Read … the letter of Protopriest Polisadov about the journey of his grace Leonty to Paris, about the consecration of our Orthodox church there, and about the descriptions and judgments of the Catholic Abbé Guettée about this celebration and his beautiful panegyric to our Orthodoxy. It is interesting and comforting to read his judgments about the respect that our spiritual mission had in Paris. The metropolitan [Filaret Drozdov] it seems is very satisfied with this foreign reception, and even told me … that he recently received a letter from England from an English priest who turned to Orthodoxy and is asking to be confirmed in the ranks of the Orthodox clergy.
—A. B. Neidgart to Archbishop Savva Tikhomirov, 1861
St. Alexander Nevsky Church and the polemical activities of Guettée and Vasiliev represented a multipronged effort to educate westerners about Orthodoxy, dispel anti-Orthodox prejudices, counter the proselytizing efforts of Russian converts to Roman Catholicism, expose papist errors, and pave the way for reunification of the churches. Portrayals of Guettée, Vasiliev, and L’Union chrétienne by their contemporaries shed light on Orthodoxy’s public image—as understood by westerners and as imagined by Russian publicists. In Russia, Guettée’s and Vasiliev’s Orthodox contemporaries saw providential significance in the Paris church, and believing the hand of Providence was at work, they exaggerated how influential Guettée, Vasiliev, and their periodical—charged with a lofty educating and ecumenical mission—really were. Orthodox publicists linked Guettée’s conversion, the polemical activity of both priests, and L’Union chrétienne to Russia’s national destiny and interpreted these developments as signs that Orthodoxy’s global prestige was on the rise. Yet while the activities of the priest-publicists in Paris reflected and contributed to the mood of religious nationalism, the confrontation with the Russian Church’s negative public image abroad also fueled reformist sentiment in Russia.
Naturally, there were differences in how Guettée, the Catholic press, and the Russian Orthodox press represented his evolution from the papal to the Russian fold. While Russian publicists tended to see the French priest’s Orthodox conversion as a sure sign that Orthodoxy’s international stature was rising, the Catholic press was quite silent, except for a few occasions when Guettée’s reception into the Russian Church provided another excuse for Orthodox-bashing. Russian publicists overlooked the fact that he could be a liability as well as an asset.
Guettée saw himself as one of very few principled ecclesiastics in France. After he had become alienated from the most visible Catholic personalities of the 1850s, he portrayed them in his memoirs as opportunists who jettisoned their principles to advance their careers.1 Somewhat narcissistically, Guettée interpreted himself to be the victim of a conspiratorial “systematic silence,” and took the silence as evidence of his irrefutable argumentation against cowardly adversaries who wanted to “kill” his work.2 His career was fraught with harassment. Several episodes stand out: his problems with the Index that began in 1852, setting in motion the series of events that led to his reception in the Russian Church; the withdrawal of his permission to celebrate in Paris by Archbishop Morlot (archbishop of Paris from 1857 to 1862); and allegations that he was an interdicted priest and had been implicated in Jean-Louis Verger’s assassination of Archbishop Sibour. These episodes stained his reputation among Catholics, making him a somewhat problematic individual to entrust with the defense of Orthodoxy.
After his history of the French Church was placed on the Index, Guettée became embroiled in a public controversy in January 1857. Immediately on succeeding the assassinated Sibour, Archbishop Morlot withdrew Guettée’s celebret—a special permission to serve mass outside his home diocese (Blois)—provoking a fierce appeal in which Guettée argued that without a trial and condemnation, depriving a priest of his authority to celebrate was an abuse of power and an act of episcopal despotism, contrary to all divine and ecclesiastical laws.3 He had not committed a sanctionable offense, as Morlot’s predecessor had even acknowledged in a letter to Guettée.4 Withdrawal of the celebret was not interdiction. Nonetheless, in the aftermath of this publicized case, some newspapers referred to Guettée as an interdicted priest when Guettée, known to be the author of a Gallican memorandum to Napoleon III that railed against the temporal power of the papacy, was suspected of being the author of another brochure sympathetic to a break between the French Church and Rome that appeared in January 1861.5 In response to the accusations, Guettée filed a successful libel suit (diffamatoire avec mauvaise foi) in the Civil Court of the Seine.6 He obtained a favorable judgment in April 1861 and the offending newspapers had to print corrections.7
In the interim between the start of his trouble with Morlot (January 1857) and the settlement of his libel suit (April 1861), Guettée met Vasiliev and Sushkov, and they founded L’Union chrétienne (November 1859). Then Guettée joined the Russian Church in July 1862. According to a narrative originating with Guettée’s Souvenirs (1889) and repeated in both French and Russian sources subsequently, after becoming Orthodox, Guettée was insulted and reproached by Catholics. After he had “become Orthodox in order to become truly catholic,” he was attacked by his “enemies,” who “cried that I had become schismatic on entering a schismatic Church.”8 He responded to them by writing La Papauté schismatique ou Rome dans ses rapports avec l’Église orientale (The schismatic papacy or Rome in its relations with the Eastern Church, Paris, 1863),9 which obviously would not have endeared him to Catholic polemicists. Guettée recalled: “This publication made my enemies furious. I received a host of anonymous letters in which I was insulted in a most stupid manner.”10 Characteristically, Guettée expressed pride when Papauté schismatique was placed on the Index and was extremely gratified to receive a doctorate in theology (in 1864) from the Moscow Theological Academy in recognition for the work.11 The doctorate signified that Guettée was a fully credentialed Russian Orthodox publicist.
There was little public discussion in France of Guettée’s entry into the Russian Church. He did not discuss his intention to join, nor his official reception into the church. He continued to sign many of his works “Abbé Guettée,” although by September 1862 he signed some articles in L’Union chrétienne with his Orthodox name Vladimir. Most likely, he did not discuss his formal reception in the Russian Church because he did not consider himself a convert. His faith had always been and remained Catholic as far as he was concerned. Most of his enemies after he joined the Russian Church were already his enemies beforehand. Guettée was cognizant of having joined a confession that was regarded negatively by his Roman Catholic compatriots. The flip side was that, to his Catholic critics, Guettée’s joining of the Russian Church did not improve the reputation of that church but further verified its bankruptcy.
After his libel suit, if Guettée’s Catholic compatriots discussed him at all, they tended to censure him for his contempt for the papacy, anti-Jesuitism, alleged Jansenism, and staunch Gallicanism. One work referred to Guettée’s periodical Observateur catholique as a vestige of Jansenism that, since 1854 and the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, expressed “the perennial hatred” of the Jansenist party for Jesuitism and for the “successor of St. Peter, as temporal prince and infallible personage.”12 The author continued, “I don’t need to add that the paper and the journalist are not in the good graces of the court of Rome.”13 Guettée was publicly criticized for joining the Russian Church in a report in the Catholic Journal de Bruxelles.14 The same paper had criticized Guettée for Gallicanism and Jansenism and reproached the Russian Church for “not having a fixed doctrine about anything” and for opening its doors “to the Jansenists, to the Protestants, to all the sectarians of the world!”15
When Guettée spoke of his enemies in Souvenirs, he often had the Russian Jesuits, whom he dubbed “pseudo-Russians,” in mind, especially Gagarin and the Golitsyns. They might have been about his only new enemies after his entry into the Russian Church, except that Guettée tended to consider everyone he perceived to be hostile to Russia to be his personal enemy. With the exception of the “pseudo-Russians,” Guettée appears to have thought about his enemies much more than they thought about him.
The Russian Jesuits defined him as a defector from the true faith. For example, Nikolai Borisovich Golitsyn, who wrote under the pseudonym Prince N. Boulgak, earned Guettée’s particular contempt.16 Boulgak responded to Papauté schismatique in an 1865 work characterized by silly accusations. He argued that the “new Russian priest” (Guettée), who taught his “erroneous system” with “audacity and haughtiness,” did not in fact belong to any church since he had disavowed the Catholic Church to become a member of the “Greco-Russian Church,” and since Papauté schismatique contradicted Russian liturgical texts that supposedly proved papal primacy.17 Boulgak’s critique suggested that he saw Guettée primarily as a lapsed Catholic, a defector, a person who stood only against something (Roman Catholicism), and not for something (the Eastern Church).
Guettée’s reputation as a lapsed Catholic and his inability to shake the label that he had been interdicted flared up when Alexander II visited Paris in 1867. Outside the jurisdiction of the French courts, Journal de Bruxelles printed a report from its Paris correspondent noting that, on his arrival in Paris, the “czar” was immediately “taken to the Russian church, where the pope who serves it received him with all the ceremonial commonly used in similar circumstances.”18 The correspondent identified the pope as “none other than the ex-abbé Guettée who was formerly part of the Catholic clergy of Paris, who wrote a highly suspect History of the Church of France, and who was put under interdict by his ecclesiastical superiors.” He added that “the Czar made to M. Guettée a gift of 20,000 francs.”19
When Guettée found out about this report, he sent a corrective letter to the editor, pointing out that the Journal’s Paris correspondent knew perfectly well that it was Vasiliev who greeted the Russian emperor. He added that he considered it an honor that his Histoire de l’Église de France had been placed on the Index. Interpreting the report in Journal as an attempt of the French papist and pro-Poland party to slander him under the refuge of the foreign press, he objected to the allegation that he was a priest under the ban, and recounted the details of his libel case. He denied that the “magnanimous sovereign of all the Russias” had given him a gift of 20,000 francs, saying the emperor owed him nothing and knew he could not be bought.20
The editor of Journal de Bruxelles printed the letter with a nasty note. Guettée had to have been “touched … by the Muscovite grace” to use such expressions as the “magnanimous sovereign of all the Russias.”21 He could not understand why Guettée was so concerned to defend himself from the charge that he had been interdicted, when he considered it an honor “to profess doctrines incompatible with the obligations of the Catholic priest.” What did the sacerdotal integrity matter when one was in a state of “proud rebellion before the supreme head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy”? Then he closed with a series of final digs about Guettée and the “czar’s” visit to the Russian church, restoring to Vasiliev “the official role that devolved to him in the reception of the Czar and to Mr. Guettée the sad honor of devoting, with or without recompense, to the ‘magnanimous sovereign of all the Russias’ the obedience that his free convictions have not permitted him to guard for the Pope.”22 For the Journal de Bruxelles, Guettée and the Russian Church, both sullied, deserved each other.
Guettée’s alleged interdiction resurfaced again when he applied to wear the insignia associated with his acceptance of Russian orders. In 1873 Alexander II bestowed on Guettée the Order of St. Anne, an honor given for civil or military service that confers noble rank on the recipient. Guettée applied to the French Legion of Honor for permission to wear the insignia of the order but was denied permission without any explanation. When he pursued the matter, Grand Chancellor General Vinoy said the decision was made with consideration of the opinion of the minister of worship, who had reported that Guettée’s “attitude … during the Verger trial, earned him a severe admonition from … the imperial prosecutor Waïsse [Vaïsse], and consequently, a sentence of interdiction from the part of the ecclesiastical authority.”23 So now it was alleged that Guettée had been implicated in the Verger affair, and that his supposed interdiction was tied to the Verger case.
Verger was the interdicted priest who assassinated Archbishop Sibour at the Church of Saint-Etienne-du Mont in January 1857. He called Guettée as his witness, because, according to a transcript of the trial, in a conversation with Guettée, Sibour had called Verger a “bad priest” and Guettée responded that he had seen Verger twice and thought he seemed “very good.” The prosecutor wanted to know why Guettée would defend a priest who had printed “a libelous brochure in Belgium.” Guettée could only reply that he had not seen the brochure, that he would not defend it if he knew it was outrageous, and that he was having his own “difficulties” with Sibour at the time.24
Guettée interpreted the authorization to wear the insignia as a formality, an administrative matter, and the denial of the authorization as religiously motivated.25 In defending himself to the Legion of Honor, he argued that the Ministry of Worship had no jurisdiction over him, because he did not belong to any church recognized by the state; rather, he could only be viewed as a French citizen, and he was “an honorable citizen, enjoying all his civil and political rights.”26 Nonetheless, Guettée had to wait until after Vinoy died in 1880 to renew his appeal and receive permission.27
In that same interval between 1873 and 1880, Guettée received honorary Russian citizenship in 1875. His memoirs only mention this detail in passing, with no explanation.28 But his biographers have linked his honorary citizenship directly to his religious harassment, suggesting he accepted Russian citizenship “to escape the condemnation of his [Catholic] detractors” and because of “Catholic pressure on the State” in the monarchist-dominated 1870s.29 Sympathetic to Guettée and commemorating him just after his death, Émile Mopinot, a fellow French Catholic dissident who also turned to Orthodoxy, wrote in April 1892 that Guettée’s entry into Orthodoxy did not happen without earning him the “epithets of defector [transfuge] and of apostate.”30 With the exception of the Jesuits, who were perceived as nationless due to their avowed obedience to the pope, Guettée, his collaborators, and his enemies, tended to link national and religious identity; but it is not clear how Russian citizenship would have benefited him, furthered his work, or silenced his detractors.31
Guettée’s memoirs emphasized his persecutions, and how those persecutions continued after he joined the Russian Church. During the Second Empire, Guettée experienced firsthand what he considered the arbitrary power of the bishops, the Catholic press, and the Index. He recalled that harassment and attempts to censor him continued in the clerical-dominated years of the MacMahon presidency (1873–1879).32 French sources critical of Russia with respect to church-state relations or the empire’s treatment of Catholic minorities suggested that there was a higher degree of toleration and liberty and a lower degree of arbitrary authority in French society than in Russian society, true enough de jure. But Guettée understood all too well that Catholic dissenters faced formal ecclesial and informal censures, from interdiction to censorship. The press was not free in Second Empire France, but even apart from formal restrictions on the press, and even if legally the papal Index was not binding, views contrary to the prevailing winds of Catholic opinion were censored by publishers who did not want to take the risk of publishing viewpoints that were controversial (as Guettée experienced and as was upheld by a French court in the 1850s).
Guettée found his freedom in the Russian Church. “From the time that I became a member of the Orthodox Church, it felt like a breath of fresh air. The Roman Church that I left has been for me only a prison where I was weighed down with chains, where there was recourse to the most hypocritical tortures to kill my learning and my reason.”33 Subject to arbitrary authority, the priests of the Roman Church were “slaves,” and Rome represented “a brutal despotism.”34 It was not based on deep knowledge of Russia but on his experience with the French milieu that Guettée, while traveling in Russia in 1865, could write to Vasiliev back in Paris that “there are some nations that speak much of tolerance, and that practice it much less than is done in Russia.”35 Liberty and toleration were at least somewhat relative, and de jure liberties did not preclude other forms of persecution or harassment. Guettée’s experiences explain why he gave himself wholeheartedly to uncritical defense of the Russian Church and government, although an alternative response would have been to defend freedom of conscience and freedom of the press and to condemn arbitrary authority on principle. He tended to repay fanaticism with fanaticism and extracted general rules from what was his very exceptional personal experience as a celebrated and privileged member of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Once he became Orthodox, his status as a lapsed Catholic could not be divorced from his zealous support for a church of such ill repute. For Roman Catholic true believers, his entry into the Russian Church confirmed his bad theology and the Eastern Church’s decadence. Still, he was probably harassed more because he was such a vocal adversary of papism than for joining the Russian Church per se. The bottom line is that because he was such a controversial and contentious figure, he could not raise the standing of the Eastern Church in the opinion of most Roman Catholics.
But outside the Catholic press, more balanced and less polemical portrayals of Guettée, and by extension, of the Eastern Church can be found. Among French encyclopedias published during Guettée’s lifetime, some followed the dominant narrative and spoke of him as having been interdicted for Gallican or Jansenist views,36 while others were more precise about Guettée’s circumstances and even adopted the nomenclature that the Orthodox publicists used for the Eastern Church.37 Guettée had the respect of other critics of papism. Shortly before Guettée joined the Russian Church, the Evangelical (i.e., Lutheran) pastor Edmond de Pressensé wrote in complimentary terms about him and Observateur catholique for their anti-ultramontane stance.38 Guettée maintained a close friendship and correspondence with the Old Catholic Eugène Michaud.39 He retained importance as a historian of the French Church and was frequently cited in works touching on French church history, though the ban of the Index had to be taken into account by writers who cared about Catholic officialdom.40
Guettée’s reputation in France depended on the theological, philosophical, and/or political stance of the parties involved. In Russia, high-ranking ecclesiastical and civil authorities and Orthodox publicists saw him as an asset who vindicated Orthodoxy’s claims to catholicity and who was uniquely qualified to defend Orthodoxy in the West, although there are indications that there was at least some ambivalence about Guettée’s Orthodox turn, ecumenism, and polemical style.
Vasiliev first brought the Catholic dissident to the attention of high-ranking civil and ecclesial authorities. His intercessions were instrumental in getting Guettée recognized by the sovereign and by Russian religious authorities. Already actively courting Guettée, in 1860 Vasiliev asked the emperor to reward Guettée for his work on the Jesuits.41 When Guettée petitioned to be received in the church, Vasiliev pressed Bishop Leonty for a response. The delay of about eight months caused both Guettée and Vasiliev some anxiety.42 But once it was official, the archpriest wrote to Sushkov about the day of Guettée’s reception into the church as one of great joy, referring to Guettée as “our newly Orthodox.”43
When Guettée published La Papauté schismatique, Vasiliev interceded with Over-procurator Aleksei Petrovich Akhmatov, asking him to promote the work in Russia.44 The work came to Metropolitan Filaret’s attention, who, in turn, presented the work to the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, A. V. Gorsky. Gorsky was particularly impressed that Guettée had been exposing Roman or papal errors even before he joined the Orthodox Church and concluded that the work was worthy of a doctorate.45 With positive evaluations from the academy’s Conference, Filaret referred the matter to the Holy Synod, which approved the doctorate in May 1864. A diploma and doctoral cross were sent to Guettée, who received them in October (along with a salary commensurate with his rank).46 On receiving them, Guettée addressed an appreciative letter to Filaret, noting that the news compensated him “for the nasty feelings that some blind members of the Roman Church … sustain toward me” and provided him with “a strong incentive for new works in defense of our Apostolic Church, which is subjected to such slanders in the West.”47
One of Guettée’s projects as an Orthodox publicist was a French translation of Dmitry Tolstoy’s two-volume work on Roman Catholicism in Russia (1863–1864). Tolstoy, who became over-procurator soon after this work’s appearance, began by suggesting that the collapse of the papacy’s temporal power, if it were accompanied by a decentralization of spiritual authority to the national churches, would have a beneficial impact on church-state relations. Predictably, the work was placed on the papal Index in 1866.48
Guettée quickly became famous in Orthodox circles. Contributing to his celebrity, he traveled to Russia in 1865, visiting Moscow, Petersburg, and the Holy Trinity Lavra. He served with Metropolitan Isidor [Nikolsky] in St. Petersburg, met the members of the Holy Synod, helped officiate at the funeral of Crown Prince Nikolai Alexandrovich (1843–1865), and had audiences with Alexander II, Metropolitan Filaret, and many other hierarchs, clergy, and lay people.49 His name was well-known among the educated public by the time Vasiliev died in late 1881. Obituaries and memoirs about Vasiliev routinely mentioned his success in leading key westerners, especially Guettée, to Orthodoxy. Guettée’s works, a number of which were translated into Russian, contributed to his fame, although in the Russian context, his antipapal polemics were not his most important works.50 Of the Orthodox journals, Vera i razum (Faith and reason, founded in 1884), attached to the Kharkov Theological Seminary, published the most of Guettée’s works and followed his career with interest. Although a predominantly Orthodox region in northeastern Ukraine, Guettée’s polemics may have had more propagandizing value in Kharkov than in central Russia, and his ideas about the national autonomy of churches may have appealed to Ukrainian churchmen in an era of emergent Ukrainian nationalism.
Orthodox educated society attached special significance to Guettée’s reception into the Russian Church. It represented a turning point in Orthodoxy’s standing on the world stage and a hopeful sign that westerners were discovering the true merits of Orthodoxy. Strannik first reported the news in September 1862, observing that Guettée was a talented writer with “deep theological erudition,” a firm commitment to true Catholicism, and the ability to vigorously debate Roman Catholics. “The joining of such a person to Orthodoxy must have profound meaning and important consequences for the Church.”51 A follow-up article in December indicated that news of Guettée’s reception into the Russian Church produced excitement in some quarters, but skepticism in others. To illustrate the “impression which is made by this event on all true offspring of the Orthodox Church,” Strannik cited a letter from Artillery Colonel Apollon Erkovsky, who wrote to the editors of Strannik that on reading the news about Guettée he “cried out and leapt for joy.”52 He eagerly set out to share the good news and his joy with his acquaintances but discovered they did not have the same reaction, and “there were even people (Lutherans) who suspect that Guettée received a lot of money for this.”53 Undeterred, Erkovsky—who a year before had sent twenty-five silver rubles to the Paris church because it represented “the Dawn of Orthodoxy in the West”—dispatched eleven silver rubles to Paris requesting an intercessory prayer service for the “health and long life of the newly joined to Orthodoxy Fr. Vladimir.”54 Vasiliev’s daughter considered Guettée’s conversion her father’s “crowning achievement,” although she exaggerated the importance of the event and embellished it with Jesuit conspiracy motifs. “The joining to Orthodoxy of such a prominent writer-priest stunned and embittered the Catholic world, so that the Jesuits even tried to poison Guettée. This was the first joining to Orthodoxy of a Catholic priest and at the same time the crowning achievement of Father’s work abroad.”55
Russian lay and ecclesiastical authorities anticipated that the former Latin Catholic’s acceptance and public defense of Orthodoxy would raise the international profile of Orthodoxy, help curb the trend of émigré conversions to Catholicism, and even attract more westerners to the Eastern Church. They viewed the defense of Orthodoxy as a necessary step in the larger ecumenical project of uniting all the churches. In Guettée they found an ally and fervent publicist, and some of the same issues that discredited him in the eyes of many of his former co-religionists, especially his antipapal polemics, heightened his credentials as an Orthodox publicist. From the day of his reception into the church, it was understood by Guettée and his Russian Orthodox contemporaries that he had a specific mission—to nurture the seed planted in Paris at the Russian church’s consecration by educating western Europeans about Orthodoxy. In a letter to Metropolitan Isidor, Guettée promised to assist Vasiliev “in the holy cause undertaken by him—to acquaint the West with the Eastern Church and to refute the slanders not infrequently imputed to it.” Linking his mission with the imminent collapse of the papacy, he continued: “This undertaking is extraordinarily useful due to those critical circumstances in which the papacy now finds itself; and we must accept participation of Providence in those actions which reveal to the West the existence of the true Church at precisely the time when the papacy is prepared to disintegrate. With all its seeming insignificance, L’Union chrétienne strives in this respect to a truly lofty aim, and I am happy to have been able to assist with the founding of this paper.”56
In his memoirs, Leonty recalled his role in Guettée’s Orthodox turn, noting how Guettée, “by his publications acquainted and is acquainting foreigners with the Orthodox Church very successfully,” and was proving himself worthy of his doctorate.57 In December 1889—the twenty-fifth year jubilee of Guettée’s doctorate and fifty-year jubilee of his ordination—the Holy Synod recognized him for his decades of service by sending him a cross of St. Vladimir and a congratulatory certificate stating that the Holy Synod appreciated his zeal “for the good of the Orthodox Church and in particular the works of ecclesiastical scholarship published by him in defense of Orthodoxy.”58
For the jubilee, Istomin published a commemorative article in Vera i razum, announcing that Guettée’s Souvenirs would be published soon, which would “preserve many Orthodox from lightminded enthusiasm for the foreign” and “show the true worth of our native Orthodoxy.”59 By Istomin’s account, Guettée flourished only once he had repudiated western errors. Living in France, he initially knew of Orthodoxy only the common slanders against it that circulated freely among westerners. But then, through his relationship with Vasiliev, he changed his mind, thus representing living proof of “the great influence of our native Church.”60 When Guettée met Bishop Leonty in Paris, any remaining doubts he had dissipated. Leonty “pointed Fr. Vladimir to his lofty mission,” which was to “serve the great task of the union of all Churches” by “acquainting the West with Orthodoxy” and “refuting western inventions and the slanders of Latin writers about the Eastern Church.”61 While there was still much to be done to dissipate the “fog that with such a dense shroud covers the minds of western Christians in their judgments about the Eastern Orthodox Church in general and about Russia in particular,” Istomin lauded Guettée’s quarter-century of vigorous and steadfast defense of the Eastern Church, which was leaving “deep traces in the consciousness of right-thinking Christians” and belonged to “the annals of the noble efforts for the achievement of the great task of the union of all the Churches.”62
When Guettée died in Luxembourg on March 20, 1892, obituaries in the secular and ecclesiastical press reiterated these same themes. Guettée’s joining of the church was related to a broader movement—inquisitiveness about Orthodoxy and religious rapprochement—that started in Europe in the late 1840s and early 1850s.63 Guettée had a “great mission in the West” as an energetic “wrestler” for Orthodoxy. On one hand, Guettée spent thirty years exposing “Roman-Catholic fabrications and slanders of papist writers about the Eastern Church.” On the other hand, he worked for the “affirmative establishment of the truthfulness of Orthodoxy” and “the great cause of the joining of all the churches.”64 A publication of the Kharkov diocese reported the death of “one of the most remarkable representatives of Orthodoxy in the West,” a “torch bearer of Orthodoxy, who shined as such a bright and radiant star in the West.”65 Guettée’s last wish was to be interred in Russia, among his fellow believers, and “under the protection of the Orthodox Church,” which he had admirably defended for thirty years.66 His wish was not fulfilled for reasons that are not clear. Father Dmitry Vasiliev officiated at his burial at the Batignolles Cemetery in Paris in 1892.67
Guettée’s conversion furthered the Orthodox public relations campaign by ensuring the vigorous propagation of an Orthodox counternarrative in the West and by ensuring that anti-Orthodox propaganda, especially that of the Russian Jesuits, would not go uncontested. But a lot of his compatriots had already tuned him out before he joined the Russian Church. Guettée’s enemies transferred his tainted reputation to the Russian Church. Limited in the positive results that he could attain for the public image of Orthodoxy among Roman Catholics, he could still reach audiences from questioning Russians to Anglicans, Protestants, and Old Catholics.
In 1865 Guettée wrote to Vasiliev from Moscow that “everyone speaks to me of you … in terms that could flatter anyone,” adding that he would be returning to Paris with “an enormous load of kindest regards, compliments, and respects” for the archpriest. “I feel very happy in Russia to be considered as your friend.”68 When Vasiliev died in 1881, obituaries in both the religious and secular press attested to the fame and importance of this “invincible wrestler for the Orthodox Church” who “raised high its banner in the West.”69 His eulogists remembered him as a highly esteemed and decorated representative of Russia’s white clergy and as an important public servant who dedicated his whole life to the benefit of the Orthodox Church. Religious education was the theme of his entire career, connecting his twenty years of public service in Paris with his work from 1867 until his death as the chairman of the Holy Synod’s Education Committee. As one obituary expressed it: “May you rest in peace, valiant servant of the Church, honorable and tireless toiler of religious education [prosveshchenie]!”70 The artist Vladimir Orlovsky unabashedly declared that no other member of the white clergy “enjoyed such broad fame or fully deserved celebrity” as Vasiliev, whose renown extended throughout Russia and western Europe.71 He added that it was universally felt in Russia that the country had lost an important public figure. Intelligent, tolerant, kind, strong, sincere, upright, a true Christian—such were the descriptors applied to this man of “titanic energy” and “amazing” activities.72
Vasiliev’s eulogists reflected on his achievements: his pastoral care of POWs in France during the Crimean War; his work to prevent Russians from apostatizing and to counter the propaganda of the Russian converts to Catholicism; his correspondence with Jaquemet, Bonald, and Guizot—but especially with Jaquemet; his efforts to educate western Europeans about the Orthodox Church through his work on L’Union chrétienne; his role in joining Guettée and other westerners to the Russian Church;73 the founding of the Russian church in Paris; and his contributions to the reform of Russian ecclesiastical education on his return to Russia in 1867. Vasiliev had supported Popovitsky’s liberal (pro-white clergy) ecclesial newspaper.74 Popovitsky wrote about him in glowing terms, calling him “one of the most valiant representatives of the white clergy,” and their energetic and practically sole defender.75 All Vasiliev’s major achievements in Paris, as identified by his eulogists, were tied to one overarching goal: to enlighten the world about the truth of Orthodoxy, with the church on Daru Street as the pinnacle of his efforts to raise the international profile of Orthodoxy and Russia.
One reason for Vasiliev’s appointment to the embassy chapel in Paris was to deal with concerns that Russians living in Paris were being seduced by Roman Catholicism.76 He was equipped to deal with this problem because he had been an outstanding student at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, where he had written a dissertation on papal primacy. Orlovsky stressed that one of Vasiliev’s main achievements was preventing Russians who lived in Paris from apostatizing: “It is possible to say, without fearing exaggeration, that many Russians in Paris, solely thanks to Iosif Vasiliev, were not Frenchified [ne ofrantsuzilis'] and did not convert to Catholicism. To achieve such results in Paris—the capital of Europe and the center of Catholic learning, where the most brilliant preachers and the most active Jesuits always were—a lot of talent and a lot of energy were necessary.”77 Avtonomova also addressed her father’s pastoral mission to keep Russians in Paris from turning to Catholicism. By her account, since Monseigneur Dupanloup was such a popular orator, and the Russians in Paris loved “everything brilliant” and “had a weakness for Catholicism,” Vasiliev attended Dupanloup’s orations at the bishop’s invitation, partly due to his own interest and partly in the interests of supervising his flock.78 She claimed that Vasiliev would debate with Dupanloup, adding her judgment that Dupanloup considered the Russian archpriest “an intelligent, knowledgeable and also somewhat liberal opponent.”79 Her account portrays Vasiliev as raising Orthodoxy’s stature by his good relations with Catholic clergy, although the evidentiary basis for her impressions is not clear. “Despite the difference of opinions and the polemic against Catholicism, Father was in excellent relations with the Catholic hierarchs, who respected Father for his intelligence, deep erudition, impartiality in judgments and fascinating conversation always in a benevolent tone, not at all insulting and not offending.”80
If one aspect of Vasiliev’s public service was to prevent Orthodox Christians in France from apostatizing, another aspect, recognized by all his eulogists, was outreach to counter anti-Orthodox attitudes and to educate westerners about Orthodoxy. He did so through L’Union chrétienne, a “special paper” to familiarize westerners with “a true understanding about the dogma and internal organization of the Orthodox Church” and “prepare the way for the desired rapprochement between the separated Christian confessions.”81 This periodical would not have been born without Vasiliev’s initiative, but it was also dependent on Guettée’s collaboration. Yet some Russian sources downplayed Guettée’s role as the actual owner and editor of the paper.82 Orlovsky emphasized how much “civic courage” it took for the knowledgeable Vasiliev to found the paper and to challenge “Catholic theologians in the center of Catholic learning.”83 It made sense to attribute the paper to Vasiliev in Russia, where it was possible to do so openly, even though the paper was registered in Guettée’s name. But the legal registration of the paper was not a formality. Although Vasiliev contributed several articles to the periodical, Guettée was the editor. While the collaborative nature of the work is evident in the first few years of the paper’s existence, Guettée’s strong presence is easy to spot and quickly evolved into predominance. The fact that Vasiliev’s eulogists minimized Guettée’s role and emphasized Vasiliev’s suggests that they had not scrutinized the periodical and failed to understand that L’Union chrétienne depended largely on Guettée.
When it came to his journalism, Vasiliev was best known for his polemical letters to three individuals whom Vasiliev deemed guilty of publicly misrepresenting Orthodoxy, but especially Jaquemet. By all Russian accounts, Vasiliev’s polemic with the bishop of Nantes made a splash in the Russian press.84 Vasiliev’s son-in-law, the dogmatic theology professor Alexander Katansky, recalled that the letters “thundered throughout all Russia,” while Vasiliev’s eulogists remembered how they had “roused the general attention of the public both abroad and at home.”85 Polisadov considered Vasiliev’s exchange with Jaquemet remarkable because it was “the first open, printed attempt at a polemic by a representative of the Orthodox Church in a non-Orthodox land with one of the pastors of that land.”86 Publication of Vasiliev’s polemical letters in the major, though still fledgling, Russian ecclesiastical journals demonstrates that his contemporaries considered his defense of Orthodoxy and of Russia important.
Yet Vasiliev’s particular arguments in defense of the Russian Church received little attention. His contemporaries extolled his letters to Jaquemet, Bonald, and Guizot not for the specific arguments he made but for what they represented, an “answer to a false accusation against the Russian Church.”87 Vasiliev had challenged “an extremely offensive opinion” about the Orthodox Church, refuted the prejudice that the tsar was the head of the church, and reiterated that the Orthodox Church recognizes only one head, Jesus Christ.88 He used “implacable logic” and “numerous facts” to refute the ultramontane view “that the Russian emperor is the head of the Russian Church in the same sense in which the pope is considered the head of Catholicism.”89 There was hardly any discussion of Vasiliev’s arguments in defense of the Russian Church, though there was private acknowledgment that he described church-state relations as they should be, not as they were.90 Whether his contemporaries generally agreed with his arguments, or just hesitated to openly debate the matter, the fact of his public defense of the Russian Church mattered more than the particulars. It signified that the Orthodox Church was becoming more visible and more audible in the West. Vasiliev was a Russian David standing up to the Roman Catholic Goliath.
Vasiliev’s polemical letters symbolized a resilient Russia. In the context of the 1860s, given the uncertainty about the fate of the papacy, the moment was ripe for Orthodox publicists to entertain their aspirations that Russia would be at the forefront of the hoped-for reunion of the Christian churches, sans papal supremacy. After his death, Vasiliev’s eulogists stressed that Vasiliev had single-handedly raised Orthodoxy’s international prestige and, as such, had been the faithful servant of the church and the fatherland. Some did not hesitate to declare Vasiliev victorious in the polemic with Jaquemet.91 Barsov affirmed that “the most important articles” in L’Union chrétienne were “the celebrated letters” of Vasiliev to Jaquemet and Guizot. “The author triumphantly refuted the delusion concerning the teaching and organization of the administration of the Russian Orthodox church. The indestructible dialectics and wealth of erudition of our theologian were revealed in all their glory in these letters and they propelled him … to universal fame, since almost every religious press of Europe and America talked about this polemic.”92 Vasiliev’s daughter recounted that Vasiliev received a letter from Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, praising him for his letter to the bishop of Nantes, which sent shockwaves through the Catholic world since it was unheard of for a Catholic bishop to engage in polemics with a “schismatic.”93 The offprints of the correspondence sold like hotcakes, she claimed, and she clearly believed her father influenced Catholic opinion. “The activity of my father in Paris and the correspondence with the bishop interested the Catholic world which finally had to admit that the Orthodox Church was not a quantité negligeable, but the equivalent of the Catholic [Church].”94 Such sentiments reflect wishful thinking more than concrete results.95 Vasiliev made some headway, but the influence of his polemical letters was not the dramatic coup depicted in these Russian accounts.
Although his polemical letters certainly contributed to Vasiliev’s fame and raised the international visibility of the Russian Orthodox Church, they were hardly cause for Orthodox triumphalism. The church on Daru Street, which was at the center of all Vasiliev’s efforts to raise the international profile of Orthodoxy, deserves more credit for enhancing not only the visibility but the reputation of Orthodoxy. Besides all the attention it received in the Russian press in 1861, Vasiliev’s initiative, personal sacrifices, and persistence in seeing this project through from start to finish were noted by every eulogist.
Popovitsky’s obituary is revealing because it portrayed Vasiliev as having to struggle against the inertia of both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Vasiliev had to persuade Alexander II that it would not be too provocative for the Russians to build a church in Second Empire France. After receiving Metropolitan Filaret’s blessing, Vasiliev obtained an audience with Alexander II, “and, a remarkable fact!—the late Sovereign, from the first words of Iosif Vasilievich, expressed to him His fear: suppose the interference of the Russian government in the matter of the construction of an Orthodox church in Paris were to be interpreted by the government of Napoleon III in an unfavorable sense from the political point of view.”96 Vasiliev had “to persuade the Sovereign Emperor that the project he conceived was devoid of any danger whatsoever in the political respect and about its endless fruitfulness for the glory of the Orthodox Church and for the religious needs of the numerous sons of Orthodoxy who were living in Paris or visiting the capital of France. Then all obstacles were removed.”97 Popovitsky explained that Vasiliev also had to persuade the church authorities to send a bishop to Paris to consecrate the church, an idea they initially found inconvenient (neudobnyi).98
In life and in death Vasiliev was significant to his contemporaries as the archpriest who stood up for Orthodoxy in the “capital of Europe.” The eulogistic assessments of Vasiliev point to the conclusion that, for his contemporaries, Vasiliev’s polemical achievements (including L’Union chrétienne), like Guettée’s conversion which he facilitated, had mainly symbolic significance. Vasiliev’s public defense of Orthodoxy and his role in turning Guettée to Orthodoxy signaled that Russian Orthodoxy’s prominence was on the rise while Rome’s was declining. Orthodoxy’s prominence was arguably on the rise; but the decline of Rome, so much anticipated among Orthodox thinkers, did not accompany that rise. Nonetheless Vasiliev worked hard to raise the image of the Eastern Church in the minds of westerners and to root out prejudices. A magnificent church as a visible testimony about the Orthodox faith was the most effective way that he raised awareness about and heightened the prestige of the Orthodox Church.
L’Union chrétienne had a tiny niche audience in the West and was met with ambivalence in Russia, but it was portrayed by Guettée’s and Vasiliev’s eulogists as an important vehicle for the defense of Orthodoxy.
L’Union chrétienne was seldom mentioned in the French press. When it first appeared, Hello critiqued it in Le Croisé as the nebulous paper—neither Catholic nor Protestant—of Guettée.99 Early on, a couple of French sources—knowing Guettée to be the editor—associated the paper more with Gallicanism than with Orthodoxy. A liberal paper described it as “written under the influence of Gallican principles.”100 Writing for Le Monde, La Tour said L’Union chrétienne represented a sort of “semi-catholic, ultra-Gallican episcopalism,” adding that the periodical expressed an ecumenical tendency in the Russian Church that was a minority view in a church where “the great majority of the episcopate and the clergy remain very opposed to the Roman Church.”101 Once in a while the foreign correspondents for Roman Catholic newspapers revealed their impressions of the paper. One reporter in St. Petersburg commented, “L’Union chrétienne, Mr. Vasiliev’s organ, is very widespread here; our orthodox are very proud to see their principles printed in French characters, and imagine that they cause a lot of emotion in Paris.”102 Journal de Bruxelles’s correspondent in Russia attributed little importance to the paper in western Europe but believed its significance was in spreading anti-Catholic sentiment in St. Petersburg. He described how “animosity against Catholicism” in Russia was being “fueled by a paper that the Holy Synod devised to pay in Paris; this paper, that is probably not known there [Paris], but that is wreaking havoc here, is L’Union so-called chrétienne, written by this Abbé Guettée who is so sadly made famous in the trial of the assassin of Mgr. Sibour! Here’s where our Holy Synod is obliged to go fetch its advocate!”103 A few months later the same correspondent reported that while the radicals in Russia made Pierre-Joseph Proudhon look “retrograde” and Giuseppe Mazzini “moderate,” the Russian Church was powerless in the face of social disorder because “not having a fixed doctrine about anything,” it opened its doors to Jansenists, Protestants, and sectarians of all sorts. The correspondent blushed, he said, for the Russian clergy who could enlist no better “penholder” than Guettée in its cause. “Our so-called orthodox delight in L’Union chrétienne whose false and hate-filled language I have already noted. This sheet is directed by M. Guettée who is the sole defense witness to be presented in favor of the assassin of the Archbishop of Paris.”104 From another ideological perspective, to defend a Russian colleague (Grigory Nikolaevich Vyrubov)—“a young scholar too well-known already for his progressive ideas” who lived in a “still half-barbaric land”—the positivist Émile Goubert responded to an article Guettée published in L’Union chrétienne, referring to it as a “Russian paper, unknown to the rest,” read by a “meager public.”105
If the periodical was largely unknown or ignored in France, it did not fare all that well in Russia. When publication began, Sushkov provided copies of the paper and a list of names to Prince Sergei Urusov and asked that the state secretary distribute the copies to the people on the list. Urusov assured Vasiliev—who had expressed doubt about Urusov’s support—that he supported the paper, had distributed it as asked, and that all the people who received the paper instructed him “to sincerely thank the editorial board” and expressed the wish to subscribe.106 We can surmise that the people on the list were highly placed in St. Petersburg society, including representatives of the imperial and church administration.
Khomiakov and Deacon Replovsky were early critics of the weekly. Khomiakov’s criticisms of L’Union chrétienne may have pushed the paper to become more explicitly Orthodox.107 Replovsky did not relent from his criticisms in Pravoslavnoe obozrenie. In March 1862 he conceded that the paper “more and more abandons the character of a weekly paper where amateurs agree to talk about how good it would be for everyone to unite, not having determined in advance the banner under which they stand and the terms on which they would be able to understand each other.”108 Nonetheless, even if the paper had become more decidedly Orthodox in tone (six months earlier Guettée had submitted his formal request to join the Russian Church), Replovsky remained unfavorably disposed to it. While admitting that L’Union chrétienne provided an important Orthodox perspective on the papal question and singling out Vasiliev’s works as the best in the paper on the topic, Replovsky argued that this “hot question” would ultimately be resolved in favor of one of the parties, and thus its interest was “transitory.” A second activity of L’Union chrétienne was to remain “on the watch for every aspersion about the Eastern Church, which so often Jesuits and non-Jesuits disseminate.” Here Replovsky discussed how the Russian Church was known to the West through anecdotes that people found amusing or tall tales related by travelers to Russia or “by our dear compatriots,” who trivialized and presented as absurd “important events and institutions.”109 While the paper struggled against these distortions of the truth, Replovsky did not think the paper could achieve “lasting and significant results” because it specialized in the “refutation even of trifles.” The paper repaid anecdotes with anecdotes instead of providing substantive refutations of errors or serious Orthodox works that exposed the hollowness of negative western characterizations of Orthodoxy. He concluded that “Orthodoxy, despite the two-year existence of the paper, … is terra incognita for the West.”110 The paper did not contain “a serious account” of Orthodoxy. To be an “actual and useful Orthodox voice,” it needed a change of program toward more “careful study of Orthodoxy” with help from more Russian collaborators.111
Replovsky continued to criticize the paper throughout 1862, elaborating on his view that L’Union chrétienne lacked the proper focus to educate westerners about Russia. He wanted to see the paper more explicitly and exclusively deal with the Russian Church. Instead of following developments in the Anglican Church—Vasiliev was at the forefront of ecumenical discussions with Anglicans—or polemicizing against the tendencies of modern rationalism, he thought that L’Union chrétienne needed a tighter focus on Russian church history and theology, with more Russian contributors. His vision was that the paper could publish translations of articles from the Russian theological reviews, which would demonstrate Russia’s interest in western church life while simultaneously educating westerners about Russia.112
Although Replovsky’s criticisms appear to be aimed against Guettée’s editorializing as well as against the ecumenical direction of the paper, possibly expressing skepticism about the Russian authorities anointing the former Roman Catholic priest as a leading spokesperson for Orthodoxy, Vasiliev did not appreciate Replovsky’s ideas about fundamentally altering the program of the periodical. He responded in the pages of L’Union chrétienne, and wrote to Sushkov that “I gave that windbag reformer the deacon Replovsky a good dressing down.”113 Vasiliev rejected Replovsky’s vision that the paper should explicitly be “an organ of the Russian Church,” and insisted that L’Union chrétienne would maintain its original ecumenical program, “the explanation of true Catholicism that is so well preserved in the Eastern Church.”114 He added: “The Russian Church is a very extensive branch of this church; an exposition of its teaching, its actual conditions, and refutations of prejudices that are scattered against it in the West will occupy an extensive place in its pages. But while testifying to other Christian churches that they strayed from the original structure of the Church, we will do justice to them concerning what they have of the good and the orthodox, and show them the elements of unity.”115 Replovsky’s response to this reaffirmation of the paper’s program was to accuse the paper of latitudinarianism. He pronounced his judgment that the Orthodox Church had “the right to expect straightforward services from its most important members.”116 He questioned how it served the cause of unity for Vasiliev to refute his (Replovsky’s) criticisms in L’Union chrétienne, since most of the readers of the Parisian paper would not have seen his critique in Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, and he rechristened the periodical The Parisian Union (Parizhskaia uniia), thereby attacking its orthodoxy.117
Though Replovsky remained a detractor, the periodical received affirmation from Greek quarters.118 Vasiliev reported to Over-procurator Akhmatov that after presenting a complete set of the periodical to Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim II, the editors received a congratulatory gramota (certificate) from Joachim praising their good work.119 Vasiliev used this approbation and news of the positive reception of L’Union chrétienne among Greek ecclesiastics as leverage to press for financial support for the periodical from the Russian Synod, mentioning that he had received testimonials that the Greek hierarchs valued the Orthodox weekly. Vasiliev expressed the hope that his “native” bishops would also throw their support behind the endeavor. In addition to publishing the gramota in L’Union chrétienne, Vasiliev mentioned that it was being published in three French-language newspapers.120
While some of the Orthodox journals interpreted L’Union chrétienne as a sign that “the enemies of the Orthodox Church understand that now they cannot so overtly and with impunity make attacks on the Eastern Church, as often happened earlier,” meaningful support remained lacking.121 By early 1864, Vasiliev expressed his own frustrations with L’Union chrétienne. His grievances included difficulty in getting worthwhile contributions from the Russian clergy abroad, a deficit thanks to the mismanagement of the correspondent in Constantinople, people who wanted to bend the program of the paper (e.g., Replovsky), and the tardiness of financial support from the Synod.122 His daughter felt Vasiliev never received due recognition for L’Union chrétienne. Neither the Russian clergy abroad nor the Holy Synod lent strong support to the paper, which never had more than three hundred subscribers and had to “solicit a pitiful subsidy.”123 Avtonomova recalled that when she read the correspondence of her father as collected and published in 1915, her heart sank to learn of how he had to beg for an allowance (1,200 francs per year) for L’Union chrétienne.124 She said Vasiliev discontinued the edition after six years and indicated that her father wanted to return to Russia after the failure of the paper.125 The periodical was not discontinued, so her comment can only refer to Vasiliev’s active participation. There was some tension between Guettée and his Russian collaborators regarding authorship of certain articles. Besides that, given Vasiliev’s personality and reputation for tolerance, level-headedness, and civility, it would not be surprising if Guettée’s vitriolic tone and temperament tried the Russian archpriest’s patience.126
L’Union chrétienne was a landmark in Orthodox journalism because it was the first Orthodox periodical published in the West, it was published outside the Russian ecclesiastical censorship apparatus, and it represented an attempt by Orthodox publicists to promote understanding between Christian confessions. It provided a medium for ecumenical discussions between Orthodox, Anglicans, Protestants, and Old Catholics, and the ecumenical discussions of the late nineteenth century were built on interpersonal relationships and groundwork established in Paris and London in the era of Vatican I.127 Ideas flowed in multiple directions, and the magazine not only explained Orthodoxy to the heterodox but introduced Orthodox readers to developments in other Christian confessions.128 The periodical fits into a much broader framework of how the Russian clergy abroad in the nineteenth century—some of the brightest representatives of the white clergy—played a key role as intermediaries between Orthodoxy and other confessions by disseminating information about Orthodoxy in the West and information about other confessions and western European philosophy back in Russia.
The periodical was not very successful in terms of its reception and support either among westerners or in Russia. Ambivalence about the paper in Russia exposed rifts in Orthodox circles between more and less inclusive definitions of Orthodoxy (or catholicism), on one hand, and more and less enthusiasm about ecumenism, on the other. Besides its Orthodox subscribers, the paper reached only a small contingent of Catholic dissidents (e.g., Old Catholics), Anglicans, Protestants, and of course the Russian Jesuits.
Guettée’s and Vasiliev’s eulogists spoke highly of L’Union chrétienne, recalling how it “mercilessly castigated Latin deviations from universal truth.”129 But their praise was out of step with the lackluster attention and support the periodical received in either France or Russia. They included it among the priest-publicists’ significant accomplishments, but given the dearth of discussion about the contents of the paper, for them the paper’s significance was largely symbolic. Orthodox spokesmen had an organ and were raising their voice in defense of Orthodoxy. They had an audience, but a small one.
Events in Paris had direct bearing on calls for reform in Russia. Exaggerated as they were, criticisms of the Russian Orthodox Church emanating from the West were productive. They raised the awareness—of laypersons and ecclesiastics, secular and spiritual authorities alike—about the Orthodox Church’s lack of respectability abroad because of its reputation for being enslaved to the civil power. The struggle to improve Orthodoxy’s public image reflected and fueled reformist sentiment in Russia where it provoked consideration of church-state relations, the need for clerical, especially educational, reforms, and freedom of conscience.130
“It was sad for me to hear … unfavorable judgments … about our Russian Church,” Andrei Muraviev recalled. Referring to Theiner, he conceded: “At the bottom of my heart I sometimes realized that there are such accusations in which he has cause for reproach, and still other important shortcomings in the domestic life of our church which still have not been brought to light in the West.”131 In response to the criticisms of Roman Catholic polemicists, around mid-century Muraviev suggested to Metropolitan Filaret the idea of calling for a council to address issues of church administration.132 Then, with the publication of Vasiliev’s response to Jaquemet, the Russian press drew the educated public’s attention to Orthodox church-state relations as imagined by westerners (“If the Czar believes it necessary to change my creed and modify my religion, I am at his command”) and understood by Vasiliev, who functioned as an intermediary between western European polemicists, individuals in the Russian ecclesiastical and secular administration, and the Orthodox reading public. Vasiliev’s correspondence with the French bishops and Guizot made it abundantly clear that western Europeans either perceived the Russian Church to be completely enslaved to the state or were, as was Guizot, dismissive of Orthodoxy. Besides popularizing information about western perceptions, Vasiliev’s letters emphasized the Orthodox principle of church and state as separate, autonomous spheres.133 His appraisal of the Holy Synod as a canonical institution appeared while Russian theological study of canon law was in its infancy and before the matter of the Synod’s canonical status became a matter of debate among canonists.134
While there was little discussion of the substance of Vasiliev’s polemical letters, there are hints that the letters served as a springboard for a reappraisal of church authority. Archimandrite Feodor (Alexander Matveevich Bukharev, 1824–1871) published a mildly critical article about them in the secular press in 1862.135 Feodor affirmed that Vasiliev’s letters were “already well known among us in Russia where they have been read and are being read with lively interest.”136 He acknowledged that Vasiliev was doing important work by countering western ignorance about Orthodoxy, but Feodor did not think it was sufficient to emphasize the collective (conciliar) as opposed to individual (papal) nature of church authority. If those in authority lost sight of the fact that they were Christ’s instruments, a collective yet illegitimate “papacy” could develop.137 In short, even though Vasiliev affirmed the Orthodox doctrine of Christ as sole head of the church, Feodor thought his explanation of spiritual authority, tradition, and councils kept Christ at a distance, accessible only through intermediaries. It was necessary, Feodor argued, to counter the papal spirit with the idea of Christ’s ever-present action in the church. Hence, Feodor liked Vasiliev’s observation that Christ was the president of the Holy Synod.138
By the time Archimandrite Feodor wrote this commentary on Vasiliev’s letters, he was embroiled in the affair that led to his dismissal from the Spiritual Censorship Committee and his removal from St. Petersburg to a monastery in Vladimir Province.139 A year after his article on Vasiliev appeared, he was defrocked at his request and resumed life as a layperson. Besides expressing aspects of his Christology, Feodor’s article on Vasiliev’s polemical letters made a statement about what church authority should be and about the Christo-centric directives that should guide the action of the Holy Synod. If the article reflected his views on the de facto nature of the Synod (which is doubtful) as opposed to offering a corrective on what church authority in general and the Holy Synod in particular should be (which is more likely), it must have been painful for Feodor to see his works successfully censored and to be dismissed from his position by the conservative wing in the Russian Church. In any case, L’Union chrétienne printed a rebuttal in November 1862, attributed to Vasiliev (partially by Guettée?), that implicitly questioned the “very venerable” archimandrite’s Orthodoxy on some points.140
Archimandrite Feodor used Vasiliev’s letters to Jaquemet and Guizot as an opportunity to reflect on church authority, emphasizing that church authority, whether exercised by an individual or a council, could be abused. His critique illustrates that even though Vasiliev defended the synodal system as in accord with Orthodox teaching on church and state, his polemical letters could nonetheless serve as a catalyst for reevaluation of issues of church authority and church-state relations. Since they outlined what the boundaries were supposed to be between church and state, Vasiliev’s letters could be interpreted as containing implied criticisms and invited comparison between theory and practice.
Under the lens of publicity at home and abroad, civil and ecclesial authorities faced pressure to examine matters of church authority and to consider the need for church reform. Vasiliev’s correspondence with Jaquemet put the issue of church-state relations in public view, and in the aftermath of his polemical letters and other reports from clerical and lay publicists, no member of Russian educated society could claim to be in the dark about the negative assessments of the Russian Church’s authority that were in vogue in the West. Ecclesiastics had plenty of leverage they could use to fend off state interference in church affairs. By the early twentieth century, there was widespread agreement among the Orthodox hierarchy and educated public that there needed to be a major realignment of church-state relations, though there was a lack of consensus about the precise nature of reforms.141 Questions remain, however, regarding whether Vasiliev’s argument that the divine constitution of the Russian Church was not altered either by the creation or dissolution of the patriarchate (letters to Jaquemet) and his defense of the Orthodox idea of harmony between church and state (letters to Guizot) noticeably shaped the subsequent debates or had more fleeting value as the literary sword of the archpriest who stood up for Russia.
Besides the sphere of church-state relations, there cannot really be any doubt that the criticisms coming out of the West about the ignorance of the white clergy (popes), lack of preaching, and lack of missionary efficacy were driving attempts at further ecclesial reforms, especially educational reforms and the elimination of the clerical caste, in the 1860s and subsequent decades. Figures with ties to Paris pushed for change. For example, Dmitry Tolstoy assumed the mantle of an Orthodox publicist and as over-procurator of the Holy Synod and minister of education, worked closely on educational projects with Vasiliev, who chaired the Synod’s Education Committee after his return to Russia in 1867. After Polisadov left foreign service and became the head priest at SS Peter and Paul Cathedral in Petersburg, he began preaching regularly on Sundays and called for the abolition of censorship of sermons. It is evident that Polisadov worked for this measure partly in response to criticisms in the West about the lack of preaching in the Orthodox Church and partly to counter the Catholic preaching of Father Souaillard in St. Petersburg.142 It is no coincidence that other high-profile members of the Russian clergy abroad, fully cognizant of how western Europeans perceived their church, also advocated for higher standards for Russian clergy and promoted educational reforms.143
Freedom of conscience was another front in the battle for Orthodoxy’s international reputation. Blaming coercive state policies for aggravating sectarian movements in the Russian Church, Muraviev used the foreign press to make the case for freedom of conscience in his 1859 work Le Raskol. About a decade later, Ivan Aksakov published a letter in Moskva (Moscow)—part of a polemic between him and Pogodin regarding freedom of conscience. For Aksakov, as for all the leading Slavophiles, coercion in matters of faith was anathema. As “the most forceful and prolific popularizer of Russian Panslavism,” Aksakov’s commitment to freedom of conscience reflected his belief that Russia was in need of internal regeneration if it was to be the spiritual and cultural center of Slavic unity.144
If Orthodoxy was experiencing a new heyday in the West, Aksakov argued it was because of freedom of the press and freedom of conscience:
Every year the Orthodox Church acquires new offspring and new adherents both in western Europe and across the Ocean … in the free American States… . These peaceful victories of the word gave and will give much consolation to our entire church, from the highest hierarchs, from the Synod, to the last layman… . But how have these acquisitions happened? These victories are gained thanks to what? … Isn’t it thanks to the principle of “freedom of conscience,” to this essential condition of the faith, without which faith is not faith,—isn’t it thanks to this principle that has become the cornerstone of European civil legislation, that the unrestricted preaching of Orthodoxy became possible in the Catholic and Protestant countries and that we have acquired some souls there? Isn’t it on the strength of this principle that all who were mistaken, after confessing their error, can without hindrance come to the light? Isn’t it by leaning on this law that nationals of the French, English, and Prussian states dare, not being liable to any prosecution from the side of their governments, profess aloud in the middle of the non-Orthodox world, the truth of Orthodoxy that they have found? Isn’t it by the fruits of the religious freedom, allowed in foreign and non-Orthodox states, that the Russian Church is propagated in these cases, and shouldn’t the Russian Church therefore give thanks to and praise the fertile strength of religious liberty?145
Aksakov discussed the growth of favorable attitudes to Orthodoxy in the West. Orthodoxy’s growing prestige was evident in the realm of print media and from its increasing number of adherents. As examples of Orthodoxy’s rising stature he mentioned the brochures Khomiakov had published abroad in the 1850s, L’Union chrétienne, The Orthodox Catholic Review founded in London in 1867 by Joseph Julian Overbeck (another westerner, reportedly influenced by Vasiliev and Guettée, who joined the Orthodox Church), and a “conscientious work” published in France by a Protestant, Louis Boissard’s L’Église de Russie (The church of Russia, Paris, 1867).146 Aksakov described L’Union chrétienne as a paper “founded by the Russians, with Russian money,” that for a decade had been working to “promote that ‘joining of the churches’ for which arises every day the prayer in our temples, and to promote to European, chiefly French society, the truth of Eastern Orthodoxy.”147 Under the impression that Guettée had recently assumed the editorship of this Russian Orthodox paper, Aksakov explained that Guettée was formerly a Catholic priest who had become Orthodox, and who “openly and harshly, in Paris itself, the capital of Catholic France, both in the pages of his paper and his numerous works, denounces the falsehood and disease of Roman church structure—and not only openly and harshly, but chiefly, without constraints.”148
The fact was, Aksakov argued, Orthodoxy was benefiting from freedom of conscience in western Europe and the United States, though this freedom was not allowed in Russia. Russia had a double standard, and while people were coming to the light of the Orthodox faith where freedom of conscience was granted, “the Russian conscience” remained in bondage to the dominant church.149 Specifically mentioning Guettée’s joining to Orthodoxy, he observed that if France had apostasy legislation like that in the Russian penal code, Vasiliev and Guettée would both have been subject to harsh punishments.150 He cited the Russian legislation at length, noting that even if many of the provisions were no longer enforced, they were nonetheless contrary to the spirit of liberty of conscience that was vital to religious faith. “It is precisely because our faith is true that it must be by true faith, i.e., by the free will of the spirit, as the Orthodox Church also teaches: it must demand of its children only sincere, i.e., fully free and not hypocritical belief.”151
Aksakov’s observations highlight the reciprocity between events in Paris and Russia, indicating that what was happening abroad exposed tensions and contradictions in Russian society. Like other Russian contemporaries of Guettée and Vasiliev, Aksakov had the sense that Orthodoxy was becoming more visible around the world and that western opinion about Orthodoxy was undergoing positive changes. He saw that it was the comparative freedom of the press and the principle of freedom of conscience that allowed Orthodox publicists to openly practice and profess their faith abroad, to challenge anti-Orthodox prejudices, and to receive heterodox individuals into their fold. Once again, St. Alexander Nevsky Church and the activities of the embassy clergy in Paris advanced the conversation about freedom of conscience.
Of course, Aksakov was right that Russians were benefiting from freedoms in the West that were absent from Russia, but it might also be worth pointing out that freedom of conscience became the pattern in western Europe gradually and through a process of bitter struggle; while Aksakov mentioned that it had become the law of the land in France, Britain, and Prussia, the application of the principle was contested in and beyond the 1860s, especially when Pope Pius IX rejected freedom of conscience as a universal principle, most famously in The Syllabus of Errors. With the notable exception of the liberal Catholics, Catholic polemicists were certainly not at the forefront of the fight for freedom of conscience in western European nations; hence the political alliances that sometimes formed between religious minorities and liberals, and hence the anti-Catholic legislative programs of the 1870s and 1880s.152
Aksakov implicated both the dominant church and the state for the fact that Russia lacked freedom of conscience and was concerned that the Russian clergy would be resistant to the principle.153 He was starting to understand something that most Catholic polemicists probably did not: in the post-Nikolaevan era, Russian state interference in ecclesiastical affairs pushed for more tolerance of the heterodox, contrary to what some key Orthodox churchmen would have liked.154 Some of what foreign observers of the Russian situation interpreted as state interference in ecclesial affairs was actually ecclesiastics actively seeking state patronage to ensure that the Orthodox Church retained its privileged position within the empire.
To an educated public preoccupied with Russia’s international reputation, events in Paris fed religious nationalism at home. Guettée, Vasiliev, and L’Union chrétienne mattered because they defended and promoted Orthodoxy abroad, symbolizing that Orthodoxy was gaining ascendancy at precisely the moment when the papacy seemingly faced implosion. For Orthodox publicists and eulogists, Guettee’s turn to Orthodoxy demonstrated that even if Orthodoxy was misunderstood, misrepresented, and slandered in the West, it was gaining prominence, influence, and respect. Vasiliev was appointed to the Paris embassy church in part to counter Russians’ “lightminded enthusiasm for the foreign” (to borrow Istomin’s expression), and Guettee’s turn to Orthodoxy was proof that “the foreign”—that is, Roman Catholicism—was not superior to Orthodoxy. Some Russian writers interpreted Guettée’s Orthodox turn as a sign of a new sea change in western opinion, oblivious to the facts that it was a relatively isolated event, a real change in attitudes was still in embryonic stages, and Guettée was a controversial figure and not a total boon to Orthodoxy.
While any Orthodox triumphalism was misguided, Guettée’s and Vasiliev’s eulogists were right to see their work as important. Guettée and Vasiliev were representatives of a relatively new phenomenon among the clergy abroad—the Orthodox priest-publicist. They began doing for Orthodoxy in the West what Catholic and Protestant clergymen, including Guettée, had already been doing: using the press to promote their faith and to discuss the important issues of the times. For the public image of Orthodoxy, it was significant that they did so in the international language of the day. For Guettée, already a seasoned journalist, the transition from Gallican to Orthodox publicist was seamless. But Vasiliev was breaking new ground by venturing into French-language journalism in his capacity as a Russian priest, although his efforts were part of a broader movement among the clergy abroad to educate westerners by translating Orthodox liturgical and theological works into western European languages.155 The clergy in foreign service joined outspoken Orthodox laymen who took it on themselves to defend Russia and the Orthodox faith in the West. As priest-publicists, Guettée and Vasiliev contended with anti-Orthodox sentiment, defended the Eastern Church as catholic, and sought better mutual understanding with anti-ultramontane Christians of other confessions. They deserve credit for raising the awareness of those westerners who, amid the controversies over the papacy that divided Catholics and troubled statesmen, wanted to know more about the history and teaching of the Eastern Church. While there was not an abrupt shift in western opinion, they had some success at reshaping French attitudes about the Eastern Church, as was already evident in the 1860s.