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What’s in God’s name: literary forerunners and philosophical allies of the imjaslavie debate

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the interaction between a tradition that belongs originally to the realm of orthodox contemplative monasticism (i.e., hesychasm) and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian intellectuals. In the first part, this paper will explore how hesychasm gradually penetrated nineteenth-century secular culture; a special focus will be on the hermitage of Optina Pustyn’ and its renowned elders, as well as their appeal to members of the Optina-intelligentsia, especially Fëdor Dostoevskij. Then, attention will shift to the imjaslavie controversy at the beginning of the twentieth century, which flared up initially as a dispute between Athonite monks and reached a sad culmination in 1912–1913 with a manu militari intervention by troops of the Russian Holy Synod. However, the debate was taken up by some prominent intellectuals of the Russian religious renaissance, such as Pavel Florenskij, Nikolaj Berdjaev, and Sergej Bulgakov, who explicitly sided with the imjaslavcy (“Glorifiers of the Name”) and actively stepped into the debate.

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Notes

  1. See e.g. the works by Alfeev; Kuße (2006), Gurko (2006), Leskin (2004).

  2. For an exhaustive bibliography of the hesychastic tradition, see the recent bibliography by Khoružij (2004). See also Meyendorff (1974).

  3. See Paert (2010) for the diverse range of elders in Russia.

  4. Quotes from and references to Dostoevskij’s works are from the Polnoe sobranie sočinenij v tridcati tomakh (compiled by the Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1972–1990), cited as PSS, followed by the volume and page number.

  5. For this concise overview of the history and development of the imjaslavie controversy, I have relied primarily on Dykstra (1988), Alfeyev (2007b, 241–307), Paert (2010, 171–178). See also Schultze (1951), Leskin (2004).

  6. “Для верующаго, любящаго Господа и всегда к Нему молящагося, имя Господа Иисуса Христа есть как бы Сам Он, Божественный Спаситель наш. И действительно, в производстве умно-сердечной Иисусовой молитвы всего лучше ощущается эта высокая истина.”.

  7. For a detailed analysis of the book’s content, see Hamburg (2003).

  8. During his military career, Bulatovič had served on diplomatic missions to Ethiopia. On one of these missions, he prepared a geographical report on Ethiopia for which he was rewarded a silver medal of the Russian Geographical Society (Dykstra 1988). During World War I, he again entered the Russian army to serve as a chaplain. Upon his return to Russia, he again became an active participant in the imjaslavie debate and tried to persuade the church authorities to accept Name-Worshipping. In October 1918, Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow signed a decree that prohibited Worshippers of the Name to take part in church services. After that, Bulatovič broke all his negotiations with the church and returned to his family estate near Kharkov, where he lived as a hermit. It was there that he was murdered in mysterious circumstances on the night of 5–6 December 1919; some say he was killed by robbers, others say he was murdered by soldiers of the Red or White Army (Graham and Kantor 2009: 16–17).

  9. There were also some reports in the international press: for example see an article in The New York Times (July 27, 1913) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B11F93E5B13738DDDAE0A94DF405B838DF1D3 and a series of articles in The London Times (June 19, August 22 & 23, 1913) (Khoružij 2004, 673–674).

  10. It has been suggested that Zosima Verkhovskij served as one of the saintly models for Dostoevskij’s fictional elder Zosima (in addition to the Optina elder Amvrosij and Tikhon of Zadonsk), but that is not a commonly accepted view among Dostoevskij scholars (see the editors’ commentaries to The Brothers Karamazov, PSS 15, 570).

  11. The title “Quenchers of the Spirit” can be traced back to 1 Thessalonians 5: 19, “Quench not the Spirit.” Just two verses earlier, we find Paul’s command “Pray without ceasing,” which is often quoted among practitioners of the hesychastic Jesus prayer.

  12. In a letter to Vladimir Ern, dated 18 September 1913, Bulgakov writes he regrets the heated style of Berdjaev’s essay (Kejdan 1997, 553).

  13. In the summer of 1913, Bulgakov took up the plan to publish a whole volume on the imjaslavie- controversy and asked several members of the Novosëlov circle to contribute articles to it. This plan was never realized (Leskin 2003, 172).

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Acknowledgments

The author’s research is financed by The Research-Foundation Flanders (FWO). I would also like to thank the editor and reviewers of SEET for their helpful comments and valuable suggestions to improve this paper.

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  1. Department of Slavonic and East European Studies, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Nel Grillaert

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Grillaert, N. What’s in God’s name: literary forerunners and philosophical allies of the imjaslavie debate. Stud East Eur Thought 64, 163–181 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-012-9167-1

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