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” (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.
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 over-procurator’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
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
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 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 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). 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 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
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 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 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.
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
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. 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
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 forty-eight 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 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 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 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 two-branched 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, 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
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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 anti-Orthodox 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 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 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.