Crimean System (London: Macmillan, 1963). In April 1857, Russia obtained permission from the Kingdom of Piedmont to build a small church in Nice. Cavour hoped to tap into antipapal and anti-Austrian sentiment in Russia to further the cause of Italian unification (Mikhail G. Talalai, Russkaia tserkovnaia zhizn' i khramostroitel'stvo v Italii [St. Petersburg: Kolo, 2011], 98–99). For a detailed diplomatic study of Russia’s role in Italian unification, which makes, however, no mention of either Russian church, see O. V. Serova, Gorchakov, Kavur i ob'edinenie Italii (Moscow: Nauka, 1997). 42. This letter is located in the files of the Ministry of Worship at the Archives nationales (France), F/19/10933, folder “Autorisation de construire une église pour

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la communauté russe du rite grec, établie à Paris,” Kiselev to Waleski, December 12, 1856. As of 1858, there were about six hundred Orthodox Russians in Paris, and eight hundred by 1860 (Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 142n3). 43. Kiselev to Waleski, December 12, 1856. 44. Ibid. 45. Archives nationales (France), F/19/5590 (Cultes), folder 55, doc. 65, January 1857. My emphasis. 46. Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 40–41, 120. 47. Ibid., 40–41, 120. 48. Sh., “Protoierei pravoslavnoi tserkvi pri russkom posol'stve v Parizhe,” 258; Oderova, “Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev,” 66. The Holy Synod contributed another 200,000 francs. 49. P. D. Kiselev signed the contract for the purchase of land in the name of the Russian embassy of Paris on October 17/29, 1857 (Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 31). 50. André, “Courrier de Paris,” Le Monde illustré, December 26, 1857, 2. 51. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, January 15/27, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 181. 52. The groundwork for this treaty was laid in 1857, when Grand Duke Constantine went to Paris and held talks with Napoleon III. French authorization for the church appears to have been a good-will gesture tied to Franco-Russian entente after the Crimean War. Thus, Oderova portrays the building of the church as a move toward cooperation in international politics, noting that “the temple became a kind of symbol of the union of Russia with one of the leading powers of Europe” (“Protoierei Vasil'ev,” 66). See also François Charles-Roux, Alexandre II, Gortchakoff et Napoléon III (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1913), 245–46. The laying of the cornerstone commemorated Alexander II’s ascension to the throne in March 1855 (Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, February 19/March 3, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 188; B. “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” Vsemirnaia illiustratsiia, no. 295, August 24, 1874). 53. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, February 19/March 3, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 188. 54. Ibid., 188–89. 55. “Rech', proiznesennaia O. Protoiereem Iosifom Vasil'evym pri polozhenii pervago kamnia Pravoslavnoi Trekh-Prestol'noi Tserkvi v Parizhe vo imia soshestviia Sviatago Dukha, sv. Blagovernago Velikago Kniazia Aleksandra Nevskago i Sviatitelia Nikolaia Mirlikiiskago Chudotvortsa, 19 fevralia (3 marta) 1859 goda,” Dukhovnaia beseda, no. 13 (1859): 414–15. 56. Ibid., 415. Oderova also stresses Vasiliev’s efforts to present the church as apolitical (“Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 41). 57. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, February 19/March 3, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 188–89. the foundations of this Orthodox temple The cornerstone reads: “Year 1859 193February March of three altars are laid to the successful reign of the Most Pious Sovereign the Emperor of All Russia Alexander II by the generosity of His Majesty, of the entire Reigning house, the Holy Governing Synod, and the sacrifices of the Orthodox, by the undertaking and efforts of prot. I Vasiliev, according to the design of prof. of architecture Roman Kuzmin, in the presence of the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Emperor of the French Napoleon III Count Paul Dmit. Kiselev, the building committee, and the builder and academician Ivan Shtrom” (ibid., 189n1; Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 151, 154).

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58. He added that Gagarin dismissed these rumors (Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, January 15/27, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 186). 59. La Presse, March 3, 1859. The paper had reported on November 12, 1858, that an “interesting ceremony” would soon be taking place. 60. Frédéric Gaillardet, “Les États-Unis et la Russie,” La Presse, September 4, 1860. In contrast with the Catholic press, Gaillardet used the expression “catholics of the Greek Church.” 61. Barrier, L’Univers, March 5, 1859. 62. Leontii, “Moi zametki i vospominaniia,” Bogoslovskii vestnik 3, no. 12 (1913): 813. Leonty subsequently became metropolitan of Moscow (1891–1893). Three other bishops were considered for the mission: Leonid [Lev Vasil'evich Krasnopevkov], the vicar-general of the Moscow metropolitanate, Archbishop Makary [Bulgakov] of Kharkov, and Archbishop Arseny [Fedor Pavlovich Moskvin] of Warsaw (until 1860, subsequently metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia). “All of these eminent candidates, representing the episcopacy, and especially the last would appear to attach to the event an official importance and were likely to be seen as a sign of the involvement of the Russian Church and State in the Parisian ceremony, which they [church and state] wished to avoid at all cost” (Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 172). 63. Alexander L'vovich Katansky noted that Vasiliev petitioned Filaret for a bishop to come to Paris, and that Filaret’s support was vital for securing support from the Synod (Vospominaniia starago professora [St. Petersburg, 1914], 215–16). Katansky became Vasiliev’s son-in-law in January 1867 and subsequently was a professor at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and the editor of Tserkovnyi vestnik. See also Oderova, “Protoierei Vasil'ev,” 66. Vasiliev’s correspondence does not discuss plans for the consecration. There is a gap from December 1860 to December 1861, and he spent some time in Russia during that period. 64. Vasilii P. Polisadov [Protopriest], “Pis'ma O. Protoiereia V. P. Polisadova (O puteshestvii nashei dukhovnoi missii v Parizh i ob osviashchenii Parizhskoi tserkvi),” Dukh khristianina (October 1861), pt. 3 (Smes'): 2. There is a one-day discrepancy in the arrival date given by Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 814. 65. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 2. Ivan Flerov was Polisadov’s brother-in-law. Vasiliev, Polisadov, and Ianyshev all married daughters of Protopriest Efim Vasilievich Flerov (1793–1867), who were especially well educated (Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 62, 88). 66. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 3. 67. Ibid., 5. 68. Ibid., 14. 69. Ibid., 14–15. 70. Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 814. 71. Flerov explained this practice of wearing lay clothing in an editorial note to Polisadov’s account (“Pis'ma,” 16). The practice originated (along with trimming or shaving beards) because some Russian priests in foreign service were ridiculed or harassed by the locals (Kizenko, “ ‘Vitriny samoderzhaviia,’ ” 459; Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 60–61). 72. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 16. 73. Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 814. 74. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 16–17.

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75. Ibid., 25. In most of the French newspaper press, Leonty was referred to as Monseigneur, bishop, and/or coadjutor of the metropolitan of St. Petersburg. L’Opinion nationale announced before the consecration that the church would be blessed by Leonty the “archbishop-suffragant of Novgorod and St. Peterburg,” September 10, 1861. Two of the most important Paris papers in terms of distribution, Le Constitutionnel and Le Siècle, reported after the fact that the church was consecrated by an archbishop. Le Siècle referred to the bishop charged with blessing the church as “the Archbishop of Great Novgorod” and as “the prelate of the great metropolis.” Novgorod formed part of the Metropolitanate of Novgorod, St. Petersburg, and Finland. See “Faits divers” (compiled by Alexis Grosselin), Le Siècle, September 12, 1861; and “Nouvelles diverses,” Le Constitutionnel, September 12, 1861. 76. La Presse announced the consecration on September 6, 1861, and L’Opinion nationale on September 10. 77. A. P. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Graf P. D. Kiselev i ego vremia: Materialy dlia istorii Imperatorov Aleksandra I, Nikolaia I, i Aleksandra II (St. Petersburg, 1882), 3:249; Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 145. 78. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 25; Pelliapork [Pelleport], “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, no. 9 (September 1861): 145. 79. As cited by A. I. Popovitskii, “Osviashchenie Russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” Strannik (September 1861), Sovremmenaia khronika: 146. 80. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 25–26. 81. Ibid., 26. 82. Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 814. 83. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 27. 84. Pelleport considered Baudry especially important because he was a wellknown archaeologist whose opinion carried weight, and Baudry’s expert opinion was that the rites had been preserved from novelty and Leonty served with tremendous dignity (Pelliapork, “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” 143; Ross, SaintAlexandre sur-Seine, 177). 85. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 27. 86. The basement church had a capacity of three to four hundred (Le Temps, September 12, 1861). A Russian source claimed the church could accommodate up to two thousand people. See E. Kryzhanovskii, “Russkaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” Voskresnoe chtenie, no. 27 (October 22, 1861): 737. 87. La Presse, September 12, 1861. 88. Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 815. 89. Le Nord, September 13, 1861. For Polisadov’s description, see “Pis'ma,” 29. 90. Le Nord, September 13, 1861; Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 29. 91. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 29. 92. Ibid., 29–30. 93. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Graf P. D. Kiselev, 3:249. 94. Leonty toured Paris but was a sight himself, the recipient of “polite attentiveness” everywhere he went in his monastic dress (“Moi zametki,” 815). 95. A technology developed by French photographers in the 1850s allowed photos to be mass-produced and mounted on 2.5 x 4 inch cards. 96. Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 815. Levitsky (Lewitzky), a pioneer in Russian photography, was one of thirty-three thousand people who were making a living from

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photography in Paris by 1861. See Helmut Gernsheim, A Concise History of Photography, 3rd rev. ed. (Toronto: Dover, 1986), 22, 55–56; and “Levitskii, Sergei L'vovich,” in Great Soviet Encyclopedia: A Translation of the Third Edition (New York: Macmillan, 1973–1983), 14:455. 97. Marinos Papadopoulos Vréto, “Léontius, évêque de Reval (Lithonie), Coadjuteur du Métropolitain de Saint-Pétersbourg; L’Archprêtre Joseph Wassilieff,” L’Illustration, Journal universel, September 28, 1861, 196–97. L’Illustration and Le Monde illustré were France’s earliest illustrated periodicals. See Rune Hassner, “Photography and the Press,” in A History of Photography, ed. Jean-Claude Lemagny and André Rouillé, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 76. 98. “The New Russian Church in Paris,” The London Illustrated News, September 21, 1861, 291illus., 304. Felix Thorigny (1824–1870) did the illustration. See the Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842–2003, accessed via find.galegroup. com; see also the article by Mac Vernoll and the illustration by the famous Émile Bayard (1837–1891) in Le Monde illustré, September 21, 1861, 598, 600illus. 99. Le Monde illustré, September 21, 1861, 598. 100. Le Constitutionnel, September 12, 1861. 101. For example, Le Temps reported that while the consecration service had not been open to the public, the bishop would be serving for the next few days and those services would be open to the public (September 12, 1861). 102. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (August 1916), 312–15. 103. Ibid., 312–15. 104. Théophile Martin, “Faits divers,” L’Ami 10 (September 14, 1861), 637–38. 105. He did not think old Catholic Paris would feel celebratory given “the sorrows of so many of the faithful who are worried and full of trouble in seeing what is being contemplated here and elsewhere against Rome.” See V. D., “Nouvelles étrangeres: France (Correspondance particulière),” Journal de Bruxelles, September 12, 1861. 106. “Nouvelles étrangeres: France (Correspondance particulière),” Journal de Bruxelles, September 19, 1861. 107. In Postcolonial Studies, contact zones have been defined in terms of relationships between the dominant and dominated people in an empire, as “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination.” However, the concept of physical spaces and physical media where “peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations” is certainly useful in contexts other than colonialism. For this definition of contact zones, see Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2008), 7–8. 108. Some of the information about Orthodoxy in this brochure appeared in articles by Vasiliev and Prilezhaev that were published in Gazette du Nord in 1859. A version of Description de L’Église russe de Paris appeared in Russian as “Russkaia tserkov' v Parizhe” in the military and political paper Russkii invalid, no. 205 (September 20, 1861). 109. L’Opinion nationale, September 10, 1861. This article also reported that three hundred Russian aristocrats traveled to Paris for the festive occasion. The curious detail about Sheremetev’s serf choir was repeated in Le Siècle’s first report on the consecration on September 12, 1861. Leonty had in his entourage a choir of fourteen

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men under the direction of Grigory Fedorovich Lvovsky, precentor of the St. Petersburg Metropolitan Choir and of the choir of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the seat of the St. Petersburg metropolitanate. I am not aware of any connection between Sheremetev’s serf choir and Lvovsky’s choir. The source of the confusion is not clear. If Count Sheremetev was in Paris with his choir, it was to participate in the ceremony in a capacity other than singing and is a detail not mentioned in the Russian (in this case the more reliable) sources. On the Sheremetev serf choir, see Marina Ritzarev, Eighteenth-century Russian Music (New York: Routledge, 2016), 256–58. On the choir that accompanied Leonty, see Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 48. On the choir of French opera singers who were on the payroll of the Russian church, see Vasil'ev to Leonty, December 7/19, 1861, “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia Mitropolita Moskovskago,” Russkii arkhiv 30, book 3 (1892), 102–3. See also Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 172, 216. 110. My emphasis. Le Siècle, Le Monde, La Presse, Le Moniteur, and L’Opinion nationale all ran the same article describing the exterior of the church between the eighth and tenth; thus, the error got perpetuated. The compiler of the miscellaneous news for Le Siècle, which published the report on the eighth, was Alexis Grosselin. Michaux, who catalogued the church’s art works in the 1880s, mistook Beideman’s exterior painting for a depiction of God the Father. See the work published for the church’s centennial celebration, Conseil Paroissial de Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky, La Cathédrale Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky de Paris, 6–7; and L. Michaux, Histoire et description de l’Église russe (Paris, 1888). Beideman’s exterior painting of Christ was already discussed by Adrien Robert in Revue universelle des arts 14 (1861): 66. It appears that Beideman (1826–1869) continued to refine the painting after 1861, since the church’s commemorative volume and Michaux date the work 1862. In Russia Beideman was known for his “Byzantine style” (B., “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe”). 111. “Bulletin du jour,” L’Opinion nationale, September 17, 1861. 112. Ibid. 113. Vretos courted Vasiliev’s daughter Sofia, as attested in Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (August 1916): 329. 114. Vréto, “Léontius, évêque de Reval; L’Archprêtre Joseph Wassilieff,” 196–97. 115. La Presse, September 4, 1860. 116. “It is on this very place and at the most elevated point of the central spire of the monument, that, following the usage of the Russian clergy, this imposing ceremony occurred” (La Presse, October 31, 1860). 117. Charles Deulin, “Édification d’une église russe à Paris,” Le Monde illustré, April 20, 1861, 246. Also a theater critic, Deulin had contributed to the Russophile paper La Gazette du Nord and was a friend of Pelleport (pseud. Artamov), with whom he collaborated on the French translation of Oblomov. The accompanying illustration, by the well-known artist Felix Thorigny, featured an exterior view of the church being observed by about eleven spectators. Thorigny’s illustration highlights how the church stood out against the backdrop, as there were few other buildings immediately surrounding it. 118. Ibid., 246. Deulin adopted the terminology of the Russian priest-publicists, referring to the “Orthodox Catholic Church of the East” (l’Église catholique orthodoxe d’Orient). He explained (as per Description de L’Église russe de Paris) that the Eastern Church was “based on the equality of the bishops,” governed by the ecumenical

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councils, and that it “preserves the Nicene Creed and the primitive organization in all their integrity.” He believed the St. Honoré suburb, where the new church was located, would become “the center of elegant and aristocratic Paris,” a “new Beaujon quarter”—referring to Nicolas Beaujon, 1718–1786, a wealthy banker who bought the Élysée Palace and founded the Beaujon Hospital. 119. La Presse and La Patrie, September 9, 1861. 120. La Patrie, September 12, 1861. La Patrie was a paper sympathetic to FrancoRussian rapprochement. In his article Lauzières relied on Description de l’Église russe de Paris to describe the church’s decorative features and their liturgical significance. The interior decoration of the church was not entirely finished by 1861. Beideman and Aleksei Petrovich Bogoliubov contributed more paintings in the 1860s and 1870s. See B., “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe.” 121. Louis Boniface, Le Constitutionnel, September 12, 1861. 122. Théophile Martin, “Faits divers,” L’Ami, September 14, 1861, 637–38. 123. Le Constitutionnel, September 21, 1861. Lengthy excerpts from this article were also printed in Revue universelle des arts 14 (1861): 63–66. 124. Robert, as cited in Revue universelle des arts, 64. 125. Ibid., 64. Robert found Evgraf Sorokin’s painting of Christ in the cupola “a little bizarre,” partly because “the archangels [cherubim] resemble hideous bats circling above a fire.” The painter redeemed himself with his “too beautiful” rendition of the Last Supper, however. Robert disliked Paul Sorokin’s Nativity and faulted him for his use of models that were too emaciated. 126. “Inauguration de la nouvelle église russe de la rue de la Croix-du-Roule,” Le Temps, September 12, 1861. 127. Ibid. 128. Ibid. Richard did not think that the paintings of the Last Supper, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Entry of Jesus in Jerusalem, and the Sermon on the Mount in the four main cupolas really lived up to their themes. He praised the “military punctuality” of the painters who had gotten the paintings done in just a few months but clearly thought punctuality and artistic talent were two different things. 129. De Maistre wrote that Russia’s religion “is wholly external, and has no place in the heart. We must beware of confounding the power of religion on man with the attachment of man to religion,—two things which have nothing in common” (Pope, 287). Henningsen referred to icon paintings as “wretched daubs” and contrasted the interior decor of a Russian church, “decked out with a pompous magnificence, which renders it gaudy and glittering,” with the “solemnity and grandeur which, in the Roman-Catholic cathedrals, involuntarily fills the breast of the beholder with awe and veneration” (Revelations of Russia, 1:327–28). In a work on the Russian peasants based on the author’s fifteen years in Russia, the poet and composer Achille Lestrelin characterized the “Greek religion” as “a sumptuous religion, where everything speaks to the senses and nothing to the soul, a religion purely demonstrative, where devotion consists of infinitely making the sign of the cross and of striking the forehead on the floor of the church!” (Les Paysans russes: Leurs usages, mœurs, caractère, religion, superstitions et les droits des nobles sur leurs serfs [Paris, 1861], 169). Lestrelin perpetuated other well-established negative ideas about Orthodoxy, including the tsar-pope myth. 130. Edmond Texier, “Revue hebdomadaire,” Le Siècle, September 15, 1861.

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131. Ibid. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid. 134. Ibid. 135. Guérolt, L’Opinion nationale, September 16, 1861. 136. Ibid. This observation prompted a letter to the editor from Amand Chevé clarifying that one of the sixteen members of his choir was a Russian, Alexei Koporsky, whose “voice, very remarkable both in volume and solemnity, powerfully assists our French basses” (L’Opinion nationale, September 19, 1861). Koporsky served as one of the salaried psalm readers at the Paris church from 1851 to 1873 (Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 99, 216). On the development of Russian music, see Ritzarev, Eighteenth-century Russian Music. 137. Abbé Jouve, “Choral de l’Église de l’ambassade russe à Paris,” Revue de musique sacrée, June 15, 1862, 246–50. Jouve liberally praised the choral singing in the Russian church in this article, but the editor specifically clarified that Koporsky was not present when Jouve attended services, meaning Jouve heard only French singers (cf. preceding note). The choir was evidently singing arrangements composed by Dmitry Bortniansky. 138. Ibid., 249. On Jouve, see Louis Huz, Notice biographique sur M. l’abbé Jouve (Valence, n.d.). 139. Jouve, “Choral de l’Église de l’ambassade russe,” 249. 140. Typical descriptive information included reference to the church’s “ByzantineMuscovite” architectural design and the fact that it was modeled on Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. It was usually noted that the church was built in the shape of a Greek cross, with a large gilded dome at the center, and four smaller pyramidal cupolas located at each corner, each surmounted by gilded elliptical domes topped with a gilded cross. Some guides added that the five domes had mystical significance, representing Christ and the four evangelists. The church’s dimensions were often included, along with mention of the eleven stairs leading up to the church’s porch—which was also topped by a small dome—and description of Beideman’s large fresco on the exterior of the building. Discussions of the interior mentioned the division of the church into three main parts, the vestibule, nave, and sanctuary. Attention might be drawn to the painting of Christ enthroned in the main dome and to the carved wood curtain (cloison) separating the sanctuary from the nave—that is, the ­iconostasis—and adorned with images of Christ, the Virgin, Apostles, and Saints. The main frescoes in the church were identified by subject and painter. A few more detailed guides added more theological description of the Holy or Royal doors, the middle set of three sets of doors on the iconostasis, traversed only by clergy. See Amédée d. Cesena, Le Nouveau Paris: Guide de l’étranger pratique, historique, descriptif et pittoresque (Paris, 1864), 554–55; A. Lasmarrigues, Paris monumental: Guide pratique de l’étranger dans Paris et ses environs (Paris, 1863), 195; Albert Montémont, Guide universel et complet de l’étranger dans Paris (Paris, 1865), 287; J. C. G. Marin de P***, A Fortnight in Paris; or, The Stranger’s Guide in Paris and Its Environs, Containing a Complete and Picturesque Description of all the Remarkable Objects of Interest in Paris and Its Environs, trans. from a new and enlarged French edition by J. Fisher (Paris, 1864), 273. 141. See, for example, Galignani’s New Paris Guide, for 1862 (Paris, 1862); and Galignani’s New Paris Guide, for 1866 (Paris, 1866). Both include the church in the walking tours section, and the 1866 version contains descriptive information (205–6).

NOTES TO PA GES 1 0 2 – 1 0 6     231

142. Adolphe Joanne, Paris illustré: Nouveau guide de l’étranger et du Parisien (Paris, 1863), 39–41. See also Le Guide parisien, par Adolphe Joanne, contenant tous les renseignements nécessaires à l’étranger pour s’installer et vivre à Paris (Paris, 1863). 143. Cesena, Nouveau Paris, 116–17. 144. Marin de P***, 15 jours à Paris ou Guide de l’étranger dans la capitale et ses environs (Paris, 1863), 32, 284–85; Marin de P***, A Fortnight in Paris, vi, 30–31, 272–73. The guide mentions three other non-Roman Catholic monuments in addition to the Russian church. 145. Galignani’s New Paris Guide, for 1862; Galignani’s New Paris Guide, for 1866, 205–6. 146. Henri A. de Conty, Paris en pôche: Guide pratique illustré de l’étranger dans Paris et ses environs, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1867), 220. 147. Pol de Guy, Paris en 1867: Guide a l’exposition universelle (Paris, 1866), 268. 148. Bibliotheque de voyageur, Nouveau guide à Paris, avec plan et gravures (Paris, 1862), 311–12. 149. Edmond Renaudin, Paris-Exposition ou Guide à Paris en 1867 (Paris, 1867), 137. 150. Texier, “Revue hebdomadaire,” Le Siècle, September 15, 1861; Alexis Grosselin, “Faits divers,” Le Siècle, September 12, 1861. 151. “Prospectus,” La Semaine des familles: Revue universelle, October 2, 1858, 1–4. 152. René, “L’Église russe de Paris,” La Semaine des familles, March 21, 1863, 386. 153. Ibid., 386. 154. Ibid., 386. 155. Ibid., 387. 156. Ibid., 387. René referred to M. l’abbé [Louis-Henri] Delière, Tableau d’une Église nationale d’après un pope russe ou Compte rendu d’un ouvrage publié à Leipsic, par un prêtre de l’Église russe, sous ce titre: “Opisanie sel'skago dukhovenstva.” “Description du clergé de campagne” (Paris and Poitiers, 1862). 157. Ibid., 387. 158. Ibid., 387. 159. Ibid., 388; Description de L’Église russe de Paris, 3. 160. René, “L’Église russe de Paris,” 388. 161. Ibid., pt. 2 (March 28, 1863), 401–4. The illustrations were signed Pieron/ Pierron and the engravings were done by Adolphe Gusman (1821–1905). 162. Ibid., 401–2; Description de l’Église russe de Paris, 6. If the need to explain the Holy Doors is not clear, see Lestrelin, who mistranslated Tsarski dver (Royal door) as “porte du Tsar” (door of the Tsar), then explained: “No ecclesiastic, no foreigner can pass through this door, which is exclusively reserved to the priest who is officiating and to the emperor, in his capacity as supreme head of the orthodox Church” (Les Paysans, 175). 163. René, “L’Église russe de Paris,” pt. 2, 402. Of course, René cites the hymn in Latin: Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, Quae sub his figuris vere latitas. The English is Edward Pusey’s translation. 164. Ibid., 403; Description de l’Église russe de Paris, 9. My emphasis. 165. Description de l’Église russe de Paris explained that the architecture in Constantinople adopted attributes “more in harmony with the character and the genius of the eastern peoples,” 4. René added that the words “We will see God as he is, face to face” (cf. I Cor. 13:12; I John 3:2) characterize the “man of the West” (“L’Église russe de Paris,” pt. 2, 402). 166. René, “L’Église russe de Paris,” pt. 2, 404.

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167. Ibid., 404. 168. Ibid., 404. 169. Vasiliev to Leonty, October 27/November 8, 1861, “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 99. For purposes of comparison, before the fire in 2019, the Cathedral of Notre Dame received an average of more than thirty thousand visitors per day. See https://www.notredamedeparis.fr/en/la-cathedrale/ les-informations-insolites/la-cathedrale-en-chiffres/. 170. Vasiliev to Leonty, October 27/November 8, 1861, “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 99. The schismatic label always really bothered Vasiliev. He objected to the label, claiming that rather than return the epithet, Russian theologians called Christians of other confessions by the names they called themselves—­ Roman Catholic, Protestant, and so on. He was right, although Orthodox polemicists have not universally observed this general rule. The comment about Russians being Christian harkened back to Vasiliev’s first efforts to counter a prejudice that Russians were pagan or Mahometans (Vasiliev, “La Russie religieuse”). 171. Vasiliev to Leonty, December 7/19, 1861, “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 102. 172. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, December 20, 1861/January 1, 1862, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 252–53. 173. Vasiliev to Leonty, December 7/19, 1861, “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 102–3. As for Napoleon III, there is no indication that he visited the church until the Te Deum held there in 1867, after the assassination attempt against Alexander II in Paris. 174. When the treaty failed to obtain results, Empress Eugénie became a patron for the cause of the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, taking up an international subscription and seeking a cooperative approach between Catholic and Orthodox Christians for this project. While seventeen out of twenty-four states, including Greece, supported her subscription in 1865, Alexander II did not. See Alison McQueen, Empress Eugénie and the Arts: Politics and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 251–56. Correspondence between French Ambassador Montebello, French Foreign Minister Thouvenal, and Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov can be found in “Russie. 1861, aout à decembre. Le duc de Montebello,” Correspondance Politique de l’Origine à 1871 (Russia), Archives diplomatiques, MNESYS 112CP/225. 175. Vasiliev added the observation that “the words of Bautain have great authority here.” Vasiliev to Leonty, March 18/30, 1862, in “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 106. Louis-Eugène-Marie Bautain (1796–1867) served as vicargeneral of Paris (1850–1857) and taught philosophy and theology at the Sorbonne. See Eugène de Régny, L’Abbé Bautain: Sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1884). Bautain’s works circulated in Russia, and Bautain represented an ecumenical current in French theological thought that saw Catholics and Orthodox alike as belonging to the universal church. See Dom O. Rousseau, “Les attitudes de pensée concernant l’unité chrétienne au XIXe siècle,” in L’Ecclésiologie au XIXe siècle, ed. Maurice Nédoncelle (Paris: Cerf, 1960), 357; and Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 94. 176. Vasiliev to Leonty, February 20/March 4, 1862, in “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 104.

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177. Vasiliev to Leonty, February 5/17, 1863, ibid., 108. In this letter, Vasiliev mentioned that two editions of lithographs of the church had been published, one specifically for children. 178. Ibid., 110. In this letter Vasiliev expressed his concerns about the appointment of a new deacon to the church, insisting that the appointed deacon had to be attractive and have a decent voice. His opinion illustrates his commitment to the idea that the new church was intended to shape and educate European public opinion about Orthodoxy. “In a chapel, as this was earlier, outward qualities are not so necessary; but in our vast and grand church, which non-Orthodox [inovertsy] visit, a decent voice and comely appearance are necessary” (ibid., 109). 179. De Maistre introduced this expression, which became a common way for Catholic writers to refer to the Orthodox Church (Du Pape, 2:192). See Heather Bailey, “ ‘The Churches that Call Themselves orthodox’: Nomenclature for Russian Orthodoxy in Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies (2019). 180. It is also interesting to recall that as part of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1856, in efforts to shore up the Ottoman Empire and to eliminate a Russian pretext for intervention in the Near East, the western powers insisted that Turkey adopt a decree guaranteeing religious toleration and civil rights to non-Muslim subjects. This decree was resented by Muslim religious authorities, contributed to religious conflicts in the Ottoman Empire, and was not enforced (Figes, Crimean War, 427–32). Theoretically, the decree meant that the Ottoman Empire had more progressive legislation than Russia concerning toleration of religious minorities. 181. In 1847, already talking about the need for a new church, a project that required an understanding of French laws on religious confessions, Vasiliev sent Serbinovich his notes on “Legislation of the French Government concerning the Religious Confessions.” Vasiliev to Serbinovich, October 5/17, 1847, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 43. 182. Vasiliev to Serbinovich, March 14/26, 1849, ibid., 89. 183. Le Nord, February 8, 1861. 184. See ibid. and Sergei Sushkov, “L’Église de Russie: Vengée contre les calumnies du journal Le Monde,” L’Union chrétienne, September 29, 1861, 379. 185. Le Nord, February 8, 1861. A Russian subscriber to Le Nord wrote to the editor on this same subject, suggesting that it was typical of the Catholic ultramontanes to consider Protestant all who have contested and contest papal pretensions. 186. La Presse, March 3, 1859. 187. Mac-Sheehy, “Chronique du jour,” L’Union, March 5, 1859. It is curious and not at all typical that Mac-Sheehy referred to the church as a “cathedral,” since that would imply the establishment not only of a parish but of a diocese. 188. See the September 9, 11, and 14, 1861 issues of Le Monde. 189. Texier, “Revue hebdomadaire,” Le Siècle, September 15, 1861. 190. Ibid. 191. In 1861, a complaint was made against a curé in Sarrabee (Moselle) because he refused to hear the confession of a woman who was “dangerously ill” on grounds that “she received Le Siècle in a cafe that was the House of the Devil” (Archives nationales [France], F/19/5605, folder “1857–1862”). 192. Le Monde, September 16, 1861. 193. Ibid.

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194. The first segment appeared about ten days after Coquille’s polemical article against Texier. The excerpts in Le Monde preceded the publication of a book that was partly a translation of Belliustin and partly an anti-Orthodox rant. See Le Monde, September 25, 1861, and October 1, 4, 9, 13, 1861. For the book, see Delière, Tableau d’une Église nationale. 195. Sushkov, “L’Église de Russie,” 379. 196. Ibid., 379–80. 197. Even the range of press coverage was impressive. Besides appearing in the most important mainstream newspapers including the prominent illustrated papers, reporting about the church reached into papers representing specific ethnic groups (e.g., Revue espagnole et portugaise) and special interests (e.g., Revue universelle des arts; L’Industrie du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais). 4. A Spectacular Success

1. Petrovich, Russian Panslavism, 29. 2. Maiorova, From the Shadow of Empire, 164. On the Crimean War as a turning point for Russian identity, see especially ibid., 6–8. 3. Petrovich, Russian Panslavism, 287. 4. [Popovitiskii], “Protoierei Vasil'ev.” 5. Oderova notes that the reaction to the consecration in the Russian press exceeded the bounds of regular reporting with “poetical odes,” and expressions of “rapture” glorifying Russia, its church, and its sovereign. “The Russian church truly became a means of the transmission of imperial ideology in the West” (“Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 49). 6. “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie (January 1882): 176–77. 7. Kapelmans served briefly as editor of Le Nord before assuming the editorship of the French paper in Russia, Journal de St.-Pétersbourg. 8. Popovitsky was “always speaking out for freedom of conscience and for academic freedom” (“Popovitskii,” Entsiklopedicheskii slovar' F. A. Brokgauza i I. A. Efrona). 9. Mel'nikova, Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov', 224. 10. [V. I. Kapel'mans], “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” Dukhovnaia beseda, September 16, 1861, 589. 11. Ibid., 590. 12. Ibid., 595. 13. Ibid., 595–96. 14. Dukh khristianina was published in St. Petersburg from 1861 to 1865. For the offprint, see V. P. Polisadov, Pis'ma protoiereia V. P. Polisadova o puteshestvii nashei dukhovnoi missii v Parizh i ob osviashchenii Parizhskoi tserkvi (St. Petersburg, 1861). 15. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 21. 16. Ibid., 23–24. 17. Ibid., 5. 18. Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 815. 19. [Vasiliev and Prilezhaev,] Description de L’Église russe de Paris, 15. 20. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 27. 21. Ibid., 25, 27. 22. Ibid., 28. My emphasis.

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23. “Nouvelles du jour,” Le Nord, September 13, 1861; Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 29. 24. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 33. 25. Ibid., 36. 26. Ibid., 37. 27. Ibid., 38–39. 28. Ibid., 42–43. 29. Ibid., 43–51. This church was consecrated in May 1855. Following the consecration, memorial services were held for Elizabeth Mikhailovna, whose remains were relocated to the church. Prince Petr Viazemsky, who held important roles in the civil service under Alexander I and Nicholas I, attended these services. The account that he published is full of patriotic rhetoric about the faith, rites, and tongue of “Holy Rus,” and expresses the idea that the church is a sacred space where Russians experience a delight (naslazhdenie) that “sons of Western Churches” are deprived of. While his account expresses his religious nationalism and makes brief mention of westerners who observed the service or funeral procession, the Wiesbaden church was not conceived or inaugurated with an intent to attract publicity like the Paris church was. See P. A. Viazemskii, “Osviashchenie novosooruzhennoi nadgrobnoi eia imperatorskago vysochestva gosudaryni velikoi kniagini Elisavety Mikhailovny tserkvi vo imia sviatyia pravednyia Elisavety, v Visbadene,” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnago prosveshcheniia, pt. 87, sec. 2 (1855): 1–15. Noting that the Russian clergy abroad were able to command the respect of the heterodox, Viazemsky did speak to the role of the foreign clergy as publicists, commenting that it was important for the Holy Synod to pay attention to the issue of whom to choose for foreign service (ibid., 10). 30. Leontii, “Rech', skazannaia preosviashchennym Leontiem, episkopom revel'skim, vikariem S. Peterburgskim, pri osviashchenii russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” Khristianskoe chtenie, pt. 2 (1861): 67–70; Leontii, “Rech' po sluchaiu osviashcheniia russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi v Parizhe, 30 Avgusta 1861 goda,” Strannik (September 1861), Sovremennaia khronika: 149–51; “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” Dukhovnaia beseda, September 16, 1861, 602–8. The first French translation appeared in the Journal de St.-Pétersbourg. 31. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 32–33. 32. Ibid., 32–33. 33. Guettée, “Consecration de l’église russe de Paris,” L’Union chrétienne, September 15, 1861, 361–62; and Guettée, “La Présence de Mgr. Léonce à Paris,” L’Union chrétienne, September 22, 1861, 369–70. A year later, Vasiliev mentioned to the overprocurator that about one-third of L’Union chrétienne’s three hundred subscribers were Orthodox (Vasiliev to Akhmatov, October 19/31, 1862, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 259). 34. Guettée, “Consecration de l’église russe,” 361–62. 35. Ibid., 362. 36. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 34. 37. Guettée, “Présence de Mgr. Léonce à Paris,” 370. 38. Ibid., 370. 39. Ibid., 370. 40. Ibid., 369–70. 41. Ibid., 370. 42. Ibid., 370. 43. Popovitskii, “Osviashchenie Russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” 144.

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44. Ibid., 145. My emphasis. 45. Ibid., 148–49. 46. Pelliapork, “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” 141–42. 47. Ibid., 142. 48. J. Vilbort, L’Opinion nationale: Journal du soir, September 12, 1861. 49. “Nouvelles du jour,” Le Nord, September 13, 1861. 50. He mentioned that Bacciochi attended the event in a private, not public, capacity (Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 144; Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Graf P. D. Kiselev, 3:249). 51. Polisadov, “Pis'ma,” 25–26. 52. [Kapel'mans], “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” 590–91, 593. 53. Popovitskii, “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” 147. 54. Pelliapork, “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe,” 146. Eighty-four thousand visitors in five days would translate into 16,800 people per day or 700 people per hour, around the clock. 55. Ibid., 143. 56. Ibid., 142. 57. Ibid., 145. 58. “Zagranichnye zametki,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, February 1862, 65–66. Replovsky’s authorship of these notes can be deduced given that they were sent from Stuttgart and he frequently sent correspondence to Pravoslavnoe obozrenie. 59. The empress expressed her reverence by crossing herself and making a Latin bow (curtsy) before leaving the temple (Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, December 20, 1861/ January 1, 1862, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 253; Vasiliev to Leonty, December 7/19, 1861, “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 103; “Zamechatel'nye poseshcheniia pravoslavnoi parizhskoi tserkvi,” Strannik [January 1862], Sovremannaia khronika: 28–30). 60. Vasiliev to Leonty, December 7/19, 1861, “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 102; “Zamechatel'nye poseshcheniia pravoslavnoi parizhskoi tserkvi,” 30. 61. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, December 20, 1861/January 1, 1862, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 253; Vasiliev to Leonty, December 7/19, 1861, 102; “Zamechatel'nye poseshcheniia pravoslavnoi parizhskoi tserkvi,” 30. 62. Vasiliev to Leonty, February 20/March 4, 1862, “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 104. 63. Leonty to Archbishop Platon, January 12, 1862, “Chetyre pis'ma Mitropolita Leontiia k Arkhiepiskopu kostromskomu Platonu,” Russkii arkhiv 31, book 3 (1893): 88. 64. Ibid., 88. This letter also indicated that however much pleasure Leonty derived from the mission, it had been arduous. He indicated that some due thanks was still outstanding. “I’m still awaiting thanks for the journey, which cost me sleepless nights and intense exertion; however, I am forgetting myself.” 65. Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 815. 66. “Allocution prononcée le 30 août–11 septembre 1861 par Monseigneur Leoncé, évêque de Reval,” L’Union chrétienne, December 15, 1861, 49–50. 67. Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 815. 68. Ibid., 819.

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69. “I expected that Your Grace would fulfill the commission well, but that everything would go so superlatively, I did not anticipate” (ibid., 818). 70. Ibid., 819. On Leonty’s transfer, see his “Moi zametki i vospominaniia,” Bogoslovskii vestnik 1, no. 1 (1914): 145–47. 71. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (August 1916), 306. 72. [Vasiliev and Prilezhaev], Description de l’Église russe de Paris, 4; Russkii invalid, no. 205 (September 20, 1861); Kryzhanovskii, “Russkaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 730. 73. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (August 1916), 311–13. 74. Permission to have bells was granted later (ibid., 311–12). Avtonomova probably misremembered Vasiliev’s meeting with Napoleon III during the Crimean War, regarding the POWs on the Île-d’Aix, as a meeting about permission to build a new church. A Jesuit priest was reportedly involved in the attempt to ban Vasiliev from the island during the war. See Sh., “Protoierei pravoslavnoi tserkvi pri russkom posol'stve v Parizhe,” 257–58. Avtonomova’s account appears to be a misremembered version of what this article reported about Vasiliev, Russian POWs, the Jesuits, and Napoleon III. 75. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (August 1916), 312–15. 76. Ibid., 312–14. 77. Ibid., 314. She also discussed strong reverence among French Catholics for the Mother of God and Catholic customs associated with first communion and commemorations for the dead (ibid., 327–28). 78. Ibid., 314–15. 79. Ibid., 315. 80. A twist on Kizenko’s discussion of Russian churches as “showcases of autocracy.” See Kizenko, “ ‘Vitriny samoderzhaviia.’ ” 81. Petrovich, Russian Panslavism, 32, 34–35. 82. Gorchakov was not sympathetic to Panslav ideology, and there was no real unity between the government and Panslavs—or a clear Panslav program, for that matter (ibid., 121, 128). 83. On the evolution of Panslavism, Petrovich writes: “the Slavophiles left a legacy of ideals—ultimate allegiance to a universal culture, the quest for inner justice rather than legal form, the stress on natural development rather than coercion, the preference for social rather than political solutions, the insistence on the right of each historic people to cultural self-determination—ideals which the earlier Panslavists accepted in the realm of theory and which the later Panslavists largely abandoned in practice” (ibid., 35). Kohn contrasts the “liberal” atmosphere of the first Panslav Congress in Prague (1848) with the “stern nationalist atmosphere” of the Moscow Congress (1867) (Pan-Slavism, 159). 84. The cornerstone of the Sacred Heart Basilica at Montmartre was laid in June 1875. This monument, however, was tied to themes of penitence with no parallel in the story of the Russian church of Paris. 5. The Church Chained to the Throne of the “Czar”

1. As much as the Polish question contributed to the atmosphere of Russophobia surrounding the Crimean War, there had been no resolution of the matter. While the French and British statesmen of 1856 would have welcomed an independent Poland,

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they concluded the costs would be too high. Therefore the Polish question had not been brought up at the Paris congress in 1856 (Figes, Crimean War, 416–17). 2. Soroka and Ruud, Becoming a Romanov, 286–91; Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Un homme d’État russe (Nicolas Miliutine) (Paris, 1884), 302–11; Weeks, “Between Rome and Tsargrad.” 3. Leroy-Beaulieu, Un homme d’État russe, 104; on the fate of the concordat under Alexander II, see Astafieva, “Concordat de 1847,” 58–60. 4. Nikolai Miliutin reported that hostility reached “unbelievable extremes” (Soroka and Ruud, Becoming a Romanov, 288–90). 5. Vasiliev to Leonty, February 5/17, 1863, in “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 110. 6. “The name ‘schismatic’ [for the Eastern Church] seems too gracious to them, and for the greater degradation they call it ‘Photian’ ” (Vasiliev to A. P. Akhmatov, December 22, 1863/January 3, 1864, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 267). 7. Pogodin was Russia’s first ideologue of Panslavism, formulating his vision of Slavic unity in secret memos as early as 1838 and 1839 but finding no willingness to entertain his ideas in Russian officialdom until after the Crimean War (Petrovich, Russian Panslavism, 26–31; Kohn, Pan-Slavism, 141–46). 8. Gregory L. Freeze, introduction to Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia, by Belliustin, trans. with an interpretive essay by Gregory L. Freeze (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); Freeze, “Revolt from Below: A Priest’s Manifesto on the Crisis in Russian Orthodoxy (1858–59),” in Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, ed. Robert L. Nichols and Theofanis G. Stavrou (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978), 90–124; Freeze, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia; and Freeze, “Gagarin: A Critical Perspective on the Russian Clergy and Church in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Russian Clergy by I. S. Gagarin, trans. Ch. Du Gard Makepeace (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1976). 9. A collection of critical Russian responses was published anonymously in Berlin: Russkoe dukhovenstvo (Berlin, 1859). 10. The foreign publication even included an epigraph by Gagarin, who had been sentenced in absentia to Siberian exile for the crime of apostasy, should he ever return to Russia. 11. Freeze, introduction to Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia, 46. 12. Prince Pierre Dolgoroukow, La Vérité sur la Russie (Paris, 1860), 349. In this work, Dolgorukov challenged his compatriots’ belief that hiding Russia’s problems from foreigners was the best course of action and argued that publicity was the best medicine (ibid., 1–2). 13. Gustave de La Tour, “La Russie en 1861,” Le Monde, April 29, 1861. Le Monde covered the Jaquemet-Vasiliev debate starting on April 30, the day after La Tour’s first installment appeared. But discussion of the Jaquemet-Vasiliev polemic had already appeared in L’Ami. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., May 4, 1861. 16. Ibid. The second segment of La Tour’s piece appeared on May 1 and featured a lengthy discussion of Russian Panslavism. 17. “Du clergé des campagnes en Russie par un prêtre de l’église orthodoxe (Brochure en langue russe, imprimée à Leipzig),” in Le Monde, September 25 and October 1, 4, 9, 13, 1861.

NOTES TO PA GES 1 3 5 – 1 4 0     239

18. Delière, Tableau d’une Église nationale. 19. Ibid., 3–4. 20. Ibid., 1. 21. Ibid., 3. 22. Ibid., 5–6. The idea of Russia as a colossus built on feet of clay was a popular theme in French Enlightenment and subsequently Russophobic literature, possibly originating with Diderot and reoccurring frequently thereafter (McNally, “Origins of Russophobia in France,” 179). 23. Delière, Tableau d’une Église nationale, 8. 24. Ibid., 7–8. 25. Ibid., 20. 26. Ibid., 25. 27. Belliustin, Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia, 191. 28. Ibid., 193. 29. Delière, Tableau d’une Église nationale, 90–91. The “great Catholic preacher” was Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, who, in his twenty-third lecture at Notre Dame (1844), said: “Now, since the definitive advent of the Catholic doctrine, we have seen three great doctrinal establishments form alongside it: Islamism, Protestantism, and rationalism. I do not mention the Greek schism although it has a considerable place in the world, because the Greek schism, foreign to all real movement, is actually the Catholic doctrine in the state of petrification” (Oeuvres, vol. 3: Conférences de NotreDame de Paris [Paris, 1872], 2:55). Other Catholic polemicists repeated Lacordaire’s idea about petrification of the Eastern Church, sometimes omitting the reference to “Catholic doctrine.” 30. Gagarin, review of Tableau d’une Église nationale, 687. 31. Ibid., 685–86. 32. Ibid., 686. 33. Ibid., 686. 34. Gagarin, Russian Clergy, iv. 35. Gagarin, La Réforme du clergé russe (1867) and La Clergé russe (1871). 36. Thomas William M. Marshall, Les Missions chrétiennes: Ouvrage traduit de l’anglaise avec l’autorisation de l’auteur, augmenté et annoté par Louis de Waziers (Paris: Ambroise Bray, 1865), 2:135–36. Marshall drew on de Maistre, Horrer, Theiner, Döllinger and Shuvalov, among others. Waziers about doubled the material on Russia, and cited from Belliustin, Delière, Dolgorukov, and Muraviev among others. 37. René, “L’Église russe de Paris,” La Semaine des familles, March 21, 1863, 387. 38. Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest et des Musées de Poitiers, 11 (1865– 1867) (meetings for July and August 1865): 166–67. 39. The formal acceptance came from Metropolitan Isidor on June 5, 1862 (old style), and Vasiliev formally received Guettée into the church on the eve of the feast of St. Vladimir, July 14/26, 1862 (Vasil'ev, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 245–46). 40. Sergei P. Sushkov, “Le Clergé russe,” L’Union chrétienne. The first of seven segments appeared on June 8, 1862, 255–56; and the last appeared July 20, 1862, 301–3. 41. “Correspondance particulière du Nord,” Le Nord, May 10, 1862. 42. Ibid. 43. Le Nord, June 1, 1862. 44. Sushkov, “Clergé russe,” July 20, 1862, 302. 45. Ibid., June 15, 1862, 264.

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46. See, for example, Horrer, Persécution et souffrances, 66–68, 183–85; Custine, Russia, 461–62. There was also a connection between Muraviev and Pogodin, as the former wrote to the latter that he “tried to rebut Catholic propagandists” but found it difficult, “especially with regard to the question of domination by the state” (Freeze, “Handmaiden of the State?” 92n43). 47. Jean-Louis de Rozaven, De la réunion de l’Église russe avec l’Église catholique (Paris, 1864). This work was a new and retitled version of L’Église catholique justifiée contre les attaques d’un écrivain qui se dit orthodoxe ou Réfutation d’un ouvrage intitulé “Considérations sur la doctrine et l’esprit de l’Église orthodoxe” par Alexandre de Stourdza (Lyon, 1822). Golitsyn also published L’Église russe et l’Église catholique, lettres inédites du R. P. Rozaven (Paris, 1862). 48. Dupanloup, “Lettre de Mgr. l’évêque d’Orléans,” in L’Église russe et l’Église catholique, xii–xiii. 49. Ibid., xiii–xiv. One of the conversions attributed to Rozaven was that of the famous Madame Swetchine (1782–1857), who subsequently moved to Paris and ran a salon that attracted some of the most eminent figures in French Catholicism. Gagarin was her relation. See Tatyana Bakhmetyeva, Mother of the Church: Sofia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016). 50. Dupanloup, “Lettre de Mgr. l’évêque d’Orléans,” xiii. 51. Ibid., xvi. 52. Ezequiel Adamovsky, Euro-Orientalism: Liberal Ideology and the Image of Russia in France (c. 1740–1880) (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006), especially 14, 115–16, 193–94, 223–25. 53. Dupanloup, “Lettre de Mgr. l’évêque d’Orléans,” xvi–xvii. 54. Ibid., xvii. 55. Ibid., xvii–xix. Besse writes that Dupanloup’s “Catholic liberalism was not less anti-Orthodox than the most zealous ultramontanism.” Noting that Dupanloup was inspired by Theiner’s L’Église schismatique russe, he considered Dupanloup’s depiction of the Russian Church more negative than Custine’s. Even Gagarin recognized that the Russian clergy was not just misunderstood but “slandered” in the West (Besse, Un précurseur, 129, 131). 56. Dupanloup, “Lettre de Mgr. l’évêque d’Orléans,” xix. 57. Ibid., xxi–xxii. 58. Ibid., xxii. Hedwig (ca. 1174–1243) was duchess of Silesia and was canonized by the Latin Church in the thirteenth century. St. John Sobiewski was a seventeenthcentury Polish commander known for his role in fending off Ottoman westward expansion in the late seventeenth century but also for the loss of Kiev to Russia in 1686. See Stanislaus Tarnowski, “John Sobieski,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, retrieved from New Advent, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14061c.htm. 59. Dupanloup, “Lettre de Mgr. l’évêque d’Orléans,” xxii–xxiii. 60. George W. Moss, Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (London: Anthem Press, 2002), 121–27. 61. L’Univers and Le Monde reported this, citing Le Moniteur and Figaro respectively (“Nouvelles diverses,” L’Univers, June 3, 1867; Le Monde, June 5, 1867; “Hier— aujourd’hui—demain,” Figaro, June 3, 1867). 62. On Berezowski as the son of Uniates, L’Univers cited La Presse on June 10/11, 1867.

NOTES TO PA GES 1 4 5 – 1 5 1     241

63. Madame Jules [Céleste] Baroche, Second Empire: Notes et souvenirs (Paris: Crès, 1921), 374. 64. The horse was hit in the nostrils but survived and recovered. 65. Gustave Vapereau, “Alexandre II,” Dictionnaire universel des contemporains: Contenant toutes les personnes notables de la France et des pays étrangers, 4th ed. (Paris, 1870), 27. 66. Cucheval-Clarigny, La Presse, June 8, 1867. 67. Le Monde, June 3, 1867. 68. Le Monde, June 8, 1867. 69. Paulin Limayrac in Le Constitutionnel, as cited in La Presse, June 8, 1867. 70. L’Union, June 7, 1867. 71. For Veuillot’s analysis, see L’Univers, June 8, 1867; Guettée, “Sa Majesté Alexandre II l’Empereur de toutes les Russies à Paris,” L’Union chrétienne, June 9, 1867, 256. 72. Other high dignitaries also accompanied the sovereigns. On June 9, 1867, Le Monde reported that the ambassadors of Russia, England, and Prussia were in attendance. 73. E. Youllet, Le Monde, June 9, 1867. 74. L’Union, June 9, 1867. 75. René du Merzer, “Les Souverains à Paris,” L’Illustration, June 15, 1867, 370. 76. L’Illustration, June 22, 1867, 386, 388. 77. E. Bauer, “Nouvelles du jour,” La Presse, June 10/11, 1867. My emphasis. Bauer’s report also mentioned that the “czar” attended mass at ten in the Tuileries, served by the archbishop of Paris. 78. For circulation information on select Paris papers, see Bellet, Presse et journalisme, 312–13. 79. A few other embellishments were added: “On exiting the chapel, the emperor spoke to a few people, including a young princess for whom His Majesty was pleased to consent to sign a marriage contract.” The report also noted, “Mr. Vahilief, archimandrite, wore a magnificent vestment given by the czar” (Le Petit Journal, June 12, 1867). 80. Coquille in Le Monde, June 14, 1867. Compare with Le Monde’s June 9 report on the Te Deum, which appeared while Alexander II was still in Paris and was not politicized. 81. Ibid. 82. Figes, Crimean War, 433. 83. Guettée, “Sa Majesté Alexandre II,” 255–56. 84. Ibid., 256. 85. Le Petit Journal, July 8, 1867. 86. Ibid. 87. The confusion was due to the different formulas the western and eastern churches use to calculate the date of Pascha, and due to confusion between the Gregorian and Julian calendars. The Russians celebrated Ascension on June 6, 1867, and Pentecost ten days later. Meanwhile the Roman Catholics commemorated Pentecost on June 9, 1867. 88. Le Petit Journal, July 8, 1867. 89. Ibid. 90. See the Chronicle section in L’Union chrétienne, June 23, 1867, 271–72. 91. Ibid., 272.

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6. Guettée, Vasiliev, L’Union chrétienne, and the Public Image of Orthodoxy

1. Guettée thought Archbishop Sibour stopped supporting him and started acting like an ultramontane because he wanted to be a cardinal (Souvenirs, 236). Abbé Migne told Guettée that he was Gallican but just found it necessary to present the ultramontane position publicly in order to further his publications (Besse, Un précurseur, 91; Guettée, Souvenirs, 118). 2. Guettée, Souvenirs, 369. 3. Bulletin des lois civiles écclésiastiques: Journal encyclopédique du droit et de la jurisprudence en matière religieuse et du contentieux des cultes 10 (April 1858): 81–98. 4. Ibid., 98. 5. Guettee was asked by a representative of Napoleon III, Abbé Vilain from the Imperial Chapel of the Tuileries, to produce a memorandum that would justify a policy of distancing France from Rome. Guettée’s Mémoire soumis à l’Empereur Napoléon III sur la restauration de l’Église gallicane (Paris, 1861) argued that authority had to remain with the bishops in unity and that the French Church had to beware of a situation where the papacy could abuse its power either by interfering, in accord with the interests of another secular ruler to whom the pope could be subjected, in the internal affairs of France, or by claiming to be an “infallible oracle of heaven” (ibid., 19). The memo declared the inevitable collapse of the temporal power, but suggested that the papacy’s “spiritual pretensions” would only increase (ibid., 8). Guettée believed that Napoleon III adopted a Gallican position after reading his brochure, although “he did not have the strength of character to execute it” (Guettée, Souvenirs, 374–75; Besse, Un précurseur, 147). The Gallican brochure that Guettée was suspected of writing was Rome et les évêques de France (Paris, 1861). 6. The papers targeted by the lawsuit were the “clerico-legitimist” La France centrale (Blois) and La Correspondance française, but others had carried the same report and were obliged to print corrections (L’Esperance du peuple de Nantes, Journal de Rennes, Courrier de Lyon). See L’Union chrétienne, May 19, 1861, 231, and July 28, 1867, 310; Besse, Un précurseur, 146; Guettée, Souvenirs, 394–97; “Correspondance judiciaire,” L’Indépendance belge, May 13, 1861. 7. Guettée, Souvenirs, 394–98. 8. Ibid., 357. 9. Translated as The Papacy; Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations with the Eastern Churches (New York, 1866). 10. Guettée, Souvenirs, 357. 11. Ibid., 358. 12. Pierre-François Mathieu, Histoire des miraculés et des convulsionnaires de SaintMédard (Paris: Didier, 1864), 44. 13. Ibid., 44. 14. “Russie (Correspondence particulière),” Journal de Bruxelles, September 17, 1869. Specifically, the report stated that it would be slandering the Jesuit Aloys Pichler to put him on the same rung as Guettée by saying Pichler had “abjured Catholicism” to join the Russian Church. Pichler’s work on the schism between the churches was placed on the Index, and he was known to be an opponent of papal power, so he had been invited to Russia, given a position in the Religious Affairs Department of the

NOTES TO PA GES 1 5 6 – 1 5 8     243

Interior Ministry, and put in charge of the Theological Section of the Imperial Library. When a number of library books went missing and were found in his home, he was tried and convicted of kleptomania and exiled to Siberia until he was pardoned in 1874. One theory behind the theft was that Pichler was planning to send the books to Rome since they had once belonged to the Jesuits and had been brought from Warsaw to Petersburg after 1830. See “The St. Petersburg Professor’s Kleptomania,” The Bulwark, or, Reformation Journal 21 ( July 1, 1871): 19–20; and “Aloys Pichler,” in Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, ed. John McClintock and James Strong (New York, 1891), 8:184. Taken together with Guettée, the Pichler case is suggestive of a Russian policy of courting Catholic dissidents, a topic that would be worth investigating further. 15. See “Russie (Correspondence particulière),” Journal de Bruxelles, February 6, 1861, and June 27, 1862. 16. Guettée would not engage in polemics directly with Boulgak, addressing himself instead to Gagarin (Lettres au Révérend Père Gagarin de la compagnie de Jésus touchant l’Église catholique orthodoxe et l’Église romaine ou defense de “La papauté schismatique” contre les calomnies et les erreurs du parti jésuitique caché sous le pseudonyme de Boulgak [Paris, 1867], iii–iv). 17. See Nikolai Borisovich Golitsyn [pseud. N. Boulgak], Étude sur les rapports de l’Église catholique avec l’Église orientale (Paris, 1865), 1–2, 66. Boulgak alleged that Guettée called himself “abbé Guettée” instead of Vladimir to fool readers into thinking that he was a Catholic priest instead of a “deserter of his Church,” a rather disingenuous claim since Boulgak referred to himself as “an orthodox Russian.” See his La Russie est-elle schismatique? Aux hommes de bonne foi par un russe orthodoxe (Paris, 1859). For identification of N. Golitsyn as the author of this work, see [Louis Zozime Elie] Lescoeur, L’Église catholique et le gouvernement russe (Paris: Plon-­ Nourrit, 1903), 519n1. 18. “Nouvelles étrangéres: France. Correspondence particulière,” Journal de Bruxelles, June 5, 1867. 19. Ibid. 20. “Autre correspondance,” Journal de Bruxelles, July 31, 1867; L’Union chrétienne, July 28, 1867, 309–10, and August 11, 1867, 326–28. 21. “Autre correspondance,” Journal de Bruxelles, July 31, 1867. 22. Ibid. 23. Guettée, Souvenirs, 392. 24. Alexandre Sorel, Assassinat de Mgr. l’archevêque de Paris: Verger. Sa biographie et son procès, par un sténographe (Paris, 1857), 41–42; Guettée, Souvenirs, 245. 25. Guettée, Souvenirs, 379–99, especially 383–84 and 389–90. 26. Ibid., 384. 27. Ibid., 398–99. 28. Ibid., 411. 29. Besse, Un précurseur, 148; Patric Ranson, “Introduction” to De la papauté by Wladimir Guettee (Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 1990), 20. 30. Émile Mopinot, “Le docteur W. Guettée,” in Mopinot, Funérailles du docteur W. Guettée. (n.p., 1892), 9. 31. Even the positivist Émile Goubert referred to Guettée as a “Russian” but “formerly French” priest, while Goubert’s associate Grigory Nikolaevich Vyrubov

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(Wyrouboff ) referred to Guettée as “the abbé turned Russian” (Gr. Wyrouboff, Em. Goubert, and Wladimir Guettée, La Science vis-à-vis la religion [Paris, 1865], 21, 30n1). 32. Guettée had moved printing of L’Union chrétienne to Brussels when the FrancoPrussian War broke out in 1870. He recalled that under the MacMahon presidency, efforts were made to intercept the journal and prevent its dissemination in France. Guettée was able to wrap the journals and send them by post to circumvent the attempted ban (Souvenirs, 364–65). 33. Ibid., 410. 34. Ibid., 420; Guettée, Lettre à M. Dupanloup, évêque d’Orléans à propos de sa pastorale au clergé et aux fidèles de son diocèse à l’occasion des fêtes de Rome et pour leur annoncer le future concile oecuménique (Paris: Lebigre-Duquesne frères, 1868), 44. 35. Cited in Besse, Un précurseur, 137. 36. “Stricken with the ban for his Gallican opinions, he combatted ultramontane doctrines for a long time, and ended by passing into the Greek church where he took the name of Vladimir” (B. Dupiney de Vorepierre, “Guettée,” Dictionnaire des noms propres, ou Encyclopédie illustrée de biographie, de géographie, d’histoire et de mythologie, 3 vols. [Paris, 1876–1879], 2:178). A dictionary of theology referred to Guettée as having been interdicted for Jansenist doctrines, noting that he ended up becoming a “Greek Orthodox” in the “Russian Church.” See Nicolas Bergier and [Abbé] Félix Le Noir, Dictionnaire de théologie approprié au mouvement intellectuel de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, 12 vols. (Paris, 1873–1882), 6:242. Until the fourth edition (1870), Vapereau’s Dictionnaire universel des contemporains referred to Guettée as a priest under a ban for Jansenist doctrines. 37. Larousse and the fourth edition of Vapereau (1870) both said Guettée was removed from his ministerial functions without being formally banned and that he entered the “Eastern Catholic Church” (“Guettee [Wladimir],” in Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, 8:1605; Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des contemporains, 825, 1886–87). One account that talked about Guettée’s removal from the ministry without formal ban or censure also mentioned his founding of L’Union chrétienne and referred to it as the organ of the Eastern Catholic Church in France (Ernest Glaeser, Biographie nationale des contemporains [Paris, 1878], 223). Another mentioned that Guettée was almost interdicted but instead resigned from his chaplaincy, adding that he broke “definitely with the Roman Church in order to enter in the Eastern Church.” It also mentioned that he founded L’Union chrétienne, “the organ of the Eastern Church in France” (Adolphe Bitard, Dictionnaire général de biographie contemporaine française et étrangér: Contenant les noms et pseudonymes de tous les personnages célébres du temps présent [Paris, 1878], 606). 38. Edmond de Pressensé, “Opinions nouvelles au sein du clergé catholique,” Revue nationale et étrangère, politique, scientifique et littéraire, January 25, 1862, 221. 39. Raoul Dederen, Un réformateur catholique au XIXe siècle Eugène Michaud (1839– 1917): Vieux-catholicisme—Œcuménisme (Geneva: Droz, 1963), 14–15, 108–9; Eugène Michaud, “La Théologie de Guettée,” Revue internationale de théologie/Internationale theologische Zeitschrift 6 (1894): 262–77. 40. Larousse noted that while condemned by the Index for Gallicanism, Guettée’s history of the French Church was more anti-ultramontane than Gallican, and that for Guettée, Gallicanism meant a purely spiritual church faithful to the primitive church. While Guettée was “more scholar than diplomat,” his work remained “a

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considerable monument of our religious history and of our national history” (“Église de France, composée surs des documents originaux et authentiques,” Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, 7:251–52). But one Catholic reviewer questioned why Father Rouquette cited Guettée and other “men systematically hostile to the Catholic religion” in a history of St. Clotilde. See P. Noury, “Bibliographie,” Études religieuses, historiques et littéraires (par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus), 4th series, vol. 2 (1868): 157. 41. Vasiliev to Urusov, November 25/December 7, 1860, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 237–38. 42. Vasiliev to Leonty, October 27/November 8, 1861 and March 18/30, 1862 in “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia,” 100, 106. 43. Vasiliev to Sushkov, July 18/30, 1862, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 246–47. 44. Vasiliev to Akhmatov, December 22, 1863/January 3, 1864, ibid., 262–63. 45. Savva Tikhomirov’s brief account of Guettée indicates that Vasiliev asked that Guettée be given a master’s, but Metropolitan Filaret already thought of Guettée as a defender of Orthodoxy fully deserving of a doctorate (Savva, Khronika moei zhizni, 4:265). 46. K. Istomin, “Dvadtsatipiatiletie vozvedeniia o. Vladimira Gette na stepen' doktora bogosloviia v Russkoi Tserkvi,” Vera i razum, no. 21 (November, 1889): 565–66. 47. Ibid., 567. 48. Tolstoy was over-procurator from 1865 to 1880. His two-volume study covered the period up to the death of Alexander I. He concluded with the argument that in spite of toleration of all confessions under the Russian emperors, the Roman Church in Russia was in a state of disarray by the end of Alexander I’s reign. He blamed these problems on papal intrusions in a sovereign state. Other themes apropos of Orthodox polemical literature included the notions that the Roman system was based on egoism, the idea that western accounts of the Latin Church in Russia had distorted the facts, and the relative closeness of the Gallican to the Orthodox Church (Dmitry Tolstoy, Le Catholicisme romain en russie, 2 vols. [Paris, 1863–1864]). Katansky considered Tolstoy’s publication of this work as a likely cause of his promotion to overprocurator (Vospominaniia starago professora [St. Petersburg, 1914], 206). 49. Besse says he met Aksakov and Pogodin (Un précurseur, 134–35). While that would not be surprising, Guettée does not mention such a meeting either in Souvenirs or in the three letters he sent to Vasiliev from Russia. Guettée recalled meeting Russians of all classes and was deeply impressed by his experiences, by Russian piety, and by the realization that what he experienced was so different from the pictures painted in the French press. See L’Union chrétienne: June 18, 1865, 263–64; July 2, 1865, 274–77; and July 9, 1865, 283–84; the letters are reproduced in Guettée, De la papauté, 312–20. Guettée attempted to meet Savva Tikhomirov, but the archbishop was traveling in the diocese at the time (Savva, Khronika moei zhizni, 4:265). 50. La Papauté schismatique (1863) was not translated into Russian until 1895, after Guettée’s death. But the French historian’s rebuttal of Renan’s Vie de Jésus (1863) was translated in 1864. No other book-length rebuttal in Russian would see publication until 1892 (the year of Guettée’s death). See Oproverzhenie na vydumanuiu “Zhizn' Iisusa” sochinenie Ernesta Renan s troistvennoi tochki zreniia bibleiskoi ekzegetiki, istoricheskoi kritiki i filosofii (St. Petersburg, 1864). Guettée’s Exposition de la doctrine de l’Église catholique orthodoxe (1866), dedicated to Empress Maria Alexandrovna, appeared in 1869 as Izlozhenie ucheniia pravoslavnoi kafolicheskoi tserkvi s ukazaniem

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razlichii vstriechaiushchikhsia v uchenii drugikh khristianskikh tserkvei (Saint Petersburg, 1869). 51. “Prisoedinenie k pravoslaviiu abbata Gette,” Strannik, no. 4 (September 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 381. 52. “Donesenie protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva iz Parizha,” Strannik (December 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 517–18. 53. Ibid., 517–18. Other Orthodox journals also spread the news: “Rasporiazheniia i izvestiia ko novgorodsko-S. Peterburgskoi mitropoli: Donesenie protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva iz Parizha,” Tserkovnaia letopis', December 22, 1862, 899–904; and “Donesenie prot. I. Vasil'eva iz Parizha (O prisoedinenii k Pravoslaviiu abbata Gette),” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, part 4 (December 1862): 517–18. Vasiliev asked for 1,000 silver rubles for Guettée so that he would be able to live comfortably and work (Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoi, December 19/31, 1861, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 245). 54. “Donesenie protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva iz Parizha,” Strannik, 518n1; “Raznyiia pozhertvovaniia, v pol'zu Parizhskoi tserkvi, i vostochnykh khristian, na Afon, v Ierusalim, i drugiia mesta,” Strannik ( January 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 30– 31. Erkovsky lived in Terespol', in the Kingdom of Poland. 55. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (September 1916), 605. 56. “Pis'mo sviashchennika Vladimira Gete k mitropolitu Novgorodskomu i S. Peterburgskomu,” Strannik (December 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 519–20. 57. Leontii, “Moi zametki,” 815–16. 58. “Nekrolog: Sviashchennik Vladimir Gete,” Novosti, March 25, 1892. 59. Istomin, “Dvadtsatipiatiletie vozvedeniia o. Vladimira Gette,” 556. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., 557. See also 570. 62. Ibid., 569–70. 63. Probably a reference to John Mason Neale and William Palmer (“Nekrolog: Sviashchennik Vladimir Gete,” Novosti, March 25, 1892). 64. Ibid. 65. “Konchina o. Vladimira Gete,” Listok dlia Khar'kovskoi Eparkhii, no. 6 (March 31, 1892), 145–46. 66. Ibid., 145–46. The obituaries in Novosti and the Kharkov diocesan paper both mentioned that Guettée died in the home of his sister. Besse indicates that in order to stay in Luxembourg and to silence possible rumors, Guettée entered into a civil marriage with a resident of Ehnen, Catherine Bock. Besse notes that Bock was fiftysix years old when Guettée, about twenty years her senior, died. Presumably he includes this detail to support his position that Guettée did not betray his vow of celibacy (Un précurseur, 148–49). Guettée arrived at the belief that the obligatory celibacy imposed by the Roman Church was an abuse and that priests should be able to recover their legitimate right to marry (even after ordination) (Michaud, “Théologie de Guettée,” 270–71). 67. Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 245. 68. Guettée to Vasiliev, June 10/22, 1865, as cited in Guettée, De la papauté, 319–20. 69. This characterization appeared in an obituary in Novoe vremia, which was the basis of the obituaries in Strannik and Pravoslavnoe obozrenie. See M., “Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev,” Novoe vremia, January 11, 1882; “Izvestiia i zametki: Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev (Nekrolog),” Strannik 1, no. 1 ( January 1882): 158; and “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich

NOTES TO PA GES 1 6 4 – 1 6 5     247

Vasil'ev,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie ( January 1882): 175. Vengerov’s bibliography lists about a dozen obituaries. In the secular press Novoe vremia, Novosti, and the shortlived liberal Poriadok printed obituaries. Besides the major theological journals in St. Petersburg and Moscow cited above, obituaries appeared in several of the diocesan papers (“Vasil'ev, Iosif Vasil'evich,” in Vengerov, Kritiko-biograficheskii slovar', vol. 4, pt. 2, 160). 70. “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, 175. 71. Orlovskii, “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich,” 121. 72. Ibid., 122. Vasiliev’s energy, erudition, self-sacrifice, and lack of one-sidedness were recurring themes in his obituaries. 73. Vasiliev was associated with the conversions of Julian Joseph Overbeck, who was received into the Russian Church in London in 1865, and Nicholas Bjerring in 1870. Archpriest Ianyshev and L’Union chrétienne were key influences on Bjerring, who subsequently returned to the Roman Catholic Church after a stint as a Presbyterian. See Herbel, “Catholic, Presbyterian, and Orthodox Journey.” In addition, Vasiliev reportedly turned another Frenchman to the Orthodox priesthood, a certain Father Victor. See Aleksandr Vasil'evich Nikitenko, Dnevnik, ed. N. L. Brodskii et al., 3 vols. (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhvestvennoi literatury, 1956), 3:209. 74. Popovitsky’s paper, Tserkovno-obshchestvennyi vestnik, published a number of articles critical of the black clergy (Rimskii, “Vasil'ev,” in Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia, 7:232). Freeze refers to the organ as a liberal clerical newspaper but adds that clerical liberalism focused on clerical issues rather than broad social issues (Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia, 395). 75. [Popovitskii], “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” 1. Popovitsky, who spent four years in Paris around mid-century, knew Vasiliev personally. On Popovitsky, see “A. I. Popovitskii,” Niva, no. 3 (1895): 70. Popovitsky’s and Orlovsky’s obituaries, which emphasized that Vasiliev stood out among Russia’s white clergy and discussed how his controversial ideas for the reform of church schools were supported by Over-procurator Dmitry Tolstoy, may suggest that a natural alliance sometimes formed between the white clergy and lay authorities as a counterbalance to synodal or episcopal authority in Russia, just as in France there was a natural alliance between the lower clergy and the papacy as a counterweight to the power of the French episcopacy. Western polemicists interpreted such collaboration between the white clergy and secular authorities as dependence of the church on the civil authority. Vasiliev’s sympathies for the white clergy, among whom he enjoyed a remarkably comfortable and prestigious position, perhaps contributed to some disdain that Archbishop Savva Tikhomirov expressed about him. Savva referred to Vasiliev as a proud “Frenchified Russian prelate” (Khronika moei zhizni, 5:381). 76. Oderova, “Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev,” 57–58. 77. Orlovskii, “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich,” 122. 78. I have not found sources to corroborate her portrayal, but Avtonomova described Vasiliev as on excellent terms with Lacordaire and Dupanloup. See Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (September 1916): 603–4. 79. Ibid., 604. Vasiliev attended lectures on theology at the Sorbonne and recounted some of his impressions in his correspondence, but what the French clergymen he interacted with thought of him remains a mystery.

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80. Ibid., 604. 81. [Popovitsky], “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” 2. 82. N. I. Barsov, “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” Russkaia starina 33 (1882): 528. [Popovitsky] “Protoierei Vasil'ev,” 2. 83. Orlovskii, “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich,” 122. Orlovsky mentions Guettée’s involvement but portrays Vasiliev as the principal person who took the initiative and bore the responsibility and risk for the paper. 84. Le Nord’s St. Petersburg correspondent wrote that Vasiliev’s letter to Jaquemet, along with a piece Sushkov published in response to Deputy Bernard-Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac, were the talk of St. Petersburg. “The dignified and simultaneously respectful tone that characterized the letter of our venerable churchman is generally applauded. And . . . we can be infinitely grateful to these men of talent and conviction who so brilliantly repel the unjust and slanderous attacks directed against our Church” (Le Nord, May 9, 1861). On Cassagnac’s comments, see Heather Bailey, “Roman Catholic Polemicists, Russian Orthodox Publicists, and the Tsar-Pope Myth in France, 1842–1862,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies​53 (2019): 280–82. 85. Katanskii, Vospominaniia starago professora, 110; M., “Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev”; Barsov, “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” 529; Vengerov considered the letters to the bishop of Nantes and the letters to Guizot as the most important articles published in L’Union chrétienne, noting the attention they received in “the secular and ecclesiastical press of Europe and North America” (Kritiko-biograficheskii slovar', 4, part 2:160–62, quotation on 161). 86. See Polisadov’s introduction to Vasiliev’s “Pis'mo protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu,” 113. 87. This title was used when Vasiliev’s first letter to Jaquemet appeared in Pravoslavnoe obozrenie: “Otvet na lozhnoe obvinenie protiv tserkvi Russkoi.” 88. See Polisadov, introduction to Vasiliev’s “Pis'mo protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu,” 113n. 89. “Pis'mo protoiereia I. V. Vasil'eva k kardinalu Bonal'du, arkhiepiskomu liunskomu,” Strannik ( July 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 276. 90. Savva, Khronika moei zhizni, 6:532. 91. Orlovsky added that Roman Catholic writers found Vasiliev “a very strong and skillful opponent” (“Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich,” 122). 92. Barsov, “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” 529. 93. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (September 1916), 604. 94. Ibid., 604. 95. Archimandrite Porfiry [Georgy Ivanovich Popov] wrote to Archbishop Savva from Rome about an encounter between William Palmer and Count Efimy Vasilievich Putiatin with Pope Pius IX in 1864. The pope brought up the issue of the Russian Church’s dependence on the secular power. Putiatin tried unsuccessfully to dismiss the claim. Porfiry reported that Vasiliev’s correspondence with the bishop of Nantes was not at all known in Rome (Savva, Khronika moei zhizni, 3:203–5). 96. [Popovitskii], “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” 2. 97. Ibid., 2. 98. Ibid. The obituary in Novoe vremia also reported that it was at Vasiliev’s initiative that Bishop Leonty was sent to Paris for the consecration (M., “Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev”).

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99. Hello, “L’Union chrétienne,” Le Croisé, November 19, 1859, 189–90. 100. “Correspondance judiciaire,” L’Indépendance belge, May 13, 1861. 101. Gustave de La Tour, “La Russie en 1861,” Le Monde, May 1, 1861. 102. L’Ami, June 27, 1861, 748. 103. “Russie (Correspondence particulière),” Journal de Bruxelles, April 14, 1862. 104. Ibid., June 27, 1862. In the 1860s the correspondent periodically reported critically about articles in L’Union chrétienne, especially those that spoke positively about the Russian clergy’s level of learning and piety and those that challenged reports of persecution of Catholicism in the empire. See ibid., September 15, 1862; July 29, 1865; September 2, 1865; November 22, 1867; and September 17, 1869. 105. Wyrouboff [Vyrubov] and Goubert, Science vis-à-vis la religion, 16, 21. Goubert accused Guettée of using his platform “in France—this land of philosophical liberty” to denounce the scientist and positivist Vyrubov. He knew that if he did not respond, Guettée would take his silence for agreement. “The orthodox school will willingly take muteness to the account of its benefit.” 106. Urusov to Vasiliev, October 1/13, 1860, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 236–37. Despite seeming ambivalence, in the mid-1860s, Urusov sent an official request to Archbishop Savva Tikhomirov, asking for information that he could forward to Vasiliev for L’Union chrétienne. Urusov’s request concerned the Benedictine scholar JeanBaptiste-François Pitra’s study of Greek canon law, based in part on unpublished sources Pitra found in the library of the Holy Synod (Savva, Khronika moei zhizni, 3:169–75). 107. Besse, Un précurseur, 104. 108. [Replovsky], “Zagranichnie zametki,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie (March 1862): 123–24. 109. Ibid., 124–25. 110. Ibid., 125–26, 128. 111. Ibid., 127. 112. Ibid. ( June 1862), 68–69. 113. Vasiliev to Sushkov, July 18/30, 1862, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 247. For the responses to Replovsky, see A. J. W. [assilieff], “Une critique indirecte de L’Union chrétienne qui nous est venue d’Allemagne par la Russie,” L’Union chrétienne, July 27, 1862, 310–12; and Vasiliev, “Quelques mots à l’address de M. R., createur, reformateur et multiplicateur des journaux religieux russes dans les pays étranger,” L’Union chrétienne, August 10, 1862, 326–27. 114. As cited in R[eplovskii], “Zagranichnie zametki,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie (November 1862): 133–34. 115. Ibid., 133–34. 116. Ibid., 134. 117. Ibid., 135. Uniia means union but is used especially in connection with the creation of the Uniate church in 1596. 118. A letter from the deacon of the church of Jerusalem mentioned that Philotheos Bryennios, a Greek professor of church history, thought theological polemics should be modeled after Vasiliev’s letter to the bishop of Nantes. The archpriest was held up as an example for young people going into theology because his language reflected “peace, charity, and truth” and not the “black ink of passion and fanaticism” (“Du langage de la polemique théologique dans l’Église orientale,” L’Union chrétienne, September 14, 1862, 364–66). Bryennios’s discourse was published in Omonoia, the paper of the patriarch of Constantinople, founded in 1862.

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119. Vasiliev to Akhmatov, October 19/31, 1862, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 259. 120. Ibid., 255–59. The three papers were Le Nord, L’Esprit public (Paris, 1862–1864), and La Semaine universelle (Brussels, 1862). Publicizing that Greeks and the Ecumenical Patriarch looked favorably on the magazine was also a way for the Orthodox publicists to confirm the doctrinal unity between the Greeks and Russians. 121. “Rasporiazheniia i izvestiia ko novgorodsko-S. Peterburgskoi mitropoli,” 903; “Pis'mo sviashchennika Vladimira Gete k mitropolitu Novgorodskomu i S. Peterburgskomu,” 520. 122. Vasiliev to Akhmatov, December 22, 1863/January 3, 1864, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 263–64. 123. Avtonomova, “Vospominaniia” (November 1916), 317. 124. Ibid., 317. 125. Ibid. (September 1916), 606. 126. Although Vasiliev was a mediator between Guettée and the Russian authorities at the beginning, and clearly was pleased to have Guettée on the side of Orthodoxy, Guettée’s fanatical temperament contrasted with Vasiliev’s and may have strained their relationship. At one point Vasiliev wrote to Over-procurator Akhmatov: “With all respect for the erudition and talent of my colleague,” Vasiliev wrote, “I grieve that I cannot instill in him calm[ness] and moderation in his expressions. In this respect, he would obey only you” (Vasiliev to Akhmatov, December 26, 1863/January 7, 1864, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 277). While Vasiliev made this comment privately with respect to a particular “detailed critique” that Guettée made of a papal epistle concerning the pope’s refusal to confirm three Gallican bishops named by Napoleon III, it is also suggestive of a fundamental difference in approach between Guettée and Vasiliev. Guettée’s religious polemics were often sarcastic, caustic, and bitter, and there are a few hints that not everyone saw such an approach as Orthodoxy’s best line of defense. Nikitenko commented in his diary on Guettée’s refutation of Renan: “Unfortunately, very unfortunately, the author, objecting to Renan and very successfully refuting him in many respects will fall into too much indignation and often will simply heap abuse on his opponent” (Dnevnik, 3:50). 127. Guettée’s friend Abbé François Martin de Noirlieu (1792–1870), who said he “understood perfectly” why Guettée joined the Orthodox Church, encouraged the Catholic dissident Michaud to get acquainted with Guettée. These two maintained an active correspondence, although Michaud remained with the Old Catholics (Guettée, Souvenirs, 357; Michaud, “Théologie de Guettée”; Dederen, Un réformateur catholique; Mopinot, Funérailles du docteur W. Guettée; Olga Novikoff, ed., Le Général Alexandre Kiréeff et l’ancien-catholisme [Berne, 1911]). On London and Popov’s relationship with Anglo-Catholics, see Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen, 91– 113. When Anglo-Catholics formed the Eastern Church Association in 1863, Popov served as a member of the standing committee. One of the aims of the committee was “to inform the English public as to the state and position of the Eastern Christians, in order gradually to better their condition through the influence of public opinion in England” (Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen, 100). 128. Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 174–75. 129. “Konchina Vladimira Gete,” 145–46. 130. As Freeze notes, the Russian government actively publicized problems in order to engage the educated public in finding solutions (introduction to Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia, 50–51).

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131. Murav'ev, “Zapiska A. N. Murav'eva o sostoianii pravoslavnoi tserkvi v Rossii,” Russkii arkhiv 21, book 3 (1883): 175. 132. Basil, Church and State, 10. “The negativism in Muraviev’s views had been inspired by criticism made among groups of German and Italian Jesuits (a charge that contained some truth)” (ibid., 10). Metropolitan Filaret accepted the canonical status of the synod but also tried to defend the church’s independence and pushed back against state interference (ibid., 10–12). See also Murav'ev, “Zapiska A. N. Murav'eva,” 175–203. Theiner, though, was not a Jesuit and had anti-Jesuitical leanings. 133. Like Filaret, Vasiliev saw the synodal structure as compatible with, not contrary to, church independence and believed in the possibility for resistance from the church should the state overstep its role as protector of the church. 134. Basil notes that canon law in Russia was taught beginning in the 1830s, although the first scholarly studies emerged only in the middle of the century. Only in the 1880s did serious criticism of the Ecclesiastical Regulation emerge. While by the early twentieth century, there were some canonists who saw the Holy Synod as an uncanonical institution, in the first real debates between canonists about churchstate relations during the 1880s, the debates were over church-state relations in Byzantium, the extent to which Russian church-state relations emulated those of the Byzantine Empire, and about how much authority the state should have, or inversely, how much independence the church should have within the state. The canonists generally accepted the canonicity of the Synodal structure and the Ecclesiastical Regulation, without necessarily considering the Ecclesiastical Regulation entirely good (Basil, Church and State, 23, 35–51). It is intriguing that Basil’s study dates from 1861—the year of Vasiliev’s polemic with the bishop of Nantes—though Basil does not mention Vasiliev. It appears that he settled on this date because Boris Chicherin’s and Konstantin Pobedonostsev’s careers were taking off at this time. 135. Feodor [Bukharev], “Zametki na zagranichnyia pis'ma ottsa protoiereia o. Vasil'eva,” Syn otechestva: Gazeta politicheskaia, uchenaia i literaturnaia 29 ( July 22, 1862): 673–78. 136. Ibid., 673. 137. As Vasiliev expressed it, Christ had transferred his authority to his disciples and their successors. Feodor disagreed with Vasiliev’s portrayal of a transference of authority, emphasizing the necessity of Christ’s direct action. Without the direct appeal to and action of Jesus Christ as the head of the church, spiritual authority could go awry whether individual or collective. Furthermore, Feodor emphasized that the Holy Spirit was sent to the church as a whole, and not just to those holding the apostolic succession. Such an emphasis fit in with his focus on the priesthood of  the believer and his view that collective authority was not sufficient to prevent alienation between the clergy and the laity or predominance of the clergy over the laity. On Bukharev, see Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov. Orthodox Theology in a New Key (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 19–106. Valliere writes: “Feodor regarded the Orthodox laity as ‘a royal priesthood’ (I Pet. 2:9) and was genuinely excited by the idea of the priesthood of all believers. He called on his fellow clergy to shun ‘the self-exalting spirit typical of the western priesthood, a priesthood concerned above all with protecting and enhancing its privileges vis-à-vis the lay people’ ” (ibid., 66). 138. Feodor’s approval of the idea that Christ presided in the Synod was tied to a critique of Vasiliev’s argument that the church’s constitution was divine in origin

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while its discipline was human in origin, subject to the particularities of time and place. Feodor did not seem to think this view could gain much intellectual ground among Catholics, who, believing in the pope as Christ’s vicar on earth, accepted the church’s constitution and discipline as divine in origin. Since the papal spirit of predominance (e.g., the pope’s predominance over bishops; the clergy’s predominance over the laity) was tied to the belief that the church’s structure and discipline were divine in origin and the pope was Christ’s instrument, this spirit of predominance could not be countered or overcome by teaching that church discipline was human (Feodor, “Zametki na zagranichnyia pis'ma,” 678; Jaquemet and Wassilieff, Discussion, 67). 139. Conservatives in the church attacked and censored some of Feodor’s works (Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, 35–37, 73). 140. Non-Russian readers would have been oblivious to jabs about the former theological academy professor and “former censor” as one of the “pious solitaires” of Russian monasticism reveling in his “mystical theory,” but for those in the know, these comments alluded to the controversy surrounding Feodor’s Orthodoxy and were meant to discredit the merits of his argument (Wassilieff, “Quelques remarques sur l’opinion de l’archimandrite Théodore concernant l’autorité de l’église et la tradition sacrée,” pt. 1, L’Union chrétienne, November 2, 1862, 3, and pt. 2, November 16, 1862, 18–19). In response to Feodor’s criticisms, Vasiliev noted that the pope, along with every Protestant and sectarian, claimed the kind of direct appeal and access to Christ that Feodor recommended. Thus, Feodor’s article further confused rather than clarified the nature of church authority. Emphasizing the direct access to and action of Christ in the church could not prevent those in positions of authority from abusing power, which Vasiliev defined as the attempt to appropriate Christ’s power instead of exercising it. To suggest that Christ transferred power to his apostles and their successors did not imply, as Feodor seemed to think, any abdication of Christ’s authority (pt. 1, 5). Vasiliev found Feodor’s idea on the relations between church and civil authorities too vague, theocratic, and rooted too much in the Old Testament (pt. 3, November 30, 1862, 37). As for Feodor’s criticism about Vasiliev’s belief in church discipline as human and subject to peculiarities of time and place, Vasiliev clarified that he believed the canons to be divine in the sense that they were made by the fathers in a spirit of piety and with divine aid, but not in the sense that they “emanated from God” and are either “infallible” or “irrefragable.” Only the church’s dogmas were infallible, while canons sometimes changed or became obsolete (pt. 3, 38). 141. Basil, Church and State, ix–x, 5, 145–49. 142. Alexander J. Schem reported that in 1859 the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg “abolished the censorship to which every sermon had to be submitted before a clergyman was permitted to preach it” and explained that “the applause given to the sermons of a French Dominican, Father Souillard [Schem’s spelling]” was a further impetus for more Orthodox preaching in the capital. See The American Ecclesiastical Year-Book, vol. 1: The Religious Statistics and History of the Year 1859 (New York: H. Dayton, 1860), 212. 143. Father Ioann Ioannovich Bazarov, who served at Wiesbaden and Stuttgart, believed service at any level in the foreign clergy required specialized education and skills. He successfully pushed for high standards for prichetniki (clergy beneath the

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rank of deacon) but believed the opportunities that clergy had to continue their education in western Europe had a reciprocal benefit when these men returned to Russia, where they could join the faculty of the ecclesiastical schools (Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 82–83). 144. Petrovich, Russian Panslavism, 62, 284–85. “For the Slavophile, freedom of speech, press, and conscience were not just legal rights; they were the necessary means by which each individual fulfilled his natural obligation to the community” (ibid., 56). 145. I. S. Aksakov, “Pochemu v pravoslavnoi Rossii ne dopuskaetsia svoboda sovesti,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii I. S. Aksakova, 7 vols. (Moscow, 1886–1887), 4:80–81. 146. Ibid., 4:79–80. 147. Ibid., 79. 148. Ibid., 79. Augustin Golitsyn cited Aksakov at length in the paper of the liberal Catholics, softening passages that spoke about the truth of Orthodoxy or western errors and obscuring Aksakov’s point of view. In this case, Golitsyn’s translation just referred to the “defects of the Roman organization” (“Le Progrès et l’ancien régime en Russie,” Le Correspondant, July 25, 1868, 375–76). 149. Aksakov, “Pochemu v pravoslavnoi Rossii ne dopuskaetsia svoboda sovesti,” 81. 150. Ibid., 81–82. 151. Ibid., 82. Golitsyn briefly summarized Pogodin’s position in opposition to liberty of conscience, commenting that Pogodin admitted coercion was necessary to keep the Russian people in the fold of the church. Without it, half the Russian people would become sectarians, and women would flock in droves to the Jesuit fathers. Golitsyn did not editorialize much on the debate except to say that he hoped the discussion would continue in Russian society and that the Russian legislation would be changed. He also commented that the Russian press was undergoing a liberalization, which he thought should be pointed out in a journal that tries “not to separate the interests of liberty from those of Christianity” (“Progrès et l’ancien régime en Russie,” 380). 152. For a collection of essays on legislative measures to curb Catholic influence in several national contexts, see Clark and Kaiser, eds., Culture Wars. 153. Aksakov, “Pochemu v pravoslavnoi Rossii ne dopuskaetsia svoboda sovesti,” 82–84. 154. Catholic polemicists regarded mixed marriages between Orthodox Christians and Christians of other confessions in the Russian Empire not as a form of toleration but as a coercive recruitment scheme for the “schismatic” church. From 1721 in central Russia and from the 1830s in the borderlands the children of mixed marriages had to be brought up Orthodox. There was some retreat from enforcement of these requirements in the 1860s, but Konstantin Pobedonostsev later reversed those concessions. See Paul W. Werth, “The Emergence of ‘Freedom of Conscience’ in Imperial Russia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13, no. 3 (2012): 596–600. Werth notes that while freedom of conscience was promoted from several different sides, there was a push toward it from the Ministry of the Interior in the 1860s under Petr Valuev. On the bishops resisting pressure from lay officials for more tolerance, see Freeze, “Handmaiden of the State?,” 92–93. 155. With direct encouragement from Over-procurator A. P. Tolstoy, the London embassy chaplain, Evgeny Popov, translated the dogmatic theology of Makary (Bulgakov, 1816–1882) and catechism of Platon (Levshin, 1737–1812) into English

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(Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen, 102–3, 115). Between 1830 and 1860 the clergy abroad translated “basic Orthodox liturgical books and prayerbooks” into the languages of their host countries. Besides Vasiliev’s and Popov’s translations, Bazarov worked on German translations. Bazarov also contemplated the founding of a periodical that would track noteworthy developments “in the realm of foreign spiritual life and scholarship, but also guard the truth of Orthodoxy from the influx of various foreign ideas” (Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 158, 165). Conclusion

1. Igor' K. Smolich, Istoriia russkoi tserkvi 1700–1917, pt. 1 (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Spaso-Preobrazhenskogo Valaamskogo monastyria, 1996), 385–88. 2. Porfiry wrote to Savva about his conversations with Pitra, Palmer, and Father Paul Pierling (1840–1922) in Rome in the mid-1860s. These Catholic scholars did not deny that misinformation appeared in print but tended to be dismissive of it. Pierling admitted that the Poles were responsible for much of the tone in Le Monde. Palmer thought a lot of the misinformation was spread unintentionally (Savva, Khronika moei zhizni, 3:311–22). 3. Archimandrite Porfiry reported to Savva that, at a meeting between Count Putiatin and the pope in Rome, Palmer explained to Pius IX “that the Russian sovereign at the present time is not considered the head of the church, although there were times that the tsars autocratically managed church affairs” (ibid., 3:318–19). 4. In 1863, writing for the Genevan Evangelical Alliance, Rougemont cited Vasiliev’s letters to Jaquemet and partially accepted his explanation of Russian church-state relations (Russie orthodoxe et protestante, 21, 30). 5. Makary [Macaire], Introduction à la théologie orthodoxe (Paris, 1857); and Makary, Théologie dogmatique orthodoxe, 2 vols. (Paris, 1859–60). The works of Makary and Boissard’s L’Église de Russie were published by the Protestant publishing house of Joel Cherbuliez. 6. Boissard, L’Église de Russie, 1:xi–xii, 231–35; 2:511–12. 7. Larousse, “Église de Russie (L’),” Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, 7:254–55. 8. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, L’Empire des tsars et les russes, 3 vols. (Paris, 1881–89). This work was destined to be one of the most important studies of Russia in the West for generations (Adamovsky, Euro-Orientalism, 195). 9. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians, 3rd French ed., trans. Zénaïde A. Rogozin, 3 vols. (New York, 1893–96), 1:246–47. 10. Ibid., 3:38–39. 11. See, for example, ibid., 37–38 and 587. 12. Ibid., 172–73. 13. Ibid., 45. 14. Ibid., 145, 162–63, 166. 15. Leroy-Beaulieu, L’Empire des tsars et les russes, 3:193. 16. Ibid., 194. 17. Ibid., 194, my emphasis. This language is lost in Rogozin’s English translation, Empire of the Tsars, 3:166. 18. As cited in Leroy-Beaulieu, Empire of the Tsars, 3:167; cf. L’Empire des tsars, 3:196.

NOTES TO PA GES 1 8 4 – 1 8 5     255

19. His Russian sources include Nikolai Polevoi, Belliustin, Gagarin, Vladimir Solovyov, Barsov, Pobedonostsev, and Metropolitan Makary. One hint that he might have crossed paths with Vasiliev is that he had some familiarity with the ecumenical discussions between the St. Petersburg Society of the Friends of Religious ­Enlightenment—of which society Vasiliev was a member—and the Old Catholics (Leroy-Beaulieu, L’Empire des tsars, 3:92; Empire of the Tsars, 3:80). 20. “Raznyia pozhertvovaniia,” 30–31. 21. Birchall believes the improvements were deemed necessary “in response to the increased attention being focused on Orthodoxy by English people and the growing importance of the London Embassy.” Although the work was not completed until 1866, Popov consecrated the rebuilt church in February 1865 (Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen, 82–86). 22. Petrovich, Russian Panslavism, 90–91. Petrovich sees the St. Petersburg Slavic Benevolent Committee’s role in founding St. Nicholas Church in Prague as an exceptional example of Panslav activity, since “in practice Russian Panslavic organizations showed almost no interest in actively encouraging the conversion of non-Orthodox Slavs outside Russia, except for the erection of an Orthodox church in Prague in 1874” (ibid., 91). It is possible that the lack of active proselytism stemmed from an assumption that heterodox Slavs had largely been coerced into adopting other faiths, and belief that once coercive mechanisms were removed, they would naturally gravitate back to Orthodoxy, provided there were churches for them to fill. 23. The churches in Geneva and Florence resembled St. Alexander Nevsky in that the initiative to build them came from embassy priests (Afanasy Petrov and Vladimir Levitsky) and their flocks, and the churches were financed by donations. See Antoine Nivière, “Les Églises russes à l’étranger entre le milieu du XIXe siècle et le début du XXe siècle (le cas de l’Europe occidentale),” in Religion et nation: Des rapports du spirituel et du temporel dans la Russie des XIXe–XXIe s., ed. Michel Niqueux (Lyon: ENS de Lyon, June 14, 2010). Online at Institut Européen Est-Ouest, University of Nancy, July 15, 2011, http://institut-est-ouest.ens-lyon.fr/spip.php?article352. 24. By 1911 there were twenty-two embassy churches in western Europe, as well as thirty churches in resort areas, eight memorial chapels for members of the imperial family, seven churches of the Brotherhood of St. Vladimir in Berlin, and twelve private chapels (Smolich, Istoriia russkoi tserkvi 1700–1917, 385; Paszkiewicz, “In the Service of the Russian Empire,” 303). Major church-building efforts were also undertaken in the Russian Empire’s western borderlands. The impressive Dormition Cathedral was erected in Helsinki between 1862 and 1868. The number of Orthodox churches in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth “increased from a few hundred in 1772 to nine thousand.” More than forty were built in Warsaw, including a huge church dedicated to St. Alexander Nevsky (1894–1912) (Paszkiewicz, “Imperial Dream,” 542–44). Paszkiewicz adds, “It was not by chance that the largest Orthodox church in the Kingdom of Poland, built in a city with a predominantly Catholic population, hostile to the tsarist authorities, was dedicated to the bellicose saint.” 25. Nivière, “Les Églises russes à l’étranger.” 26. Ibid. 27. Konstantin Pobedonostsev acknowledged to the foreign minister, when it was necessary to appoint a new rector in 1887, “that on account of the significance of the rector position in Paris among other such positions at our foreign churches,” it was

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necessary to consider not just seniority but the “still more special personal qualities of the priest summoned to fill this high post” (Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 63). 28. Vasiliev to A. P. Tolstoy, February 19/March 3, 1859, Parizhskiia pis'ma, 188–89. 29. See Ross, Saint-Alexandre-Nevski, 55–62. Hélène Runge, an expert on the history of the parish, dates the church’s official elevation to cathedral status to 1951. “Cathédrale Saint Alexandre Nevsky,” http://www.cathedrale-orthodoxe.com/cathedrale/ historique/. 30. Paul Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology: ‘Behold, I Make All Things New’ (London: T & T Clark, 2019), 90. 31. See Paul Ladouceur, “Dispatches from the Western Front: The Future of the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe,” Public Orthodoxy, an editorial forum of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University, June 21, 2019, https://publicorthodoxy.org/2019/06/21/dispatches-from-the-west ern-front-the-future-of-the-archdiocese-of-russian-orthodox-churches-in-westerneurope/#more-5307. Since 1999, the archdiocese has officially been known as the Patriarchal Exarchate for Orthodox Parishes of the Russian Tradition in Western Europe. 32. In 2001, while head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Relations, (then Metropolitan) Kirill published an article in favor of close cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Foreign Ministry to recover churches abroad (“Religiia i diplomatiia: Vzaimodeistvie vneshnikh tserkovnykh sviazei Moskovskogo Patriarkhata s Ministerstvom inostrannykh del Rossii,” Tserkov' i vremia, no. 3 [2001], cited in Nivière, “Les Églises russes à l’étranger”). 33. Conseil Paroissial de Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky, Cathedrale Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky de Paris: Centenaire, 43. Ross emphasizes that the imperial Russian civil code allowed parishioners to be considered the owners of parishes (Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, 147). For details on attempts by the Soviet government to seize control of the church in the 1920s and the parish’s efforts to secure its legal status, see Ross, Saint-AlexandreNevski, 230–41, 401–11. 34. Paul Ladouceur, e-mails to Heather Bailey, October 4 and October 7, 2019. The Russian Holy Synod officially approved the joining of the archdiocese to the Moscow Patriarchate on October 7, 2019, although an unspecified number of the diocese’s parishes and clergy do not plan to follow. See “Zhurnaly zasedaniia Sviashchennogo Sinoda ot 7 oktiabria 2019 goda,” no. 123, http://www.patriarchia. ru/db/text/5508653.html?goal=0_9357f9bbb5-ede13647ba-70126111&mc_cid=ede13647 ba&mc_eid=44fd105d7a. 35. The exarchate was established in December 2018. 36. On jurisdictional rivalries in relation to Orthodox geopolitics, see Vassilis Pnevmatikakis, “Repenser la géopolitique de l’Orthodoxie à travers l’ecclésiologie: Le Cas de la diaspora orthodoxe en France,” Cahiers d’études du religieux: Recherches interdisciplinaires (online), February 15, 2016, https://journals.openedition.org/ cerri/1568?lang=en#ftn30; “La territorialite de l’église orthodoxe en France, entre exclusivisme juridictionnel et catholicité locale,” Carnets de Geographes (online): https://journals.openedition.org/cdg/918. 37. Oderova, “Pravoslavnaia tserkov' v Parizhe,” 50. 38. Runge, “Cathédrale Saint Alexandre Nevsky”; Cathédrale Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky de Paris: Centenaire, 39–43.

NOTES TO PA GES 1 8 8 – 1 8 9     257

39. For other critics who stress the cathedral’s political purposes, see Galia Ackerman, cited by Combis-Schlumberger, “À Paris, une nouvelle cathédrale”; and Nivière, “Les Églises russes à l’étranger,” especially the conclusion and note 63. 40. United Nations International Migration Report 2017, Highlights (New York: United Nations, 2017): http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/ migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2017_Highlights. pdf. Incidentally, the economic returns to Russia from its diaspora are poor. While Mexico and Russia have the second and third largest diasporas and roughly the same gross domestic product per capita, as much as $28 billion flows into Mexico annually from its diaspora while Russia receives “less than $500 million” (Vladislav L. Inozemtsev, “Russia’s Exceptional Diaspora,” The Russia File, March 14, 2017, https://www. wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/russias-exceptional-diaspora). 41. Inozemtsev, “Russia’s Exceptional Diaspora.” 42. See for example, http://www.ruhram.eu/en/; and https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UGMgTDYFq6I&feature=youtu.be 43. Mission Statement of the Russkiy Mir Foundation, https://russkiymir.ru/en/fund/. 44. “Patriarch Kirill Announces Statistical Data on the Life of the Russian Orthodox Church,” The Russian Orthodox Church Department for External Church Relations, November 29, 2017, http://Mospat.ru/en/2017/11/29/news153384/. There are about thirty thousand more churches now in Russia than there were in the mid1980s. While the number of churches, monasteries, and Russians self-­identifying as Orthodox are certainly impressive, some observers have raised questions about whether the spiritual revival driving this growth runs deep. See the section “Believing without Belonging” in Gregory Freeze, “Russian Orthodoxy and Politics in the Putin Era”; Sergei Chapnin, “A Church of Empire: Why the Russian Church Chose to Bless Empire,” First Things, November 2015, https://www.firstthings.com/ article/2015/11/a-church-of-empire; Vladimir Rozanskij, “The majority of Russians do not want to fast during Lent,” AsiaNews.it, March 1, 2017, http://www.asianews. it/news-en/The-majority-of-Russians-do-not-want-to-fast-during-Lent-40070.html. 45. “Full text of the Joint Declaration Signed by Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill,” Catholic News Agency, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/full-text-of-jointdeclaration-signed-by-pope-francis-and-patriarch-kirill-61341, articles 15 and 16. 46. “Consolidated Versions of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,” Official Journal of the European Union (7.6.2016), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:12016ME/ TXT&from=EN. My emphasis.

S el ec ted Bi bl i ogra phy

Archives

Archives nationales F/18/422 Presse parisienne et agences de presse: Dossiers des journaux (1820–1894) Dossier 8: Union chrétienne (L’), 1859–1869 (234–40) F/19/5590 Cultes: Cultes non reconnus, dissidents ou l’attachés Dossier 55: Églises nationales étrangeres/Église anglicane, grecque et russe, etc. (1810–1910) F/19/5605 Cultes: Police. Second Empire F/19/6235 Cultes: Question diverses par pays F/19/6237 Cultes: Fondations étrangéres en France Dossiers: Institut Slave catholique; Société Orientale pour l’Union de tous les chrétiens d’Orient F/19/10933 Culte protestant (réformés et luthériens), dissidences, protestantes, église orthodoxe, culte musulman. Culte Israélite (XIXe–XXe siècles) Dossier: Église russe, culte grec (ouverture de chapelle etc.) (1821–1898) Archives diocésaines de Nantes Serie E 1E06/0118, 1861–01–29 Mandement de Monseigneur l’évêque de Nantes pour le saint temps du carême de l’an de grace 1861 sur les dangers du schisme Archives diplomatiques MNESYS 112CP/225 Russie: 1861, aout à decembre. Le duc de Montebello. French-Language Newspapers and Periodicals

Ami de la religion et du rois, L’ Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest et des Musées de Poitiers Bulletin des lois civiles écclésiastiques Constitutionnel: Journal du commerce, politique et littéraire, Le Correspondance, La Croisé, Le

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Études religieuses, historiques et littéraires Figaro: Journal non politique Gazette du Nord: Revue hebdomadaire internationale, La Illustration, journal universel, L’ Independance belge, L’ Journal de Bruxelles, Le Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, Le Journal de Saint-Petersbourg, Le Monde, Le Monde illustré, Le Moniteur universel, Le Nord: Journal international, Le Opinion nationale, L’ Patrie, La Petit Journal, Le Presse, La Presse religieuse, La Revue des deux mondes Revue nationale et étrangère, politique, scientifique et littéraire Siècle, La Temps, Le Union, L’ Union chrétienne, L’ Univers, L’ Tour Guides

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——. Voyage en Russie. 2 vols. Paris, 1867. Glaeser, Ernest. Biographie nationale des contemporains. Paris, 1878. Golitsyn, Augustin, ed. Discours merveilleux et veritable de la conqueste faite par le jeune Demetrius. Paris, 1858. ——. “Le Progrès et l’ancien régime en Russie.” Le Correspondant, July 25, 1868, 375–80. [Golitsyn, Nikolai Borisovich, pseud. N. Boulgak]. Étude sur les rapports de l’Église catholique avec l’Église orientale. Paris, 1865. ——. La Russie est-elle schismatique? Aux hommes de bonne foi par un russe orthodoxe. Paris, 1859. “Gramota patriarkha Konstantinopol'skogo na imia redaktsii parizhskoi gazety L’Union chrétienne.” Strannik (November 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 470–72. Also “Gramota sviateishago vselenskago patriarkha Ioakima, vkupe s sviatym soborom, na imia redaktsii izdavaemoi v Parizhe gazety L’Union chrétienne.” Khristianskoe chtenie, part 2 (1862): 844–49. Guettée, René-François. “Consecration de l’église russe de Paris.” L’Union chrétienne, September 15, 1861, 361–62. ——. De la papauté: Textes choisis et présentés par Patric Ranson. Lausanne, 1990. ——. De l’encyclique du 8 décembre 1864. Paris, 1865. ——. Deux prétendus savants en présence de la science et de la religion ou Réponse à MM. G. Wyrouboff et E. Goubert. Paris, 1865. ——. E. Renan devant la science ou Réfutation de la prétendue “Vie de Jésus” de M. E. Renan au triple point de vue de l’exégèse biblique, de la critique historique et de la philosophie. Paris, 1864. Translated as Oproverzhenie na vydumanuiu“Zhizn' Iisusa” sochinenie Ernesta Renan s troistvennoi tochki zreniia bibleiskoi ekzegetiki, istoricheskoi kritiki i filosofii. St. Petersburg, 1864. ——. Exposition de la doctrine de l’Église catholique orthodoxe, accompagnée des différences qui se rencontrent dans les autres églises chrétiennes. Paris, 1866. Translated as Izlozhenie ucheniia Pravoslavnoi kafolicheskoi tserkvi s ukazaniem razlichii, vstrechaiushchikhsia v uchenii drugikh khristianskikh tserkvei. St. Petersburg, 1869. Also appeared in Vera i razum in 1886–1887. ——. Histoire de l’Église depuis la naissance de N.-S. Jésus-Christ jusqu’à nos jours. 8 vols. Paris: 1870–1886. ——. Histoire des jésuites, composée sur documents authentiques en partie inédits. Paris, 1858. ——. Une injustice: Appel à l’opinion publique d’une décision prise par le Conseil de la Légion d’Honneur sur un avis illégal et calomnieux de M. Batbie. Brussels, 1874. ——. Jansénisme et jésuitisme, ou, Examen des accusations de jansénisme: soulevées par M. Lequeux et par “L’Ami de la religion” contre M. l’abbé Guettée. Paris, 1857. ——. Lettre à M. Dupanloup, évèque d’Orléans, à propos de sa pastorale au clergé et aux fidèles de son diocèse à l’occasion des fêtes de Rome et pour leur annoncer le futur concile œcuménique. Paris, 1868. ——. Lettre à M. le prince Augustin Galitzin. Paris, 1862. ——. Lettres au Révérend Père Gagarin, de la compagnie de Jésus, touchant l’Église catholique orthodoxe et l’Église romaine ou Défense de “La papauté schismatique” contre les calomnies et les erreurs du parti jésuitique, caché sous le pseudonyme de Boulgak. Paris, 1867.

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——. Mémoire à consulter touchant une décision anti-canonique de M. Morlot, cardinalarchevêque de Paris, à l’encontre de M. Guettée. Paris, 1858. ——. Mémoire soumis à l’Empereur Napoléon III sur la restauration de l’Église gallicane. Paris, 1861. ——. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de l’Église de France pendant le XIXe siècle. Paris, 1881. ——. La Papauté hérétique: Exposé des hérésies, erreurs et innovations de l’Église romaine depuis la séparation de l’Église catholique au IXe siècle. Paris, 1874. ——. La Papauté schismatique ou Rome dans ses rapports avec l’Église orientale. Paris, 1863. Translated as The Papacy; Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations with the Eastern Churches. With an introduction by A. Cleveland Coxe. New York, 1866. Translated into Russian as Papstvo kak prichina razdeleniia tserkvei, ili Rim v svoikh snosheniiakh s vostochnoi tserkov'iu. Kharkov, 1895; Moscow, 2007. ——. Première lettre à Mgr Sibour, archevêque de Paris, à propos d’une mesure qu´il a cru pouvoir prendre contre M. l’abbé Guettée. Paris, 1856. ——. “La Présence de Mgr. Léonce à Paris.” L’Union chrétienne, September 22, 1861, 369–70. ——. Requête et mémoire adressés à S. Exc. le ministre des Cultes, par M. l’abbé Guettée en appel comme d’abus d’une décision de M. Morlot, Cardinal-Archevêque de Paris. Paris, 1858. ——. “Sa Majesté Alexandre II l’Empereur de toutes les Russies à Paris.” L’Union chrétienne, June 9, 1867, 250–56. ——. Souvenirs d’un prêtre romain devenu prêtre orthodoxe. Paris, 1889. Translated into Russian [by Kireev?] as “Vospominaniia sviashchenika pravoslavnoi tserkvi D-ra o. Vladimira Gette byvshago sviashchennikom rimskoi tserkvi,” Vera i razum, no. 1 ( January 1890): 35–56; no. 2 ( January 1890): 89–114; no. 3 (February 1890): 160–84; no. 4 (February 1890): 211–52; no. 7 (April 1890): 398–420; no. 10 (May 1890): 559–86; no. 12 ( June 1890): 707–35; no. 14 ( July 1890): 73–102; no. 19 (October 1890): 377–412; no. 6 (March 1891): 378–400; no. 13 ( July 1891): 41–69; no. 16 (August 1891): 206–33; no. 23 (December 1892): 669–86; no. 24 (December 1892): 734–50. Guizot, François. L’Église et la société chrétienne en 1861. Paris, 1861. ——. Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe. Paris, 1828. Gurowski, Adam. La Cause polonaise sous son véritable point de vue. Paris, 1831. ——. Le Panslawisme. Florence, 1848. ——. Russland und die Civilisation. Merseburg, 1833. Translated as La Civilisation et la Russie. St. Petersburg, 1840. ——. La Verité sur la Russie et sur la revolte des provinces polonaises. Paris, 1834. Haxthausen, Le Baron August de. Études sur la situation intérieure, la vie nationale et les institutions rurales de la Russie. 3 vols. Hanover, 1847–1853. Translated (from the German) by Robert Farie as The Russian Empire, Its People, Institutions and Resources. 2 vols. London, 1856. Henningsen, Charles Frederick. Revelations of Russia or the Emperor Nicholas and His Empire in 1844: By One Who Has Seen and Describes. 2 vols. London, 1844. Translated into French by M. Noblet with annotations by Cyprien Robert as Révélations sur la Russie, 3 vols. Paris, 1845.

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Herberstein, Sigismund von. Notes upon Russia: Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of That Country, entitled “Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii.” Translated and edited by R. H. Major. 2 vols. New York: Franklin, 1963. Herzen, Alexander. A Herzen Reader. Edited and translated by Kathleen Parthé. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012. ——. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem. 22 vols. St. Petersburg, 1919–1925. Horrer, Marie Joseph. Persécution et souffrances de l’église catholique en Russie. Paris, 1842. Istomin, K. “Dvadtsatipiatiletie vozvedeniia o. V. Gette na stepen' doktora bogosloviia v Russkoi Tserkvi.” Vera i razum, no. 21 (November 1889): 555–74. Jaquemet, Antoine Mathias Alexandre, and J. Wassilieff. Discussion entre Mgr. l’évêque de Nantes [i.e., A.M.A. Jaquemet] et M. l’archiprêtre J. Wassilieff au sujet de l’autorité ecclésiastique dans l’église de Russie. Paris, 1861. Jouve, Abbé. “Choral de l’Église de l’ambassade russe à Paris.” Revue de musique sacrée. June 15, 1862, 246–50. Jugement sur les discours du jésuite Gagarin, concernant l’Union (de l’Église Russe). Athens, 1857. Translated into Russian as Suzhdenie pravoslavnago greka o sposobe soedineniia tserkvei kakoi predlagaet Gagarin v svoeiu broshiurke: “La Russie serat-elle catholique?” St. Petersburg, 1858. Translated from Russian to French [by I. V. Vasiliev] as Orthodoxie et papisme: Examen de l’ouvrage du Père Gagarin sur la réunion des Églises catholique grecque et catholique romaine. Par un grec membre de l’église d’orient. Paris, 1859. [Kapel'mans, Viktor Ivanovich]. “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe.” Dukhovnaia beseda, September 16, 1861, 588–96. Katanskii, A[leksandr]. Vospominaniia starago professora. St. Petersburg, 1914. Khomiakov, Aleksei S. L’Église latine et le Protestantisme au point de vue de l’Église d’Orient: Recueil d’articles sur des questions religieuses, écrits à différentes époques et à diverse occasions. Lausanne, 1872. ——. Quelques mots d’un chrétien orthodoxe sur les communions occidentales, à l’occasion d’un article de M. Laurentie. Paris, 1853. Reprinted in A.-S. Khomiakoff, L’Église latine et le Protestantisme au point de vue de l’Église d’Orient. Lausanne, 1872, 3–88. Kireev, Aleksandr. Correspondence on Infallibility between a Father Jesuit and General ­Alexander Kireeff. New York, 1896. “Konchina o. Vladimira Gete.” Listok dlia Kharkovskoi eparkhii, no. 6 (March 31, 1892): 145–46. Kryzhanovskii, E[vfimii Mikhailovich]. “Russkaia tserkov' v Parizhe.” Voskresnoe chtenie, no. 27 (October 22, 1861): 726–42. Lacordaire, Henri-Dominique. Oeuvres. Vol. 3: Conférences de Notre-Dame de Paris. Paris, 1872. La Guéronnière, Louis, Vicomte de. L’Empereur Napoléon III et l’Italie. Paris, 1859. ——. La France, Rome et l’Italie. Paris, 1861. ——. Le Pape et le congrès. Paris, 1859. Larousse, Pierre. Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle. 17 vols. Paris, 1866–1877. Laurent, Francois. Principes de droit civil. Paris, 1869–1878. Laurentie, Pierre-Sébastien. La Papauté, réponse à M. de Tutcheff, conseiller de Sa Majesté l’Empereur de Russie. Paris, 1852. ——. Le Pape et le Czar. Paris, 1862. ——. Souvenirs inédits publiés par son petit-fils J. Laurentie. Paris, n.d.

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Legrelle, A[rsène]. Le Volga: Notes sur la Russie. Paris, 1877. Leontii. “Chetyre pis'ma Mitropolita Leontiia k Arkhiepiskopu kostromskomu Platonu,” Russkii arkhiv 31, book 3 (1893): 87–92. ——. “Iz arkhiva vysokopreosviashchenneishago Leontiia Mitropolita moskovskago.” Russkii arkhiv 30, book 3 (1892): 95–111. ——. “Moi zametki i vospominaniia.” Bogoslovskii vestnik 3, no. 9 (1913): 142–70; no. 10 (1913): 310–31; no. 11 (1913): 610–23; no. 12 (1913): 803–20; vol. 1, no. 1 (1914): 137–53; no. 2 (1914): 279–95; no. 3 (1914): 538–60. ——. “Rech' po sluchaiu osviashcheniia russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi v Parizhe, 30 avgusta 1861 goda.” Strannik (September 1861), Sovremmenaia khronika: 149–51. Also in Russian as “Rech', skazannaia preosviashchennym Leontiem, episkopom revel'skim, vikariem s. Peterburgskim, pri osviashchenii russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe.” Khristianskoe chtenie, part 2 (1861): 67–70. Translated into French as “Allocution prononcée le 30 aout–11 septembre 1861 par Monseigneur Leoncé, évêque de Reval,” L’Union chrétienne, December 15, 1861, 49–50. Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole. L’Empire des tsars et les Russes. 3 vols. Paris, 1881–1889. Translated from the 3rd French ed. by Zénaïde A. Rogozin as The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians. 3 vols. New York, 1893–1896. ——. Un homme d’État russe (Nicolas Miliutine) d’après sa correspondance inedite: Étude sur la Russie et la Pologne pendant le regne d’Alexandre II. Paris, 1884. Leskov, N[ikolai] S. Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 2, book 2. Moscow, 1993. Lestrelin, Achille. Les Paysans russes: Leurs usages, moeurs, caractère religion, superstitions et les droits des nobles sur leurs serfs. Paris, 1861. L[esur, Charles Louis]. Des progrès de la puissance russe depuis son origine jusqu’au commencement du XIX siècle. Paris, 1812. Levesque, Ch[arles]. Histoire de Russie: Tirée des chroniques originales, des pièces authentiques, and des meilleurs historiens de la nation. 5 vols. Paris, 1782. Also new ed. 8 vols. Hamburg, 1800. Luquet, [Monseigneur]. “Aux évêques de Russie.” In L’Église schismatique russe, d’après les relations récentes du prétendu saint-synode, by Augustin Theiner, v–clii. Paris, 1846. M. “Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev,” Novoe vremia, January 11, 1882. Macaire [Makary, Mikhail Petrovich Bulgakov]. Introduction à la théologie orthodoxe. [Translated by I. V. Vasiliev]. Paris, 1857. ——. Théologie dogmatique orthodoxe, 2 vols. [Translated by I. V. Vasiliev]. Paris, 1859–1860. Maistre, Joseph de. Du Pape. 2nd ed. Lyon, 1821. First published in 1919. Translated by Rev. Aeneas McD. Dawson as The Pope; Considered in His Relations with the Church, Temporal Sovereignties, Separated Churches, and the Cause of Civilization. London, 1850. Mal'tsev, A. P. [Protopriest]. Bratskii ezhegodnik: Pravoslavnyia tserkvi i russkiia uchrezhdeniia za granitseiu. Spravochnaia knizhka s kalendarem na 1906 god. St. Petersburg, 1906. Mars, V. de. “Histoire politique: Chronique de la quinzaine. 14 Juin 1849,” Revue des deux mondes, new period, 2 (April–June 1849): 1037–58.

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Marshall, Thomas William M. Christian Missions. 3 vols. London, 1862. Translated as Les Missions chrétiennes: Ouvrage traduit de l’anglaise avec l’autorisation de l’auteur, augmenté et annoté by Louis de Waziers. 2 vols. Paris, 1865. Martin, Victor. Vie de Monseigneur Jaquemet: Évêque de Nantes. Paris 1889. Masson, Charles. Mémoires secretes sur la Russie. 3 vols. Amsterdam, 1800. Reprinted with an afterword by Francois Barrièr. Paris, 1859. Mathieu, Pierre-François. Histoire des miraculés et des convulsionnaires de Saint-Médard. Paris, 1864. Michaud, Eugène. “La Théologie de Guettée.” Revue internationale de théologie/ Internationale Theologische Zeitschrift 6 (1894): 262–77. Michaux, L. “L’Église russe.” In Inventaire general des richesses d’art de la France: Monuments religieux, by the Ministère de l’instruction publique et des beaux-arts, 3:79–92. Paris, 1901. Also published as Histoire et description de l’Église russe. Paris, 1888. Michon, Jean-Hippolyte, M. l’abbé. La Solution nouvelle de la question des Lieux saints. Paris, 1852. McClintock, John, and James Strong, eds. Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature. 12 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1891. Montalembert, Charles Forbes, Comte de. Foreword to Vicissitudes de l’Église catholique des deux rites en Pologne et en Russie: Ouvrage écrit en Allemand, par un prêtre de la congrégation de l’Oratoire, by Augustin Theiner, 1:i–xxvii. 2 vols. Paris, 1843. Mopinot, Émile. Funérailles du docteur W. Guettée. n.p., 1892. [Murav'ev, Andrei Nikolaevich]. Question religieuse d’Orient et d’Occident: Parole de l’orthodoxie catholique au catholicisme romain. Translated by Alexander Popovitskii. Paris, 1853. ——. Le Raskol: Essai historique et critique sur les sectes religieuses en Russie. Paris, 1859. ——. Raskol oblichaemyi svoeiu istorieiu. 2nd ed. St. Petersburg, 1854. ——. “Zapiska A. N. Murav'eva o sostoianii pravoslavnoi tserkvi v Rossii.” Russkii arkhiv 21, book 3 (1883): 175–203. Neale, John Mason, ed. and trans. Voices from the East: Documents on the Present State and Working of the Oriental Church. London, 1859. Nechkina, M. V., ed., Golosa iz Rossii. Sborniki A. I. Gertsena i N. P. Ogareva. 10 vols. Moscow: Nauka, 1974–1976. “Nekrolog: Sviashchennik Vladimir Gete,” Novosti, March 25, 1892. Nikitenko, A. V. Dnevnik. Edited by N. L. Brodskii et al. 3 vols. St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1956. Novikoff, Olga, ed. Le Général Alexandre Kiréeff et l’ancien-catholisme. Bern, 1911. Orlovskii, V[ladimir]. “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich.” Zhivopisnoe obozrenie, no. 8 (1882): 121–23; no. 9 (1882): 136–38. “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe.” Dukhovnaia beseda, September 16, 1861, 602–8. “Otzyv grecheskom professora Vrienniia o protoierei I. V. Vasil'eve,” Strannik (October 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 444–45. Palmer, William. Dissertations on Subjects Relating to the “Orthodox” or “Eastern-Catholic” Communion. London, 1853.

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Pelleport, Comte Vladimir de La Fite de [Petr Artamov, pseud.]. Iezuity krasnago petukha nam pustili ili razvratitsia-li Rossiia v latinskii katolitsizm? Posviashchaetsia iezutiam Gagarinu i Martynovu. Russkii zagranichnyi sbornik, part 2, no. 4. Paris, 1859. ——. “Osviashchenie russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe.” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie (September 1861): 141–46. ——[Petr Artamov, pseud]. La Russie historique, monumentale, et pittoresque. With the collaboration of J.-G-D. Armengaud, 2 vols. Paris, 1862–1865. ——. “Le Tzar est-il, en Russie, chef d’Église?” La Presse religieuse, no. 61 (May 24, 1853) and no. 62 (May 26, 1853). Reprinted in La Voix de la Verite, no. 128 ( June 2, 1853). ——. “Sostoianie tserkovnykh del vo Frantsii,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie (October 1861): 243–72; (December 1866): 548–67. Pie [Louis-Édouard, Monseigneur]. Oeuvres de Monseigneur l’évêque de Poitiers. Paris, 1883–1884. Pinguad, Léonce. Les Français en Russie et les Russes en France: L’Ancien régime— l’émigration—les invasions. Paris, 1886. “Pis'mo sviashchennika V. Gette k mitropolitanu novgorodskomu i S.-Peterburgskomu (o prisoedinenii k pravoslaviiu).” Strannik (December 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 518–20. Polisadov, Vasilii P. [Protopriest]. “O novoi parizhskoi gazete L’Union chrétienne (Khristianskoe edinenie).” Strannik (November 1860), Bibliografiia: 78–101. ——. “Pis'ma O. Protoiereia V. P. Polisadova (O puteshestvii nashei dukhovnoi missii v Parizh i ob osviashchenii Parizhskoi tserkvi).” Dukh khristianina (October 1861), part 3 (Smes'): 1–42. Offprint published as Pis'ma protoiereia V. P. Polisadova o puteshestvii nashei dukhovnoi missii v Parizh i ob osviashchenii Parizhskoi tserkvi. St. Petersburg, 1861. Popovitskii, A[lexander] I. “Osviashchenie Russkoi tserkvi v Parizhe.” Strannik (September 1861), Sovremennaia khronika: 144–49. ——. “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” Tserkovno-obshchestvennyi vestnik, no. 155 (December 30, 1881), 1–4. “Prisoedinenie k pravoslaviiu abbata Gette,” Strannik (September 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 381–82. “Protoierei Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie ( January 1882): 175–81. “Izvestiia i zametki: Protoierei I. V. Vasil'ev (Nekrolog),” Strannik 1, no. 1 ( January 1882): 158–62. “Rasporiazheniia i izvestiia ko novgorodsko-s. peterburgskoi mitropoli: Donesenie protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva iz Parizha.” Tserkovnaia letopis', December 22, 1862, 899–904. “Raznyia pozhertvovaniia, v pol'zu Parizhskoi tserkvi, i vostochnykh khristian, na Afon, v Ierusalim, i drugiia mesta,” Strannik ( January 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 30–31. Rech', proiznesennaia o. Protoiereem Iosifom Vasil'evym pri polozhenii pervago kamnia Pravoslavnoi Trekh-Prestol'noi Tserkvi v Parizhe vo imia soshestviia Sviatago Dukha, sv. Blagovernago Velikago Kniazia Aleksandra Nevskago i Sviatitelia Nikolaia Mirlikiiskago Chudotvortsa, 19 fevralia (3 marta) 1859 goda. Dukhovnaia beseda, no. 13 (1859): 413. Régny, Eugène de. L’Abbé Bautain: Sa vie et ses œuvres. Paris, 1884.

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René. “L’Église russe de Paris.” La Semaine des familles, no. 25 (March 21, 1863), 385– 89; no. 26 (March 28, 1863), 401–4. Robert, Cyprien. “Le Monde gréco-slave,” Revue des deux mondes, new series, 9 ( January– March 1845): 409–50. ——. “Les Deux Panslavismes.” Revue des deux mondes, new series, 16 (October– December 1846): 452–83. ——, ed. Testament de Pierre le Grand, ou Plan de domination européenne, laissé par lui à ses descendants et successeurs au trone de Russie, déposé dans les archives du Palais de Péterhoff, près Saint-Pétersbourg. Paris, 1860. Rome et les évêques de France. Paris, 1861. Rougemont, Frédéric de. La Russie orthodoxe et protestante. Paris, 1863. Roy, Just-Jean-Étienne. Les Français en Russie: Souvenirs de la campagne de 1812 et de deux ans de captivité en Russie. Tours, 1856. Rozaven, Jean-Louis de. L’Église catholique justifiée contre les attaques d’un écrivain qui se dit orthodoxe ou Réfutation d’un ouvrage intitulé “Considérations sur la doctrine et l’esprit de l’Église orthodoxe” par Alexandre de Stourdza. Lyon, 1822. Reprinted by Augustin Golitsyn as De la réunion de l’Église russe avec l’Église catholique. Paris, 1864. ——. L’Église russe et l’Église catholique, lettres inédites du R. P. Rozaven. Paris, 1862. “The Russian Church.” The Rambler 8 (new series) (November, 1857): 305–22. Russkoe dukhovenstvo. Berlin, 1859. Savva [Tikhomirov]. Khronika moei zhizni: Avtobiograficheskiia zapiski vysokopreosviashchennago Savvy, arkhiepiskopa Tverskago i Kashinskago. 9 vols. Sergiev Posad, 1898–1911?. Schem, Alexander J. The American Ecclesiastical Year-Book. Vol. 1: The Religious Statistics and History of the Year 1859. New York, 1860. Shuvalov [Grigory Petrovich, a.k.a. Pére Agostino Maria, Barnabite]. Ma Conversion et ma vocation. Paris, 1859. 2nd ed. Paris, 1864. Translated by Father C. Tondini as My Conversion and Vocation. London, 1877. Séché, Léon. Les Derniers Jansénistes et leur role dans l’ histoire de France depuis la ruine de Port-Royale jusqu’à nos jour (1710–1870). 3 vols. Paris, 1891–93. Sh., P. “Protoierei pravoslavnoi tserkvi pri russkom posol'stve v Parizhe Iosif Vasil'evich Vasil'ev (biograficheskii ocherk).” Illiustratsiia: Vsemirnoe obozrenie, no. 42 (October 23, 1858), 257–58. Skripitzinn, V[alerii Valerievich]. Mélanges politiques et religieuse. Paris, 1869. Soloviev, Vladimir. L’Idée russe. Paris, 1888. Sorel, Alexandre. Assassinat de Mgr. l’archevêque de Paris: Verger. Sa biographie et son procès, par un sténographe. Paris, 1857. Sturdza, Alexander. Considerations sur la doctrine et l’esprit de l’Église orthodoxe. Stuttgart, 1816. Sushkov, Sergei P. “Le Clergé russe.” L’Union chrétienne, June 8, 1862, 255–56; June 15, 1862, 263–64; June 22, 1862, 270–72; June 29, 1862, 279–80; July 6, 1862, 287–88; July 13, 1862, 296; July 20, 1862, 301–3. Translated as “Otvet korrespondentu gazety Le Nord na ego zamechaniia o sostoianii pravoslavnago dukhovenstva v Rossii,” Strannik ( July 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 255–76. ——. Confédération italienne: Le Pouvoir temporel des papes devant l’Évangile et les hommes. Brussels, 1859.

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——. “Donesenie protoiereia I. Vasil'eva iz Parizha (O prisoedinenii k pravoslaviiu abbata Gette).” Strannik (December 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 517–18. ——. “Iz pis'ma nastoiatelia russkoi posol'skoi tserkvi v Parizhe protoiereia I. Vasil'eva—o gramote Vselenskogo Patriarkha.” Strannik (December 1862), Sovremennaia khronika: 515–17. ——. Parizhskiia pis'ma protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'evicha Vasil'eva k ober-prokuroram Sviateishago Sinoda i drugim litsam s 1846 po 1867 gg. Edited by L. K. Brodskii. Petrograd, 1915. ——. “Quelques mots à l’adresse de M. R., créateur, réformateur et multiplicateur des journaux religieux russes dans les pays étranger.” L’Union chrétienne, August 10, 1862, 326–27. ——. “Quelques remarques sur l’opinion de l’archimandrite Théodore concernant l’autorité de l’église et la tradition sacrée.” L’Union chrétienne, November 2, 1862, 3–5; November 16, 1862, 18–20; November 30, 1862, 37–39. [Vasil'ev, I. V., and V. A. Prilezhaev]. Description de L’Église russe de Paris. Paris, 1861. Translated as “Russkaia tserkov' v Parizhe.” Russkii invalid, no. 205 (September 20, 1861). Vasil'ev, I. V. [Wassilieff], and Antoine Mathias Alexandre Jaquemet. Discussion entre Mgr. l’évêque de Nantes [i.e., A.M.A. Jaquemet] et M. l’archiprêtre J. Wassilieff au sujet de l’autorité ecclésiastique dans l’église de Russie. Paris, 1861. The correspondence first appeared in French as “Réponse aux attaques de M. l’évêque de Nantes contre l’église de Russie.” L’Union chrétienne, April 14, 1861, 185– 89; May 26, 1861, 233–40; June 2, 1861, 241–48; and June 16, 1861, 257–62. Vasiliev’s letters were translated as “Otvet na lozhnoe obvinenie protiv tserkvi Russkoi.” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie (April 1861): 541–57; “Tolki o russkoi tserkvi vo Frantsii.” Tserkovnaia letopis', May 13, 1861, 306–15; “Pis'mo protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu Alexandru Zhakme.” Strannik (May 1861), Sovremennaia khronika: 113–24; [excerpted from Journal de Saint-Petersbourg,] “Pis'mo nastoiatelia russkoi posol'skoi tserkvi v Parizhe o. protoiereia I. Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu Zhakme.” Khristianskoe chtenie, part 1 (1861): 421–36; “Otvet na pis'mo nantskogo episkopa.” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie ( July 1861): 235–71 and (August 1861): 385–421; “Vtoroe pis'mo protoiereia Iosifa Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu Aleksandru Zhakme.” Strannik ( July 1861), Sovremennaia khronika: 28–60; and “Vtoroe pis'mo nastoiatelia russkoi posol'skoi tserkvi v Parizhe o. protoiereia I. Vasil'eva k nantskomu episkopu Zhakme.” Khristianskoe chtenie, part 2 (1861): 110–54, 213–54. Vengerov, S. A. Kritiko-biograficheskii slovar' russkikh pisatelei i uchenykh. St. Petersburg, 1889–1904. Veuillot, Eugène. L’Église, la France et le schisme en Orient: Études historiques sur les chrétientés orientales et sur la guerre contre la Russie. Paris, 1855. Viazemskii, P. A. [P. D’Ostafievo, pseud.]. Lettres d’un vétéran russe de l’année 1812 sur la question d’Orient. Lausanne, 1855. ——. “Osviashchenie novosooruzhennoi nadgrobnoi eia imperatorskago vysochestva gosudaryni velikoi kniagini Elisavety Mikhailovny tserkvi vo imia sviatyia

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In dex

Akhmatov, Aleksei Petrovich, 160, 172, 211n40, 250n126 Aksakov, Ivan, 176 – 79, 182, 245n49, 253n148 Alexander I, 22, 194 – 95n32, 193n19, 245n48 Alexander II, 13, 49; assassination of, 221n7; children of, 145 – 46, 161; compared with Nicholas I, 132; and founding of St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 84, 88, 94, 168, 224n52, 224n57; and Guettée, 53 – 54, 156 – 57, 160 – 61; and Holy sites, 232n174; in Paris (1867), 10, 144 – 51, 156, 232n173, 241nn79 – 80; as reformer, 46, 50; and Vasiliev, 53 – 54, 62, 84, 88 Alexander III: as crown prince, 145; and sacred architecture, 221n7 Alexander Nevsky Church, Saint (Paris): and Alexander II’s visit to Paris, 146 – 51, 232n173, 241n72, 241nn79 – 80; authorization to build, 86 – 87, 110, 128; as “Byzantine firework,” 80, 112; capacity of, 93, 226n86; cathedral status, 186; conception of, 85; consecration of, 3, 9 – 10, 80, 89 – 95, 97 – 101, 103, 107, 111, 113 – 14, 116 – 21, 124 – 27, 130, 132, 135, 162, 184, 227n109; as contact zone, 96, 227n107; cornerstone of, 88 – 89, 112, 186, 209n7, 224n52, 224n57; in English and German press, 95, 121; in French press, 9, 15, 88 – 90, 92 – 101, 103 – 7, 109 – 10, 111 – 13, 117, 146 – 51; and Holy Trinity Cathedral (Paris), 186 – 89; illustrators and illustrations of, 95, 105 – 6, 147, 227nn97 –  98, 228n117, 231n161; linchpin of Russian public relations campaign, 4, 7 – 10, 79, 84, 90, 96 – 98, 109, 114 – 15, 122 – 23, 126, 130, 151 – 53, 168 – 69, 181, 233n178; location, 96, 194n29, 220n1, 228 – 29n118; L’Union chrétienne and, 57, 121 – 24, 153; panOrthodox identity of, 187 – 88; in Paris tour guides, 102 – 3; in Russian press, 9, 15; and political Orthodoxy, 97 – 98; purchase of

land for, 10, 87 – 88, 224n49; and religious toleration, 110 – 15, 118, 178; and Russian religious nationalism, 9 – 10, 15 – 16, 57, 116 – 18, 124, 129 – 31, 153, 185, 188 – 89, 234n5, 255n23; and sacred arts, 80 – 81, 96 – 103, 106, 108, 118 – 19, 123, 129, 132, 227 – 28nn109 – 10, 229n125, 229nn128 – 29, 230nn136 – 37, 230n140; and Soviet government and association cultuelle, 187, 256n33; and task of reuniting churches, 117 – 20, 123 – 24, 129 – 31, 153; witness against papal errors, 117, 119, 128. See also Vasiliev, Iosif Vasilievich Alexander Nevsky, Saint, 80 – 81, 221nn10 –  11, 255n24 All-Russian Church Council (1917–1918), 186 Ami de la religion et le roi, L’, circulation, 215n104; on St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 96, 99; and Vasiliev-Jaquemet polemic, 63, 65, 78 – 79, 238n13 Anglicanism, 58, 73, 138, 164; chapels in Paris, 84, 222n22; and ecumenical dialogue, 13, 54, 171, 173; Gorham affair, 5; Oxford movement in, 5, 13 – 14; as schismatic but tolerant, 26; visitors to St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 107, 125. See also England: church-state relations in; Erastianism; Russian Orthodox Church: and Anglicans; William Palmer anticlericalism, 20 architecture, 49, 89, 96, 114; “ByzantineMuscovite style,” 80 – 81, 99, 105, 220n4, 221nn6 – 7, 230n140; and Eastern genius, 231n165; of Holy Trinity Cathedral (Paris), 2; Moscow-Yaroslavl style, 221n7; Orthodox architecture as Asiatic, 102, 199 – 200n49, 201n79, 202n92; Russian contrasted with French, 99 – 100; and theology, 102 – 3, 119. See also Alexander Nevsky Church, Saint: sacred arts

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Artamov, Petr. See Pelleport, Vladimir de la Fite de Austrian Empire: and French backing of Piedmont, 58, 88; and Holy Alliance, 31; Orthodox churches in, 222n24; and revolutions of 1848 – 1849, 31 – 32, 34; Slavs and, 22, 98, 149; and Triple Alliance, 149, 223n41. See also Hungary Avtonomova, Liudmila (née Vasilieva): on Guettée, 62, 162,; on Jesuits, 128 – 29, 237n74; on St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 95; on Vasiliev’s achievements, 162, 165 – 68, 172, 208n175 Avvakum (archimandrite), 122 Barsov, N. I. 167, 255n19 Baudry, Charles-Théodore (bishop), 93, 125, 226n84 Bautain, Louis-Eugène-Marie, 109, 232n175 Bazarov, Ioann Ioannovich (priest), 252n143, 253 – 54n155 Beideman, Alexander Egorovich, 97, 228n110, 229n120. See also Alexander Nevsky Church, Saint: sacred arts; Jesus Christ: and iconography of St. Alexander Nevsky Church Belgium, 44, 61, 91 Belinsky, Vissarion, 183 Belliustin, Ivan (priest), 113, 133 – 41, 234n194, 239n36, 255n19 Berezowski, Anton, 145, 147 Berteaud (Mgr.), 42 Bjerring, Nicholas, 247n73 Boissard, Louis, 177, 182, 184 Bolsheviks, 186 Bonald, Louis-Jacques-Maurice de (cardinal archbishop), 217n148, 218n157; on papacy’s temporal power, 70 – 72, 79; Vasiliev’s correspondence with, 76, 165, 167, 218n155 Bonjean, Louis-Bernard, 70 – 71, 217n149 Bonneau, Alexandre, 98 Bougaud, Louis-Victor-Emile, 5, 193n18 Bourgoing, Paul de, 203n102 British and Foreign Bible Society, 12 – 13 Buhler, Fedor Andreevich, 55, 212 – 13n57 Caesar(s), 59, 62, 88, 104, 148 – 49, 152 Caesaropapism, characteristics of Eastern Orthodox, 5, 14, 21; Russian, 9, 34 – 35, 60, 131, 152, 182; in Henningsen, 201n81. See also Erastianism; Russian Orthodox Church: viewed as enslaved or subordinated to state; tsar-pope myth

Cavour, Camillo Benso di, 72, 223n41 Cayla, Jean-Mamert, 59 censorship: in France (official and unofficial), 48, 54 – 55, 61, 158 – 59, 244n32; in Russia, 176, 210n20. See also Index of Prohibited Books Chaadaev, Peter, 18 Charlemagne, 34, 62 Chevé, Amand, 101, 230nn136 – 37 China, 27, 47, 71 church-state relations. See specific countries Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 9, 18, 195n35. See also France: church-state relations in; French Revolution Combes, Émile, 103 Concert of Europe, 84, 116, 203n102. See also Holy Alliance Concordat: between France and papacy (1801), 9, 18, 51, 68, 103; between Russia and papacy (1847), 32, 132, 203nn106 – 8. See also France: church-state relations in Constitutionnel, Le, 99, 226n75 Coquille, Jean-Baptiste-Victor, 113, 117, 148, 151, 202 – 3n94, 234n194. See also Monde, Le Creed, Nicene, 55, 62 Crimea, 1 – 2. See also Ukraine Crimean War, 7, 39, 83 – 84, 141, 183, 237n1; consequences of, 116, 130, 149, 185, 195n39, 238n7; Franco-Russian entente after, 224n52; and French public opinion, 194n31; French Roman Catholics and, 30, 40 – 43; as holy war, 3; Khomiakov on, 207n167; Napoleon III’s aims in, 207n167; Russian POWs during, 42 – 43, 237n74; and Russian religious nationalism, 4, 9; Russophobia and, 8, 20, 30; Treaty of Paris (1856), 86, 88, 149, 233n180, 237n1 Croisé, Le, 53, 169, 212n45 Custine, Astolphe de (marquis), 31, 37, 100, 134, 140, 200n52; on Chaadaev, 18; compared with Theiner, 26 – 27, 240n55; La Russie en 1839, 23 – 29 Delière, Abbé: Tableau d’une Église nationale d’après un pope russe, 105, 113, 135 – 39, 234n194, 239n36 Description de L’Église russe de Paris, 119, 128; on architecture and Byzantine-Muscovite style, 80 – 81, 231n165; Russian translation of, 227n108; as source for French writers, 96, 99 – 100, 102, 104 – 6, 182, 118n118, 229n120, 230n140; tie to Gazette du

I n d e x     285 Nord, 227n108. See also Prilezhaev, Vasily Aleksandrovich; Vasiliev, Iosif Vasilievich Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia, 105, 113, 133 – 41. See also Belliustin, Ivan; Delière, Abbé Desprez, Félix Hippolyte, 40, 207n170 Deulin, Charles, 98 – 99, 111 – 12, 228nn117 – 18 Dolgorukov, Peter Vladimirovich, 133, 135, 238n12, 239n36 Dukh khristianina, 90, 119 Dukhovnaia beseda, 118 Dupanloup, Felix (bishop), 6, 141 – 44, 165, 240n55 Eastern Orthodoxy: balanced views of, 159; collective authority in, 75; comparisons with Roman Catholicism, 29, 41, 64, 96, 100 – 101, 103 – 10, 114 – 15, 119 – 23, 129, 135 – 36, 142 – 43, 150, 159, 229n120; divine constitution of and symphonia in, 62, 67, 73 – 77; Divine Liturgy, 6, 13, 49, 124; Eastern bishops and papal encyclical of 1848, 32; exemplified by St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 96, 100; and Guizot, 73; negative characterizations of, 3 – 5, 8 – 9, 14 – 16, 20 – 21, 24 – 25, 31, 33 – 34, 36, 38 – 40 – 43, 47 – 48, 54, 57, 60, 73 – 74, 86, 104 – 5, 109 – 10, 122 – 23, 128, 137, 141, 144, 148 – 52, 159, 193n18, 239n29; nonpolitical nature of, 89; of non-Russians in Paris, 85 – 86, 98, 168; Orthodox publicists and concern for international reputation of, 121 – 23, 126, 129, 153, 162 – 74, 177 – 82, 185; public image of defined, 7 – 8; unrecognized confession in France, 110; untouched by papal errors, 119, 122. western nomenclature for, ix – x, 73, 76, 81 – 82, 95, 103, 110, 144, 159, 205n139, 207n171, 216n110, 225n60, 233n179, 238n6, 244nn36 – 37; See also Caesaropapism; Greeks; Russian clergy; Russian Orthodox Church; Russophobia; tsar-pope myth Eastern question, 21 – 22, 30, 35, 37, 42 – 43, 151, 207n167. See also Panslavism Ecclesiastical Regulation, 27, 67 – 68, 77 – 78, 216n128, 251n134. See also Peter I: church reform of ecumenical councils, 11 – 12, 39, 73, 184 Ecumenical Patriarchate: and Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe, 186 – 87, 256n31; Bartholemew, 186 – 87; Joachim II, 172.

Ecumenism, 49, 114; Bautain and, 232n175; Eastern Church Association, 13; Empress Eugénie and, 232n174; examples of, 12 – 13; in France, 105 – 9, 134; ecumenical aspirations as counter-revolutionary strategy, 31 – 36; Guizot and, 72 – 73; joint agreement between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, 189; and Orthodox publicists and mission of St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 7, 13 – 14, 117 – 20, 123 – 24, 129 – 31, 153, 160, 162 – 63, 167, 170 – 71, 173; of Russian Jesuits, 142, 210n19; as a strategy to contain Russia in Near East, 13, 40 – 41 edinoverie, 208n2 England, 132, 149, 177 – 78, 223n41, 241n72; church-state relations in, 5, 71. See also Anglicanism; Erastianism; Russian Orthodox Church: in England episcopacy, 11 – 12, 75, 150; French, 12, 18 – 19, 59, 61, 66, 69 – 70, 213n80, 247n75; Russian, 38, 62 – 63, 66 – 67, 78, 133 – 34, 169, 247n75 Erastianism, 5, 9, 14 Erkovsky, Apollon, 161 – 62, 246n54 Eugénie (empress), 108 – 9, 126 – 27, 129, 146, 236n64 European identity: Europe as family of Christian nations, 17 – 18; Guizot’s conception of, 72 – 73; Russia and, 2 – 3, 17 – 18, 20, 188 – 89, 196n1 European Union, 188 – 89 Evlogy (Georgievsky, metropolitan), 186 False Dmitry, first, 63 Feodor (Alexander Matveevich Bukharev, archimandrite), 174 – 75, 251 – 52nn137 – 40 Filaret (Drozdov, metropolitan), 13, 182, 184; and Guettée, 160 – 61, 245n45; on Petrine ecclesial structure, 46, 208n3, 251nn132 – 22; and St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 168, 225n63 filioque, 13 – 14, 104, 108 Flerov, Ivan Efimovich, 90, 118 – 19, 225n65 Fortoul, Hippolyte, 42, 86, 206 – 7nn166 France: church-state relations in, 9, 18 – 19, 51, 59 – 60, 68 – 70, 84, 89, 97, 102 – 3, 110 – 14, 158, 187, 195n35, 217n138; Council of State, 69, 213n80, 217n138; Franco-Prussian War, 244n32; government ministries and ministers, 41 – 43, 51 – 52, 59, 69, 84 – 87, 111, 157 – 58, 206 – 7nn166 – 67, 211n33, 217n142, 232n174; hospitality of, 145 – 50; interests

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France (continued) in Ottoman Empire, 29 – 30, 42 – 43; Legion of Honor, 157 – 58; liberalism in, 113 – 14, 117 – 18, 142 – 44; MacMahon presidency, 157 – 58, 244n32; and Rome, 6 – 7, 9, 32, 58 – 60, 70, 79, 194n27; and Russia, 10, 87 – 88, 108 – 9, 128, 132, 223n41; Second Empire, 19, 111, 158 – 59, 168; Second Republic, 32; Triple Alliance with Austria and England, 149, 223n41. See also French Revolution; Italy; Napoleon III; Roman Catholicism: in France Francis (pope), 189, 191n2, 191 – 92n4 Franck, A., 210nn20 – 21 freedom of conscience, 159; in France, 84, 87, 112, 177 – 78; and Russia, 15, 46, 63, 65, 79, 114, 174, 176 – 79, 253n144, 253n148, 253n151, 253n154. See also Russia: religious toleration in freedom of the press: Aksakov on, 177 – 78; in western Europe, 45, 61, 140, 158 – 59; in Russia, 253n144 French Revolution, 9, 18, 41, 142, 146. See also Civil Constitution of the Clergy; Concordat: between France and papacy (1801); France; Organic Articles Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire, 39, 219n179 Gagarin, Ivan (S.J.), 193n20, 255n19; and Belliustin, 137 – 38, 238n10; conversion to Roman Catholicism, 210n19; and Guettée, 156, 243n16; La Russie sera-t-elle catholique?, 210nn19 – 21; on papal primacy in Russian liturgical works, 218n159; on Theiner, 200 – 201n64; and L’Union chrétienne, 47 – 48, 53, 55; See also Jesuits Gallican Church, 4, 85; Guizot on, 73; in Vasiliev’s correspondence with Jaquemet, 62 – 63, 68 – 70. See also France: churchstate relations in; Gallicanism; Roman Catholicism: in France Gallicanism: critics of, 193n19; in French Revolution, 195n35; of Guettée, 7, 11, 50 – 51, 154 – 56, 159, 169, 179; and opposition to Napoleon III, 217n138; and papal infallibility, 192n16; versus ultramontanism, 4, 18 – 19, 50. See also Guettée, René-François Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 32 Gazette du Nord, 49, 227n108, 228n117 Germany. See Prussia Golitsyn, Augustin (S.J.), 47; and freedom of conscience in Russia, 253n148, 253n151;

polemics with Guettée and Vasiliev, 63, 65, 156, 194n28, 215n91; propaganda and proselytizing efforts of, 89, 141 – 42, 209n10, 215n102, 240n47; on relationship between Russian and Greek churches, 207n170. See also Jesuits Golitsyn, Nikolai Borisovich (S.J., pseud. N. Boulgak), 156, 209n10, 243nn16 – 17. See also Jesuits Gorchakov, Alexander, 84, 87 – 88, 127, 203n105, 222n26, 232n174, 237n82 Gorsky, A. V., 160 Goubert, Émile, 170, 243n31, 249n105 Great Schism (1054), 13 – 14, 47, 137, 182; Orthodox publicists and, 15, 70, 119, 131; Roman Catholic writers on, 40, 104, 239n29 Grechulevich, Vitaly (archimandrite), 212n55 Greece, 150, 187, 232n174 Greeks (as ethnic group): and L’Union chrétienne, 170, 172, 249n118, 250n120; in France, 82, 84 – 87, 98, 187, 223n30. See also Eastern Orthodoxy: nomenclature for Gregory XVI (pope), 23, 29, 32, 203nn106 – 7 Guéroult, Adolphe, 101 Guettée, René-François [Vladimir]: and Alexander II’s stay in Paris, 149 – 51, 156 – 57; anti-Jesuitism of, 155 – 56, 160, 164; and archbishops of Paris, 154 – 55; on consecration of St. Alexander Nevsky Church and Leonty’s reception in Paris, 117, 120 – 25; conversion to Orthodoxy, 4 – 5, 7, 50, 52 – 53, 122, 139, 153, 159 – 64, 168, 170, 178 – 79, 193n18; death of, 163 – 64, 246n66; as defender of Orthodoxy and Russia, 8 – 9, 14 – 15, 53, 58, 159 – 64, 179 – 80, 182, 246n53; doctorate from Moscow Theological Academy, 155, 160, 163, 212n50, 245n45; ecumenism of, 14, 153, 160; French assessments of, 153 – 60, 162 – 63, 242n14, 244nn36 – 37, 244n40; Gallicanism and anti-ultramontanism of, 4 – 5, 7, 11, 50 – 51, 154 – 55, 159, 169, 179, 194n28, 242n5; Histoire de l’Église de France, 11, 50 – 51, 154, 156 – 57, 211nn31 – 32; involvement with and co-authorship of Vasiliev’s polemical letters, 61 – 62, 67 – 68, 70 – 71, 215nn91 – 92, 215n96, 217n138, 217n148, 218n155, 218n163, 219n175; lawsuits of, 51, 211n31, 211n33, 214n88, 242n6; marriage of, 246n66; L’Observateur catholique, 50 – 52, 155, 160; and Old Catholics, 250n127; and Overbeck, 177;

I n d e x     287 La Papauté schismatique, 155 – 56, 160; and positivists, 170, 243n31, 249n105; Russian appraisals of, 160 – 64, 171, 179, 250n126; Russian honors and citizenship, 157 – 58; Souvenirs, 51, 62, 155 – 56, 163, 194n28, 219n175, 245n49; trip to Russia (1865), 161, 245n49; and L’Union chrétienne, 14 – 15, 44, 51 – 54, 56, 58, 63, 78 – 79, 155, 169 – 73; and Vasiliev, 160 – 66, 168, 172 – 73, 175, 245n49, 250n126; works in Russian translation, 245n450 Guibert, Joseph Hippolyte (bishop), 93 Guizot, François, 14, 196n2; L’Église et la société chrétienne en 1861, 72 – 76; and Vasiliev’s polemical letters to, 72 – 78, 165, 167, 174, 176; on phases of church governance, 219n175. See also Guettée, René-François: involvement with and coauthorship of Vasiliev’s polemical letters Gurowski, Adam, 22 – 23 Hagia Sophia, 56, 80, 100, 230n140 Hapsburgs. See Austrian Empire Haussmann, Eugène, 80, 88, 102, 220n1 Haxthausen, August von, 46, 183, 201n81, 209n7, 210n19 Hello, Ernest, 53, 169, 212n45 Henningsen, Charles Frederick, 31, 100, 207n170; Revelations of Russia, 28 – 29, 202n83, 229n129. See also Robert, Cyprien Henry VIII (king), 5 Herzen, Alexander, 22, 38, 210n20, 214n83 Holy Alliance, 31, 36, 193n19 Holy Sepulcher, Church of, 37, 108 – 9, 221n7, 232n174 Holy Spirit, 75, 219n175 Holy Synod: 36, 63, 85, 137, 177 – 78; Archimandrite Feodor on, 174 – 75; canonicity of, 38 – 39, 67 – 68, 76, 174 – 75, 217n129, 251nn132 – 34; and churches and clergy abroad, 6, 185, 222n24, 224n48, 224n57, 225n63, 235n29; and consecration of St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 90, 94; Education Committee of, 164, 176; French characterizations of, 21, 27, 48, 63, 65 – 66, 70 – 71; and Guettée, 50, 160 – 61, 163, 246n53; oath of loyalty, 63, 65, 67 – 68, 200n55, 217n133; over-procurator(s) of, 6, 13, 27, 50, 65 – 66, 69, 72, 82, 88 – 89, 126 – 27, 160 – 61, 176, 185, 193n24, 200n64, 245n48, 250n126, 253n154, 253n155; reports of publicized, 200 – 201n64, 201n78; Russian Orthodox publicists on, 46, 67 – 72, 76 – 78; and L’Union chrétienne,

52, 54, 139,169, 172; Vasiliev’s reports and requests to, 37, 82 – 83, 127, 172, 209n7, 235n33; and Vasiliev’s polemical letters, 219n179. See also Russia: church-state relations in; Russian Orthodox Church Holy Trinity Cathedral (Paris), 2, 186 – 89, 191n2; 192nn5 – 6 Horrer, Marie Joseph de, 31, 134, 140, 199n48; Persécution et souffrances de l’Église catholique en Russie, 23 – 25, 27, 29; as source for other authors, 135, 239n36 Hungary, 33 – 34 Ianyshev, Ivan (archpriest), 122, 220n186, 225n65, 247n73 Illustration, L’, 95, 98, 147, 227n97 Immaculate Conception, dogma of, 11, 122, 155, 195n40 Index of Prohibited Books, 242n14; Guettée’s works on, 11, 50, 154 – 55, 157 – 61, 211n31, 244n40 Infallibility, papal, 71; dogma of, 4, 12, 14,; and Immaculate Conception, 11, 195n40; opposition to, 6, 11 – 12, 37, 156, 192n16, 200 – 201n64, 242n5. See also Vatican Council (1869–1870); Pius IX Institut slave catholique, 41 Isidor (Nikolsky, metropolitan), 161 – 62, 239n39 Islam, 27, 59, 85, 111 – 13, 233n180, 239n29; Orthodoxy likened to, 49 – 50, Istomin, K. 163, 179 Italy, 70, 88, 149; and revolutions of 1848 – 1849, 11, 19, 32; unification of, 6 – 7, 9, 43, 58 – 60, 72, 116, 194n27, 223n41; Izvolsky, Peter (over-procurator), 185 Jansenism, 7, 50, 155 – 56, 159, 169. Jaquemet, Antoine-Matthias-Alexandre (bishop), 134; context and summary of 1861 Lenten epistle, 58 – 61; critique of Russia as critique of Napoleon III, 60, 135, 139, 213n80; and Guettée, 214n88; French press coverage of polemic with Vasiliev, 63 – 65, 238n13; response to Vasiliev, 65 – 66; Russian press on Jaquemet-Vasiliev polemic, 130, 165 – 68, 174; Vasiliev’s letters to, 62 – 63, 67 – 70, 76 – 79, 176, 184, 218n155 Jean (Renneteau, archbishop-exarch), 187 Jelowicki, Alexander, 42 – 43, 237n74 Jesuits, 251n132; and Aloys Pichler incident, 242 – 43n14; anti-Jesuitism, 19 – 20,53 – 54, 155 – 56, 160, 200 – 201n64;

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Jesuits (continued) Guettée and, 50, 160, 162, 164, 170; and Napoleon III, 108; Paris a center of, 165; Russian, 48, 63, 72, 81, 137 – 38, 141 – 42, 156, 164, 173, 193n20, 210n19; and St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 81, 117, 124, 128 – 29, 237n74; Tiutchev on, 33; vow of obedience to pope, 19 – 20, 158. Jesus Christ, 136, 143; and iconography of St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 97, 123, 129, 228n110, 229n125, 229n128, 230n140; sole head of Orthodox Church, 36, 62 – 63, 77, 106, 119, 123, 167, 175, 184; and spiritual authority, 174 – 75, 251 – 52nn137 – 38, 252n140 Jews, 29, 69, 114, 117 Joachim II (patriarch), 172, 187 Journal de Bruxelles, 96, 156 – 57, 169 – 70, 242n14, 249n104 Journal de St.-Pétersbourg, 118, 127 Jouve, Abbé, 101 Judaism, 97, 103, 110 – 14 Kapelmans, Victor Ivanovich, 117 – 18, 125, 234n7 Katansky, Alexander, 166, 225n63, 245n48 Khomiakov, Aleksei, 13, 36, 55, 170, 177, 212n52 Kirill (patriarch), 1 – 2, 187 – 89, 191n2, 191 – 92n4, 256n32 Kiselev, Nikolai Dmitrievich, 37, 82 – 84, 86 Kiselev, Pavel Dmitrievich: and authorization to build St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 84, 86 – 88, 110, 112, 128; and consecration, 92 – 94, 125; named on cornerstone, 224n57; purchase of land for church, 224n49 Koporsky, Alexei, 230nn136 – 37 Kuzmin, Roman Ivanovich, 99, 224n57 Lacordaire, Jean-Baptiste-Henri Dominique: on Greek schism, 137, 239n29; and liberal ultra-montanism, 18 – 19; sermon insulting Russians, 41, 55, 206n165, 212 – 13n57, 213n63 La Guéronnière, Étienne-Arthur DubreuilHélion, Vicomte de, 59 Lamennais, Félicité de, 18 – 19, 22, 197n7 Larousse, Pierre, 182, 244n37, 244n40 La Tour, Gustav de, 134 – 35, 169, 238n16 Laurentie, Pierre-Sébastien, 33 – 36, 46, 141 legitimacy, 194 – 95n32; Legitimists (proBourbon monarchists) in France, 25, 33, 35, 103, 112, 147. See also Union, L’

Leonty (Lebedinsky, bishop): correspondence and memoirs, 126 – 27; and Guettée, 160, 162 – 63; Metropolitan of Moscow, 225n62; officiating in Paris, 90 – 95, 100 – 101, 107, 117 – 26, 226n75, 226n84, 226n94, 227n109, 236n64, 248n98. See also St. Alexander Nevsky Church: consecration of Le Rebours, Almyre (abbé), 63 – 65 Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole: L’Empire des tsars et les Russes, 182 – 84, 255n19 Lestrelin, Achille, 229n129, 231n162 Lesur, Charles Louis, 21 Levesque, Pierre Charles, 200n55 Levitsky, Sergei, 95, 226n96 Lhuys, Édouard Drouyn de, 86, 206 – 7nn166 – 67 liberalism, 18, 22, 113 – 14, 117 – 18, 134 – 35, 142 – 44, 189. See also Roman Catholicism: liberal Catholics Lisbon Treaty, 189 London Illustrated News, 95 Louis-Napoleon (Prince-President). See Napoleon III Luquet, Jean-Félix-Onésime (bishop), 26, 218n159 Lvovsky, Grigory Fedorovich, 227 – 28n109 Maistre, Joseph de, 112; Du pape, 193n19, 199n46, 218n159, 229n129, 233n179; law of schismatic churches, 24, 110, 193n19; on relationship between Russian and Greek churches, 207n170; source for Roman Catholic authors, 66 – 67, 100, 204n133, 205n139, 239n36; ultramontanism of, 19, 69 – 70, 74. See also ultramontanism Makary (Bulgakov, metropolitan), 182, 225n62, 253 – 54n155, 255n19 Mars, Victor de, 30 – 31 Marshall, Thomas William M., 138, 239n36 Martin, Victor, 66 Mary (Mother of God), 108, 123, 129, 143, 237n77 Merzer, René du, 147 Michael (Cerularius, patriarch), 137 Michaud, Eugène, 160, 250n127 Michon, Jean-Hippolyte, 37 – 39, 86 Mickiewicz, Adam, 22, 28 Mieczyslawka, Makrena, 29 Migne, Jacques-Paul, 39, 242n1 Milonas, Nicolo, 84 – 86, 223n30, 223n34 Monceau Park, 102

I n d e x     289 Monde, Le, 37, 254n2; on Alexander II and Te Deum, 146 – 49, 151, 241n72, 241n80; circulation, 215n104; on St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 92, 112 – 13, 228n110, 234n194; on L’Union chrétienne, 169; on Vasiliev-Jaquemet polemic, 63 – 65, 134 – 35, 238n13 Monde illustré, Le, 88, 95, 95, 98, 227nn97 – 98 Moniteur, Le, 228n110 Montalembert, Charles Forbes René de, 18 – 19, 22, 25, 202n88 Mopinot, Émile, 158 Morlot (archbishop), 51, 154 Moscow Patriarchate (pre-Petrine), 38 – 39, 65, 67, 183, 186, 209n7. See also Peter I: church reform of Moscow Patriarchate (since 1917–1918), activities in western Europe, 1 – 3, 186 – 88, 256n32, 256n34; jurisdictions of in western Europe, 2, 187, 192n8. See also Kirill Moscow Theological Academy, 155, 160, 212n50 Muraviev, Andrei Nikolaevich, 47, 182, 208n4; interest in church-state reform, 174, 251n132; Question religieuse d’Orient et d’Occident, 36 – 37; and Pogodin, 240n46; Le Raskol, 45 – 46, 135, 146, 208n2, 239n36 Muslims. See Islam Nantes, Diocese of, 61, 214n86. See also Jaquemet, Antoine-Matthias-Alexandre Napoleon Bonaparte, 19, 71, 74, 184, 197n8, 223n30; campaign of 1812 and Russophobia, 20 – 21, 34 Napoleonic Wars, 38 Napoleon III (emperor), 53; and assassination attempt against Alexander II, 145, 232n173; and consecration of St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 80, 93 – 94; and Gallicanism, 154, 217n138, 242n5, 250n126; Italian policy of and French Catholics, 6 – 7, 9, 19 – 20, 58 – 60, 69, 79, 88, 134 – 35, 137, 139, 152, 194n27, 213n80, 217n138; and Milonas, 85; and the Near East, 30, 207n167, 223n30; and Russia, 9, 41, 84, 87 – 88, 128, 132, 168, 223n41, 224n52, 224n57; and Vasiliev, 43, 108, 208n175, 237n74. See also Eugénie (empress); France: and Rome nationalism: German, 31; in Ottoman Empire, 40. See also Alexander Nevsky Church, Saint: and Russian religious nationalism; Crimean War: and Russian religious nationalism;

Russia: providentialism and religious nationalism in Neale, John Mason, 13, 205n135, 246n63 Nesselrode, Karl Robert, 84, 207n171, 222n26 Nettement, Alfred, 103 Nicholas I (tsar), 49, 198n31; avoidance of religious polemics, 212 – 13n57; and Chaadaev, 18; death of, 134; foreign policy of, 116, 203n102, 203nn106 – 7; as persecutor of Poles and Uniates, 22, 25, 26, 29, 32, 39, 41, 43, 63 – 65, 132, 145; and requests for new church in Paris, 83, 85, 87; supposed aims in Crimean War, 42; symbol of reaction, 35; and Tiutchev, 31 – 35; visit to Rome, 32 – 35 Nicholas, Saint, 21, 81, 221n10 Nord Le, 210n20; on consecration of Russian church, 94, 118, 120, 124; founding of, 44, 61; French perceptions of, 140, 214nn83 – 84; on polemical works of Sushkov and Vasiliev, 63, 66, 76, 248n84; on religious toleration, 111 – 14; on Russian clergy, 139 – 40. See also Russia: Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Old Believers. See Muraviev, Andrei Nikolaevich: Le Raskol; Russia: Old Believers in Old Catholics, 7, 14, 160, 164, 173, 250n127, 255n19 Opinion nationale, L’, 98, 101, 111, 124; on Leonty, 226n75; on St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 228n110 Organic Articles, 9, 18, 51, 68. See also France: church-state relations in Oriental Society for the Union of All Christians of the East, 40 – 41 Orlovsky, Vladimir, 164 – 66 Orthodox Catholic Review Ottoman Empire, 3, 32, 85 – 86; attempts to preserve, 42, 151, 223n30; Christians in, 40, 86, 207n171; and Crimean War, 39 – 40; and Holy sites, 109; French interests in, 29 – 30, 42 – 43,; and Russian Panslavism, 21 – 22, 98, 149; religious toleration in, 233n180; in seventeenth century, 240n58; viewed as preferable to Russia, 202 – 3n94; sultan of, 150 Overbeck, Joseph Julian, 177, 247n73 Palmer, William, 5 – 7, 13, 193n20, 207n170, 246n63, 254n2; meeting with Pius IX, 182, 248n95, 254n3. See also Anglicanism

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Panslavism, 133, 176, 222n26; and Gorchakov, 237n82; of Pogodin, 238n6; and Russophobia, 21 – 23, 28, 30 – 32, 39 – 40, 134 – 35, 149 – 50, 238n16; and St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 97 – 98, 116 – 17, 129 – 30, 237nn82 – 83; and St. Nicholas Church in Prague, 185, 255n22; of Tiutchev, 203n102 Papacy, 89 – 90, 107, 148; as bulwark against revolution, 71 – 73; as bulwark against Russian imperialism, 33 – 35, 40, 43; as center of Catholic unity, 9, 14, 26, 44, 59 – 60, 66, 135 – 37, 139, 141 – 43; as counter to intrusive state policies, 4, 18 – 20; Napoleon III and, 194n27; Orthodox critiques of, 31 – 33, 52, 54 – 55, 67, 70, 73 – 76, 108, 119, 122, 124, 151, 154, 159, 165, 205n135, 216n128, 245n48, 251 – 52n138; precarious situation and potential collapse of, 3, 11 – 15, 54, 118, 130 – 31, 167 – 70, 179 – 80, 185; spiritual authority of, 11 – 12, 104, 217n149, 242n5; temporal power of, 6 – 7, 11, 13 – 14, 19 – 20, 32 – 33, 43 – 44, 52, 58 – 59, 67, 69 – 71, 73 – 75, 79, 131, 133 – 35, 152, 154, 161 – 62, 205n135, 217n149, 242n5. See also Gallicanism; infallibility, papal; Italy; Pius IX (pope); ultramontanism. Paris: as capital of Europe or second capital of Roman Catholicism, 7, 57, 84, 102, 151, 165, 178; Mandarin Chinese in, 113; non-Russian Orthodox Christians and chapels in, 82, 84 – 86, 98, 187; political and Polish exiles in, 22; Russian diaspora in, 87, 188, 223 – 24n42, 257n40; Treaty of (see Crimean War). See also tour guides Parisians, 82; and St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 88 – 89, 91 – 96, 101 Patrie, La, 99,229n120 Paul (tsar), 39 Pelleport, Vladimir de la Fite de (Petr Artamov, pseud.), 205 – 6n146; on consecration of St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 93, 117, 124 – 25, 128; on Gagarin, 210n20; on tsar as head of Russian church, 37 – 39, 216n128; translation of Oblomov, 228n117 Peter, Saint, 33, 72, 156 Peter I (tsar), 17, 63; church reform of, 21, 24, 27, 38 – 39, 45 – 48, 65, 67 – 68, 183, 200n55, 202n87, 205n135, 208n3, 209n7, 219n179; and Old Believers, 46; “Testament” of, 20 – 21, 41, 43, 198n19, 202n91 Petit Journal, Le, 148, 150 – 51, 241n79

Photius (patriarch), 42, 104, 137, 205n139; Eastern Church labeled “Photian,” 238n6 Pie, Louis-Édouard (bishop), 69, 213n80, 217n138 Piedmont. See Italy Pierling, Paul (S.J.), 254n2 Pius IX (pope), 109; encyclical to the Eastern Orthodox bishops, 32, 40; and freedom of conscience, 178; and liberal Catholics, 4, 6, 20, 197n16; and Palmer, 182, 248n98, 254n3; and papal authority, 11, 14; and revolutions of 1848 – 1849, 11, 19, 43. See also Italy; papacy; revolutions of 1848 – 1849 photography, 95, 226nn95 – 96 Platon (Levshin, metropolitan), 184, 253 – 54n155 Pobedonostsev, Konstantin P. (overprocurator), 253n154, 255n19, 255n27 Poggenpol’, Nicholas Petrovich, 214nn83 – 84 Pogodin, Mikhail, 133, 140, 176, 238n7, 240n46, 245n49, 253n151 Poland: in and after 1863, 97, 109, 132, 141, 144 – 45; Kingdom of, 21, 23, 90, 132, 149 – 50, 246n54; Polish question, 3, 21 – 22, 112 – 13, 132 – 34, 237n1; proPolish sympathy in Paris, 25, 71, 90, 115, 145 – 46, 157; Polish refugees in Paris, 145; revolution of 1830 – 1831, 20, 22; Russian Orthodox churches in, 221n11, 255n24; St. John Sobiewski, 240n58. See also Roman Catholicism: Catholic subjects in Russian Empire Poles, 32, 43, 63, 65 Polisadov, Vasily Petrovich (archpriest): marriage of, 225n65; positions held by, 83, 222n19; as reformer, 176; on St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 90 – 95, 117 – 23, 125, 128; on L’Union chrétienne, 54 – 58; on Vasiliev, 166 Pope. See papacy pope(s) (term for Russian white clergy): examples of usage, 43, 89, 113, 134 – 35, 139, 156, 209n7; explained, ix – x Popov, Evgeny (archpriest), 6, 13, 250n127, 253 – 54n155, 255n21 Popovitsky, Alexander, 36; and freedom of conscience, 234n8; praise for Vasiliev, 168; on St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 117, 122 – 23, 125; support for white clergy, 165, 247nn74 – 75 Porfiry (Popov, archimandrite), 248n95, 254nn2 – 3

I n d e x     291 Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, 55, 124, 126, 170, 172, 215n100 Presse, La: on Alexander II in Paris, 145, 148, 241n7, 241n77; on St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 89, 94, 98 – 99, 112, 228n110 Pressensé, Edmond de, 160 Presse religieuse, La, 37 – 39, 86 Prilezhaev, Vasily Aleksandrovich (priest), 49, 80 – 81, 106, 227n108. See also Description de L’Église russe de Paris Protasov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (overprocurator), and Palmer, 13; Roman Catholics on, 27, 69, 72, 200n64; and Vasiliev, 35, 82, 86 Protestantism, 148, 156; Guizot on, 72 – 73; legally recognized in France, 103, 110 – 14; in imperial Russia, 162; of Nesselrode, 84; Orthodox publicists and, 54, 79, 164, 169, 173, 179, 182, 254nn4 – 5; Orthodox publicists on, 32, 56, 58, 69, 74 – 75, 91, 119, 122, 177 – 78, 205n139; Orthodoxy considered as, 108, 112 – 13, 205n139, 233n185; Roman Catholic depictions of, 193n18, 239n29; of specific individuals, 160, 177 Prussia, 90 – 91, 177 – 78, 241n72, 244n32; German unification, 116, 149 public opinion, differentiated from public image, 194n31 purgatory, 108 Putin, Vladimir, 1 – 2, 188, 191 – 92n4 Raievsky, Mikhail (archpriest), 49 René, 104 – 7 Replovsky, Parfeny Lukich (deacon), 55, 126, 170 – 72 Revue des deux mondes, 28, 30 – 31 revolutions of 1848 – 1849, 3, 10, 19, 31 – 32, 83 – 84, 111; and ecumenical aspirations, 13; and papacy, 11, 19, 32, 43 Riancey, Henri-Léon Camusat de, 147 Richard, Jules, 99 – 101 Rimsky, S. V., 77 – 78, 218n155, 219n179 Robert, Adrien, 99, 228n110 Robert, Cyprien, 28, 202n83, 202n91 Roman Catholicism: authority as basic principle of, 72 – 73; as bulwark against revolution, 34 – 36, 144; Catholic subjects in Russian Empire, 23 – 26, 29, 63, 65, 71, 87 – 88, 90, 110, 112 – 13, 115, 132, 140 – 41, 158, 216n106, 249n104, 253n154; converts to, 5, 45, 47 – 48, 66, 69 – 70, 72, 81, 133, 137 – 38, 141 – 42, 153, 165, 185, 193n20, 194n28, 207n170; cracks in

dominant narrative about Orthodoxy, 181 – 84, 220n186, 254nn3 – 4; eastern rite mission in Paris, 40 – 41, 206n162; and Eastern question, 29 – 30; as fount of civilization, 20, 28, 138, 141 – 42, 152; in France, 4 – 5, 11 – 12, 14 – 15, 18 – 20, 40 – 43, 50 – 52, 58 – 63, 68 – 70, 73, 78 – 79, 81, 84 – 85, 87 – 88, 91 – 93, 96, 103 – 4, 107 – 8, 110 – 11, 114 – 15, 122, 124 – 25, 128 – 31, 134 – 35, 137 – 44, 147, 152, 154, 158, 177 – 78, 237n77, 240n49; and freedom of conscience, 178 – 79; in Ireland, 71; joint agreement between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, 189; liberal Catholics, 4, 6, 18 – 20, 22, 25, 41, 50, 55, 106, 141 – 44, 178, 182, 192n16, 197n12, 197nn15 – 16, 240n55, 253n148, 253n151; opposition to dominance of, 81, 114, 167, 222n24; propaganda and proselytizing of Russian converts to in Paris, 45, 47 – 48, 51 – 52, 54, 141 – 42, 153, 184 – 85, 209n10, 210n19, 215n102, 218n159; Russian publicists’ characterizations of, 32 – 33, 36 – 37, 117 – 22, 126, 128, 141, 160 – 63, 173, 178; sympathy for in Russian Empire, 18, 24, 49, 63, 141 – 42, 200n52; vis‑à-vis Protestantism, 71 – 75. See also Gallicanism, Jesuits, ultramontanism; Uniates Roman question. See papacy Romanov, Constantine Nikolaevich, Grand Duke, 49 Romanova, Alexandra Fedorovna (empress), 220n3 Romanova, Elena Pavlovna (grand duchess), 49, 200n52, 211n23, 211n25 Romanova, Elizabeth Mikhailovna (grand duchess), 220n3, 235n29 Romanova, Maria Alexandrovna (empress), 245n50 Romanova, Maria Nikolaevna, (grand duchess), 167 Roy, Just-Jean-Étienne, 201n81, 207n170 Rozaven, Jean-Louis (priest, S. J.), 141 – 42, 240n47, 240n49 Rumine, Gabriel de, 49 Russia: as Asiatic, 24, 28, 199 – 200n49; beneficiary of western freedoms, 177 – 78; church-state relations in, 1 – 6, 15 – 16, 23 – 27, 60, 62 – 72, 77 – 78, 140 – 41, 158, 167, 174 – 76, 183 – 84, 191 – 92nn3 – 4, 209n7, 219n179; 251nn132 – 34; colossus of Nebuchadnezzar, 136, 239n22; conversion to Christianity, 2; diaspora, 87, 188,

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Russia (continued) 223 – 24n42, 257n40; and France, 10, 87 – 88, 108 – 9, 127 – 28, 223n41; embassy and ambassadors in France, 37, 60 – 61, 83 –  84, 86 – 88, 91 – 94; Foreign Affairs, Ministry of, 8 – 9, 31, 44, 61, 83, 108 – 9, 112, 118, 127, 140, 185, 222n24, 255n27, 256n32; government of, 66; Great Power status, 195; imperial ambitions, 34 – 35, 149, 152; national hymn, 145; national identity, 2 – 3, 17 – 18, 116, 128, 158, 165, 184 – 85, 188 – 89, 191 – 92n4, 210 – 11n21, 221n6; and Near East, 233n180; Old Believers in, 46, 64; political exiles of, 22, 45; providentialism and religious nationalism in, 4, 7, 9 – 10, 16, 31 – 36, 57, 116 – 18, 124, 129 – 31, 152, 167 – 69, 176, 179 – 80, 185, 235n29; reforms in, 4, 15 – 16, 132 – 33, 139 – 41, 153, 173 – 80, 195n39; religious legislation in, 39, 63, 256n33; religious toleration in, 28 – 29, 97, 144, 158 – 59, 176 – 79, 233n180, 245n48; Russian Federation and Europe, 186 – 89; Russification policies, 132. See also Journal de St.-Pétersbourg; Le Nord; Roman Catholicism: Catholic subjects in Russian Empire, sympathy for in Russian Empire; Russian clergy; Russian Orthodox Church Russian clergy: characterizations of, 21, 24 – 25, 27 – 29, 46 – 48, 63 – 65, 83, 105, 133 – 41, 143, 152, 169 – 70, 176, 179, 201n78, 202n83, 202n92, 204n133, 209n7, 249n104; in foreign service, 6, 8, 91, 96, 172 – 73, 252n143; white clergy, 164 – 65, 173, 201n78, 202n92, 247nn74 – 75. See also pope(s); Popov, Evgeny; Russian Orthodox Church: role of churches and clergy abroad; Vasiliev, Iosif Vasilievich Russian Miscellany Abroad. See A. Franck Russkiy Mir Foundation, 188, 257n43 Russian Orthodox Church: and Anglicans, 5 – 6, 13, 171; Aksakov on, 177 – 79; alleged fanaticism of, 89 – 90, 148 – 49; Archimandrite Feodor on, 174 – 75; attempts to court converts and dissidents, 6, 193n24, 196n53, 242 – 43n14; and canon law, 251n134; defensive nature of Orthodox publicity campaign, 184 – 85; in England, 1, 6, 185, 187, 191n2, 194 – 95n32, 250n127, 255n21; in France, 1 – 4, 82 – 84, 86 – 88, 185 – 89, 194 – 95n32, 220n3, 223n41 (see also Alexander Nevsky Church, Saint); Guettée as defender of, 52 – 53; joint agreement between Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis, 189; lacking missionary

zeal and preaching, 28 – 29, 47, 64, 143 – 44, 152, 176; open to Jansenists, Protestants, and sectarians, 156, 169 – 70; in other European countries, 55 – 56, 81, 83, 91, 185, 220n3, 222n24, 235n29, 255nn22 – 24; perceived as threat to West, 1 – 3, 8 – 9, 13, 20, 23, 25 – 26, 30 – 35, 41 – 43, 144, 148 – 49, 152, 189; post-revolutionary jurisdictional conflicts, 186 – 88; post-Soviet religious revival, 188 – 89, 257n44; reformist sentiment and self-criticism in, 45 – 46, 133 – 36, 140 – 41, 176, 252n143; in relation to other Orthodox churches, 5, 67 – 68, 86, 88 – 89, 183 – 84, 187 – 88, 193n20; role of churches and clergy abroad, 6 – 8, 10, 45, 48 – 49, 61, 66, 107, 172 – 73, 176,179 – 80, 181 – 82, 184 – 85, 194 – 95n32, 195n38, 221n10, 235n29, 253 – 54n155; schism and sectarianism within, 45 – 46, 209n7; Vasiliev’s interpretation of relations with state, 62 – 63, 67 – 70, 72, 76 – 78, 167; viewed as enslaved or subordinated to state, 1 – 6, 8 – 9, 23 – 30, 35 – 37, 40, 44, 46, 48, 59 – 60, 62 – 71, 78, 133 – 38, 141, 143 – 44, 146 – 52, 173 – 74, 182 – 84, 191 – 92n4, 204n133, 219n179, 219n184, 240n46; in western borderlands, 81, 221n7, 221n11, 255n24; in Wiesbaden, 121 – 22, 220n3, 235n29; worship of characterized as superficial, 100, 143 – 44, 229n129. See also Alexander Nevsky Church, Saint; Holy Synod; Moscow Patriarchate; Peter I: church reform of; Russia: church-state relations in; Russian clergy Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, 186 Russian Revolution (1917), 181, 187 Russophobia, 8 – 9, 13, 197n17, 198n19; defined, 195n36; development of, 20 – 21; in England, 197 – 98nn18 – 19, 198n27, 198n29; in France, 41 – 42, 131, 198n31; origins of term, 195n36; Panslavism and, 21 – 23, 28, 30 – 32; Poland and, 131, 237n1; Roman Catholicism and, 23 – 29, 41 – 43, 109, 141 – 42, 148. See also Eastern Orthodoxy: negative characterizations of; Panslavism; Russian Orthodox Church: perceived as threat to West Sacred Heart (Sacré-Coeur): cult of, 122; Basilica at Montmartre, 130, 237n84 Savva (Tikhomirov, archbishop), 245n45, 245n49, 247n75, 249n106, 254nn2 – 3 Second Empire. See France: Second Empire

I n d e x     293 Semaine de familles, La, 103 – 7, 138 Semashko, Iosif, 39 Serfs, emancipation of, 134, 144, 204n133 Sergei (Stragorodsky, patriarch), 186 Sheremetev, Count, 97, 227n109 Shuvalov, Grigory Petrovich, 47 – 48, 105, 133, 209n10, 209n10, 239n36 Sibour, Marie-Dominique-Auguste (archbishop of Paris), 19, 42, 109, 154, 157 – 58, 169 – 70, 242n1 Siècle, Le: and Roman Catholicism, 113, 233n191; on St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 100, 103, 112 – 13, 226n75, 227 – 28nn109 – 10. See also Texier, Edmond Skripitsyn, Valery Valerievich, 218n157 Slavophile-Westerner controversy, 17 – 18. See also Slavophilism; Westernism Slavophilism, 13, 30, 176, 253n144; legacy of, 237n83; and St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 10, 57, 116, 129 – 30. See also Aksakov, Ivan; Alexander Nevsky Church, Saint (Paris): and Russian religious nationalism; Khomiakov, Aleksei; Russia: providentialism and religious nationalism in; Slavophile-Westerner controversy; Tiutchev, Fyodor Society of Antiquarians of the West, 138 – 39 Sorokin, Evgraf and Paul, 99, 229n125 Souaillard, Jean-Marie, 112, 176, 209n7, 252n142 Strannik, 55, 58, 72, 126, 161, 212n55 Strasbourg, 188 Sturdza, Alexander, 193n19. See also Holy Alliance Sushkov, Sergei: and Guettée, 7, 160; on religious toleration in France, 113 – 14; response to Deputy Bernard-Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac, 248n84; and L’Union chrétienne, 48, 51 – 52, 56, 139 – 40, 170 – 71, 218n159; on Vasiliev’s correspondence, 61 – 62, 215n92, 215n96 Syllabus of Errors, 4, 12, 178 Temps, Le, 99 Terletsky, Ippolit, 40 – 41, 47, 206n162, 212 – 13n57 Texier, Edmond, 95, 100 – 101, 103, 112 – 13, 117, 234n194. See also Siècle, Le Theiner, Augustin, 29, 31, 134; L’Église schismatique russe, 25 – 28, 200 – 201n64, 218n159; Muraviev and, 46, 174, 251n132; source for Roman Catholic authors, 135, 200 – 201n64, 239n36, 240n55; Vicissitudes

de l’Église catholique des deux rites en Pologne et en Russie, 23 Tikhon (Bellavin, patriarch), 186) Tiutchev, Fyodor, 30 – 36, 47, 144, 203n102, 203n105 Tolstoy, Alexander Petrovich (overprocurator), 6, 50, 127, 193n24, 210n21, 212n44, 253 – 54n155 Tolstoy, Dmitry (over-procurator), 161, 176, 245n48, 247n75 tour guides, 7, 96, 102, 109 – 10, 182 Trimm, Timothée (pseud. for Léo Lespès), 150 – 51 tsarism, 28 tsar-pope myth: and Alexander II’s visit to Paris, 146 – 52; defined, 8 – 9; efforts to debunk, 15, 36, 37 – 38, 70, 149 – 51, 182 – 84, 209n7; French constructions of, 31, 37 – 38, 42 – 43, 59 – 60, 66, 134, 141229n129, 231n162; in Henningsen, 28; Panslavism and, 31, 34 – 36; See also Caesaropapism; Eastern Orthodoxy: negative characterizations of; Russian Orthodox Church: viewed as enslaved or subordinated to state Turkey. See Ottoman Empire Turks, Turkish, 17, 56 Ukraine, 2, 127, 161, 163, 206n162. See also Crimea ultramontanism: and anti-Russian sentiment, 109, 113, 115, 117, 132, 139; anti-ultramontanism, 4, 12, 20, 50, 74, 113 – 14, 160, 181, 219n171, 244n40; defined, 4; democratic variety of, 18 – 19, 197n7; and French Revolution, 9, 197n8; Guizot on, 73; intransigent, 6, 19, 106, 141, 197n15; of Jesuits, 20; origins of, 8 – 9, 217n138; Orthodox characterizations of, 55, 57 – 58, 70, 124, 133, 167, 233n185; and papal infallibility, 14; press organs of, 19, 37, 39, 146, 242n1. See also Gallicanism; Guettée, René-François: Gallicanism and anti-ultramontanism of; infallibility, papal; Maistre, Joseph de; Roman Catholicism Uniates, 218n159; abolition of last Uniate diocese, 132; Orthodox publicists on, 39, 216n110, 216n113; western publicists on, 23 – 26, 29, 32, 41, 63, 65, 90, 145, 202n88, 216n110 Union, L’, 33, 112, 146 – 47, 209n7 Union chrétienne, L’: accused of latitudinarianism, 171 – 72; anti-papism and anti-ultramontanism of, 57 – 58, 124,

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Union chrétienne, L’ (continued) 162; attempted censorship of, 244n32; and Belliustin, 139 – 40; and Catholic press, 53, 63, 169 – 70, 249n104; and converts to Orthodoxy, 247n73; ecumenism of, 54 – 58, 162, 166, 169 – 71, 173, 177; on Feodor, 175; and Khomiakov, 55, 212n55; not licensed to discuss politics, 150; origins of, 48 – 53, 211n40; other contributors to, 218n157; praised by Greeks and Ecumenical Patriarch, 250n120; reception of in France, 169 – 70; reception of in Russia, 52 – 58, 61, 169 – 73, 177 – 78, 212n44, 248n85, 249n106; and Russian Jesuits, 141; and St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 57, 121 – 24, 127, 153; significance of, 173; subscribers, 235n29; and tsar-pope myth, 139, 151; and Vasiliev, 14 – 15, 44, 51 – 58, 71 – 72, 78 – 79, 139, 153, 165 – 73 United States, 89, 177 – 78, Univers, L’: anti-Orthodoxy of, 26, 29 – 30; circulation, 215 – 16n104; editors of, 39, 42, 199n48; intransigent ultramontanism of, 19; Russian publicists on, 53, 213n70 Universal Exposition (1867), 144, 148 Urusov, Sergei Nikolaevich, 52 – 53, 170, 212n44, 249n106 Vaillant, Jean-Baptiste Philibert, 43, 80 Vasiliev, Dmitry Vasilievich (archpriest), 164 Vasiliev, Iosif Vasilievich (archpriest), 35, 38, 41, 157; on anti-Russian sentiment over Poland, 132 – 33; and Bjerring and Overbeck, 177, 247n73; chair of Holy Synod’s Education Committee, 164, 176, 247n75; on church-state relations, 60 – 72, 75 – 79, 110 – 11, 215n100, 217n138, 233n181, 251n133; correspondence with French bishops, 45, 58, 60 – 72, 78 – 79, 134, 165 – 68, 174 – 76, 184, 216n113, 217n129, 218n155, 219n184, 238n13, 248n84, 248n95, 249n118; during Crimean War, 42 – 43, 207 – 8nn172 – 73, 208n175, 237n74; ecumenism of, 14, 171, 255n19; and Feodor, 175, 251 – 52nn137 – 38, 252n40; founding and consecration of St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 7, 9 – 10, 14 – 15, 57, 79, 82 – 86, 88 – 89, 107, 118, 121,

125, 165, 168 – 69, 186, 209n7, 224n57, 225n63, 233n178, 248n98; and French clergy in Paris, 165 – 66, 247nn78 – 79, 248n91; and Guettée, 160 – 66, 168, 172 – 73; and Guizot, 72 – 77, 165, 167, 174, 176, 219n175; marriage of, 225n65; and Michon, 37, 39; obstructed by local officials, 111 – 12; offiant at Te Deum (1867), 147, 150, 241n79; and other Orthodox publicists, 46 – 47; pan-Orthodox vision of, 187 – 88; as priest-publicist, 8 – 9, 14 – 15, 49 – 50, 80 – 81, 105 – 6, 124, 179 – 80, 182, 232n170, 253 – 54n155; return to Russia, 10; and Roman Catholic propaganda and proselytism in Paris, 47 – 48, 165, 179, 210n21, 212 – 13n57; Russian appraisals of, 164 – 69, 172 – 73, 179, 219n179, 247n72, 247n75, 248nn84 – 85; and L’Union chrétienne, 14 – 15, 44, 51 – 58, 78 – 79, 139, 153, 165 – 73, 211n40, 212n44, 235n29; and visitors to St. Alexander Nevsky Church, 96 – 97, 107 – 9, 126 – 27, 129. See also Description de L’Église russe de Paris Vatican Council (1869–1870), 3, 6 – 7, 10 – 12, 14. See also infallibility, papal; Pius IX Vera i razum, 51, 161, 163 Verger, Jean-Louis, 154, 157 – 58, 169 – 70 Veuillot, Eugène, 42, 56, 58, 202 – 3n94, 207n170 Veuillot, Louis, 19, 39, 56, 58, 146, 202 – 3n94, 212n45. See also ultramontanism; Univers, L’ Viazemsky, Peter (prince), 235n29 Villecourt, Clement (bishop), 42 – 43 Vladimir, Saint, 2, 4, 137 Voix de la Verité, La, 37, 39 Vretos, Marinos Papadopoulos, 95, 98, 228n113 Vyrubov, Grigory Nikolaevich, 170, 183, 243n31, 249n105 Waziers, Van Der Cruysse de, 138, 239n36 Westernism: Roman Catholic, 18, 142, 144, 196n4. See also Chaadaev, Peter; Slavophile-Westerner controversy William I (king), 146