Conclusion

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

—Richard, cardinal and archbishop of Paris, 1894

Vasiliev sensed that in order to combat its negative reputation in the West, the Orthodox Church needed a visual testimony. With the educational infrastructure that accompanied it, St. Alexander Nevsky Church had important results for the public image of Orthodoxy at home and abroad. In the West, the new church and the media campaign provided a springboard for making Orthodoxy better understood, leading to the gradual acceptance of alternative narratives about the Eastern Church in some quarters. Meanwhile, in Russia, the perception that the Orthodox publicists were having so much success provided an impetus for ramping up Orthodoxy’s international visibility.

While it was only after the Russian Revolution that Russian émigrés were successful at dispelling “prejudices and misunderstandings concerning Orthodoxy,”1 the groundwork was laid by the clergy abroad in the nineteenth century. The Orthodox public relations campaign coincided with a broader opposition movement—aimed against the centralizing tendency in Roman Catholicism—that impelled dialogue between, and better understanding among, Christians of anti-ultramontane proclivities. Russia’s clergy abroad were also in contact and conversation with their Roman Catholic religious counterparts and spoke to them about all the false information about Russia and the Eastern Church in the Catholic press.² Through these dialogues, the Russian embassy clergy in general, and the priest-publicists in Paris in particular, had some successes when it came to reshaping attitudes about Orthodoxy. Having had extensive interactions with Orthodox lay and clerical thinkers, Palmer, who acknowledged that a lifetime would not be enough to gather “all the slanders expressed by the West” about the Eastern Church since the schism, claimed that he corrected Pius IX when the pope alluded to the Russian Church’s dependence on the secular authority.3 In print, the most important and successful work was Description de l’Église russe de Paris, which was the basis for broad dissemination of factual information about Orthodoxy in the mass press and tour guides. Beyond that, Vasiliev’s and Guettée’s efforts bore the most fruit among anti-ultramontanes of different stripes.⁴

Aksakov mentioned Louis Boissard’s work as evidence that Orthodoxy’s stature was rising in the West. This minister of the Evangelical Church produced a two-volume work on the Eastern Church based on a stay of ten years in Russia, and his study of Orthodox sources including Filaret, Metropolitan Makary (whose works on Orthodox theology Vasiliev translated into French in the late 1850s), Vasiliev, Muraviev, and L’Union chrétienne.⁵ Boissard considered the claims that the Russian Church and its clergy lacked independence to be propaganda spread by a rival (i.e., Roman Catholic) church that had tried unsuccessfully to subject the Eastern Church to its authority. He accepted Vasiliev’s explanation of Russian church administration. The widespread belief that “attributes a Caesarian papacy to the emperor of Russia” was an error, according to Boissard. Civil and spiritual authority was separate in Russia: “There is a very clear line of demarcation between the civil power and the ecclesiastical authority, which enjoys a complete independence in the government of the Church. In Russia there is not even a minister of worship, which is regarded as irreconcilable with the spiritual liberty of the Church.”⁶ The free-thinking encyclopedist Larousse reviewed Boissard’s study in his Grand dictionnaire. The work filled a gap in French theological literature, Larousse wrote, and would be very useful for anyone wanting to understand the Eastern Church. Yet Larousse thought Boissard overlooked intrusions of the civil power in ecclesial affairs in Russia and was “a chronicler rather than a historian,” since “the critical element is completely lacking.”⁷ Nonetheless, owing to closer ties between Orthodox publicists and Protestants, the dominant Roman Catholic narrative was being challenged. About twenty more years passed before a French Catholic scholar significantly revised the portrayal of the Russian Church.

In the 1880s the liberal Catholic publicist Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu provided a nuanced treatment of the Russian Church in his L’Empire des tsars et les Russes (The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians) that significantly blurred the lines between Russia and the rest of Europe.⁸ Leroy-Beaulieu’s study may provide the most sympathetic treatment of the Russian Church published in French by a Catholic author since Haxthausen’s study of Russia (published before the Crimean War). In the first volume (1881) he suggested that Christianity should have linked Russia with Europe but had not done so because of Russia’s connection with Byzantium rather than Rome. Because of the complexity of the issue of Eastern Christianity’s value as a civilizing force in Russia, he devoted an entire volume to religion, which appeared in 1889.9

In this third volume, Leroy-Beaulieu posed and answered the question of whether the Russian people were Christian, attributing the idea that they were not truly Christian to Russians like the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky and the positivist Grigory Vyrubov rather than to his compatriots and co-religionists. In spite of all the elements of a dual faith and the persistence of superstitious and magical beliefs and practices—not unique to Russia but similar to other places and times, even in Europe—he concluded that Russians were nonetheless Christian, not only in rite but in their souls, because they apprehended the Christian virtues of love and humility and above all, love of the cross.¹⁰ Russia and its religion were not outside Europe but belonged to Europe of the Old Regime.¹¹

In his treatment of Russian church-state relations Leroy-Beaulieu rejected the excesses of the Catholic polemicists—the tsar-pope myth, the church’s enslavement, the idea that with the elimination of the patriarchate there were no longer any checks on autocratic power—while still adhering to the belief that only in the Latin tradition could an established church retain independence. What western polemicists described as the dependence of the Russian Church on the state was really a mutual interdependence of church and state. The religious beliefs of the people in all states serve as a check on a ruler’s, even a despot’s, power.¹² Nowhere in Europe was the link between church and state as close as it was in Russia. This fact meant that the Russian Church enjoyed special prerogatives and the protection of the state on one hand, but at the price of considerable subservience to the civil power on the other.¹³ While Leroy-Beaulieu acknowledged that there could not be a “free church in a state where nothing is free,” the autocratic rulers, even Peter I, exercised restraint when it came to the church. If the abolition of the patriarchate—“the greatest act of interference in church matters”—disposed of an institutional check on the autocrat’s power, Peter’s power was nonetheless checked by the canons that linked all Orthodox people, the need for the Russian Orthodox Church to remain in communion with the other Orthodox patriarchs, and the need not to offend “the faith of the people.”¹⁴ The manners, spirit, and customs of the people checked state power. Furthermore, Leroy-Beaulieu addressed the tsar-pope myth directly, dismissing it as a false idea that foreigners had about Russia and affirming that the Orthodox would acknowledge that their church had only one head—Jesus Christ. “The foreigner represents the tsar as the head of his Church, as a sort of national pope. No Russian, no Orthodox accepts similar views. Eastern Orthodoxy recognizes only one head, Christ, only one authority to speak in the name of Christ, the ecumenical councils.”15 The tsar only had an external, administrative authority in the church, and no authority in matters of dogma.¹⁶ Leroy-Beaulieu used a noteworthy expression in this discussion: “We pay attention to what the Russians say, to what their Church teaches. It sees in the tsar only a protector, a defender, qualities that Christian traditions attribute to every Christian monarch.”¹⁷ What is more, Leroy-Beaulieu noted that “a Frenchman is humiliated to discover” that the Russian catechisms of Platon (Levshin) and Filaret (Drozdov) do not contain “in the way of adulation and servility” anything comparable to “the duties towards the Emperor” spelled out in the catechism of Napoleon.¹⁸

Thus, Leroy-Beaulieu concurred with Russian Orthodox theologians and publicists, accepting points that were laid out in Vasiliev’s letters to the bishop of Nantes—which Leroy-Beaulieu may or may not have been familiar with. Leroy-Beaulieu’s conclusions were based on firsthand experience with Russians and research in Russia that he conducted in the 1870s.¹⁹ Between Vasiliev’s time in Paris and Leroy-Beaulieu’s time in Russia, it would not be surprising if the two crossed paths, but even if Vasiliev was not Leroy-Beaulieu’s direct source, the Russian archpriest represented the school of Orthodox thought that Leroy-Beaulieu drew on.

Boissard and Leroy-Beaulieu provide evidence that Orthodox publicists had some success at changing western mentalities. The Russian Church was not as independent as Vasiliev made it out to be, but it was also not the enslaved monolith that its critics often reduced it to for ideological reasons. With all the twists and turns in Russian church-state relations that have followed, perhaps this point should be kept in mind.

There are indications that Orthodox publicists and statesmen felt they were acting boldly, maybe even audaciously, by making their religion so public in Paris. They specifically wanted to avoid the perception that the church of Paris was political, so they proceeded cautiously, notwithstanding the spectacle surrounding the consecration. Their focus was educational, and their activities were largely defensive: to defend their religion from ridiculous caricatures; to preserve Orthodoxy as the basis of Russian national identity; to discourage travelers and expats from drifting toward “foreign” religious and political influences, especially in a center of Roman Catholic proselytism, where Russian converts to Roman Catholicism were promoting a different vision of Russian identity; and to some extent, to defend Russia’s position as a great power in the European system. They were clamoring to be recognized as Christians and part of civilized society, while many French publicists across the political spectrum practically denied them the appellations of “Christian” and “civilized.”

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

Russia’s religious and political authorities still see it as a priority to maintain an imposing church in Paris as evidenced by the decision to spend 170 million euros for the new Holy Trinity Cathedral and Russian cultural center prominently located on Quai Branly.

When the cornerstone for the church on “Cross Street” (Rue Daru) was laid in 1859, Vasiliev referred to it as the “Orthodox Holy Trinity Alexander Nevsky Church,” though on completion the main altar was dedicated to the Russian saint.28 At a time when a public Orthodox church was a novelty in western Europe, Vasiliev could never have foreseen that one day there would be two Russian cathedrals in Paris, St. Alexander Nevsky and Holy Trinity, representing (at least temporarily) two rival archdioceses, or that St. Alexander Nevsky would become entangled in a tug of war between the Moscow and Ecumenical patriarchates. How did this happen?

The All-Russian Church Council of 1917–1918 revived the patriarchate that had been eliminated by Peter I, electing and enthroning Tikhon (Bellavin) in November 1917, just as the Bolsheviks assumed power. Leading the church during the first years of the communists’ vigorous antireligious campaigns, in 1921 Patriarch Tikhon appointed Archbishop Evlogy (Georgievsky) to oversee Russia’s patriarchal churches in western Europe. This decision, and Evlogy’s move to Paris in January 1923, created de facto a new archdiocese centered in Paris, eventually raising St. Alexander Nevsky Church to cathedral status.²⁹ Following Tikhon’s death in 1925, the Soviet regime suppressed the Moscow patriarchate (until 1943) and continued to persecute the church. After Sergei (Stragorodsky), acting as self-appointed patriarchal locum tenens, tried to oust Evlogy for participating in ecumenical prayer services in London and Paris for Christians persecuted by the Soviet regime, Evlogy (by this point a metropolitan) placed the western European parishes under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1931.³⁰ With the exception of a few years when the archdiocese’s jurisdictional status fluctuated (1945–1946, 1965–1971), St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral has served as the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe from 1931 until November 2018, when Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew unexpectedly announced the dissolution of the archdiocese.³¹

For the last two decades, reunion with émigré parishes and the recovery of lost imperial-era churches has been part of Russia’s program of reasserting itself as a major political and spiritual power on the global stage.³² The process has been pursued through reconciliation between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (2007), attempted persuasion, and litigation (e.g., Dormition Cathedral in London, St. Nicholas in Nice). Under French law, St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral belongs to its worship association (association cultuelle) established in 1923, meaning in effect that it is the property of its parishioners, who have the right to determine which jurisdiction they belong to.33 The parish (and archdiocese) chose to stay under the Ecumenical Patriarchate until Patriarch Bartholomew decided to fold the independent archdiocese into the patriarchate’s other western European dioceses. Opposed to the dissolution of the diocese, Archbishop-Exarch Jean Renneteau, along with the clergy and parishes under his jurisdiction, sought a new canonical home, bringing the diocese, and most likely “a majority of its parishes, especially those in France, under the Moscow Patriarchate as a semi-autonomous ecclesial entity.”³⁴ The events since November 2018 notwithstanding, after the fall of the Soviet Union Moscow was unable to recover its most important prerevolutionary church in western Europe. Hence the Russian Federation funneled an enormous sum of money into the construction of the controversial Holy Trinity Cathedral, which serves as the seat of the diocese of Korsun and a newly created Patriarchal Exarchate of Korsun and of Western Europe.³⁵ Funding by the Russian government should guarantee that Holy Trinity will always remain under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.

In important respects, the founding of Holy Trinity Cathedral does not resemble the founding of St. Alexander Nevsky or mirror the goals of nineteenth-century Orthodox publicists. Unfortunately, Holy Trinity Cathedral (and Patriarch Kirill’s reconsecration of the Dormition Cathedral in London) are very public manifestations of an ongoing power struggle between the Moscow and Ecumenical patriarchates that intensified in October 2018 when Moscow broke communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This conflict, in turn, is exacerbating the jurisdictional controversies among Orthodox Christians that began with the Russian Revolution and have flared up many times since. While jurisdictional disputes may be multifaceted, reflecting ideological differences among Orthodox believers on sociopolitical and spiritual matters,³⁶ ultimately the unity and credibility of Orthodoxy is at stake. Vasiliev sought to project and promote unity among Orthodox peoples. He envisioned a church that would serve all Orthodox peoples in Paris. Besides being recognized by Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim II for his defense of Orthodoxy in 1862, he was decorated by King Otto I of Greece in 1863 for his service to Greeks in Paris, which included allowing the Greeks to serve liturgies in their own language in the church on Daru Street.³⁷ His pan-Orthodox vision remained an important element of parish identity at St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral for a century and a half.38 It remains to be seen whether a canonical realignment will significantly alter the orientation of the historically inclusive church.

Furthermore, although all Orthodox churches are sacred spaces where the faithful pray for the salvation of their souls and the peace of the whole world, there was a solid religious raison d’être for St. Alexander Nevsky Church, while the raison d’être of Holy Trinity Cathedral is more political than spiritual.³⁹ In theory, the new church was necessary because the existing parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate were inadequate to serve the large number of Russians living in Paris. Russia is in the throes of a demographic decline, with ethnic Russians constituting the third largest diaspora in the world and accounting for 2–5 percent of the population of major cities like Paris, Berlin, and New York.⁴⁰ In light of Russia’s large diaspora, perhaps new parishes in Paris would be justifiable. But Holy Trinity is not just a church. It is a prominent cathedral built on prime real estate to serve as the administrative and spiritual center of ecclesiastical turf being reclaimed by the Moscow Patriarchate. Besides, by funding the church-building project, the Russian government differentiated itself from other nations that have large diasporas.⁴¹ The controversial raison d’être of Holy Trinity can also be considered in light of the fact that Strasbourg, the seat of the European Parliament, is now home to a brand-new Russian Orthodox church and cultural center. A minor consecration of All Saints Church by Bishop Nestor of Korsun in December 2018 was followed by a grand consecration on May 26, 2019, by Patriarch Kirill. The websites devoted to the project—including a video showing the church’s location in relation to the European Parliament, European Court of Human Rights, and Council of Europe—discuss its “strategic nature” in one of Europe’s major political centers.⁴² Considering this broader context, the spate of criticism about the Russian Orthodox Church as Putin’s puppet or partner in a neo-imperial Russian culture war with the West is likely to continue.

Although Holy Trinity Cathedral is inextricably tied to the Russian government’s commitment to funding programs “to promote understanding and peace in the world by supporting, enhancing and encouraging the appreciation of Russian language, heritage and culture,”⁴³ behind the soft power diplomacy, Holy Trinity is, as St. Alexander Nevsky was, more a symbol of revival after a national crisis (or crises) than a measure of Russia’s political muscle. This point brings us to a major parallel between the story of St. Alexander Nevsky Church and that of Holy Trinity Cathedral.

Reflecting the persistence of Russian providentialism, both churches were built on the heels of Russian national crises and are tied to narratives of national resurgence. St. Alexander Nevsky was accompanied by the narrative of the “dawn of Orthodoxy in the West.” For the Moscow Patriarchate, Holy Trinity Cathedral, in the context of other Russian Orthodox churches being built around the globe, is tied to a broader narrative about Russia’s post-Soviet religious revival and the remarkable growth of the Russian Orthodox Church in the last two decades.44

Furthermore, the creation stories of both churches reflect attempts to fashion Russian identity and to define Russia’s relationship vis-à-vis western Europe. But a major shift has taken place since the founding of St. Alexander Nevsky Church. In the mid-nineteenth century, imperial Russia and its church were seen as threats to European civilization from the standpoint of liberalism (and every ideology further to the left) and Roman Catholicism. Now, however, the joint agreement signed by Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis in February 2016 suggests an alignment of the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches on many issues. Specific to European identity, these two preeminent religious leaders express concern for the religious freedom of Christians in the face of “very aggressive secularist ideology” and affirm Christianity as the basis for European integration. They call for Europe to “remain faithful to its Christian roots” and for “Christians of Eastern and Western Europe to unite in their shared witness to Christ and the Gospel, so that Europe may preserve its soul, shaped by two thousand years of Christian tradition.”⁴⁵ Their language can be contrasted with the preamble to the Lisbon Treaty that has governed the member states of the European Union since December 1, 2009. The treaty draws its inspiration from “the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe,” calling for European integration on the basis of the “universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law.”⁴⁶

As the Russian church on Daru Street has since the mid-nineteenth century, the cathedral on Quai Branly sits at the intersection of contested Russian, French, and European identities.