From school, many believe that the Russian Orthodox Church has anathematized or excommunicated the great world-famous writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. These people are right in one thing - Tolstoy's problems were serious, and it almost came to anathema or excommunication. The Church does not curse the living or the dead.
The reason for serious conclusions was the XXXIX chapter of the novel "Resurrection", in which the writer, describing the church service, replaces obscure Old Slavonic words with ordinary names. Tolstoy's heretical views, from the point of view of the official Church, have long been well known to everyone who has read his books and journalism. But one thing is his, albeit public, statements on this score in a close circle of close people and even articles, but similar passages with a description of the church service in the novel of the most widely read author in the world - this Lev Nikolaevich could not let go.
So what did the clergy blame the man who once confessed in a private letter: "My life makes religion, not religion,".
In the Decree of the Most Holy Synod of February 20-23, 1901, No. 557 with a message to the faithful children of the Orthodox Greek-Russian Church, it is said that the count “did not shudder to mock the greatest of the Sacraments - the Holy Eucharist” and outraged “the most sacred objects of faith of the Orthodox people ". The Synod's Determination condemned false doctrine that was contrary to Christianity and a "new false teacher" who "preaches with the zeal of a fanatic the overthrow of all the dogmas of the Orthodox Church and the very essence of the Christian faith."
The Synod announced that the church "does not consider him a member and cannot count until he repents and restores his communion with her." There is no word "excommunication" and even more so "anathema" in the Definition. Diplomatically speaking only about "falling away". However, if they wanted, the priests could, at their discretion, proclaim an anathema to the "false teacher" Tolstoy.
The crowd's reaction somewhat frightened Tolstoy. He himself wrote about this in the "Reply to the Synod's determination of February 20-22 and to the letters I received on this occasion": "And if the crowd had been formed differently, very likely I would have been beaten, as a man was beaten several years ago. at the Panteleimon Chapel ".
According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, Leo Tolstoy left the crowd almost at a run, although he was greeted rather than going to beat him, but the writer was probably embarrassed by the phrase thrown towards him by someone: "Here is a devil in the form of a man!" Tolstoy and his fellow traveler managed to get on a cab, but they continued to grab the sled. The situation was saved by a detachment of mounted gendarmes, who cut off the crowd. Tolstoy received letters with threats and abuse, but there were still more sympathetic ones.
The definition of the Synod angered primarily the intelligentsia and students. And not only in a revolutionary mood. Chekhov noted: “The public reacted with laughter to the excommunication of Tolstoy. It was in vain that the bishops inserted the Slavic text into their appeal. It’s very insincere.” But there were other opinions, including well-known and authoritative people. Father John of Kronstadt called the classic of literature "an apocalyptic dragon" who "becomes the greatest accomplice to the devil, destroying the human race, and the most notorious enemy of Christ." On the eve of the 80th birthday of the writer, almost two years before Tolstoy's death and in his own year, John of Kronstadt prayed that the Lord would remove this malicious heretic from the face of the earth.
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The fury of John of Kronstadt is downright alarming - is it really the shepherd who is revered in Russia as a miracle worker and a righteous man? Why is there so much anger in the priest, so much rudeness in his expressions? Maybe it was out of envy of a person who was also popular, or the writer and philosopher Vasily Rozanov, who sympathized with Father John, was right. Rozanov believed that others had instigated Father John on Tolstoy, he wrote: “He (John of Kronstadt) was pointed with a 'finger' to some of Tolstoy's words and offered to 'condemn' him; he condemned."
The point of view of the founder of Russian cosmism NF Fedorov is curious: “A multi-talented artist and craftsman and a completely mediocre philosopher, Tolstoy is not subject to imputation. He would very much like reproaches, vilifications, which would give him the aura of a martyr, and he so longs for the cheap price of acquired martyrdom. " Not only the literary critic NK Mikhailovsky considered Lev Nikolaevich "an out of the ordinary fiction writer, but a bad thinker."
Vasily Rozanov, who never sympathized with Tolstoy's "teaching", considered that the tongue-tied act of the Synod "shook the Russian faith more than Tolstoy's teaching." “Tolstoy, with the full presence of his terrible and criminal delusions, mistakes and impudent words, is a huge religious phenomenon, perhaps the greatest phenomenon of religious Russian history in the 19th century, albeit distorted,” wrote the philosopher and writer V. Rozanov. “But an oak that has crookedly grown is an oak, and it is not for a mechanical-formal institution to judge it, which has not grown in any way, but is made by human hands (Peter the Great with a series of subsequent orders).”
Responding to the Determination of the Synod, Leo Tolstoy wrote: “It is not blasphemy to call a partition a partition, not an iconostasis, and a cup, a cup, not chalice, etc., but the most terrible, never-ending, outrageous blasphemy is that people, using all possible means of deception and hypnotization, assure children and simple-minded people that if you cut pieces of bread in a known way and while pronouncing certain words and put them in wine, then God enters these pieces; and that the one in whose name a piece is taken out alive will be better in the next world; and that whoever eats this piece, God himself will enter into that one."
“I do not say that my faith is undoubtedly true for all times,” Lev Tolstoy emphasizes, “but I do not see another one - simpler, clearer and meeting all the requirements of my mind and heart; if I recognize this, I will immediately accept it, because God does not need anything but the truth. The Synod was forbidden to reprint the writer's answer, but the bans were no longer in effect.
And although the “ten days that shook the world” were still more than fifteen years away, the process was launched, the old prohibitions and warnings were no longer in effect. For both the intelligentsia and the common people, myth has mixed with reality. But who were the creators of this myth?
First, unknown folk talents. At the beginning of the century, frescoes depicting Count Tolstoy in hell were painted in several rural churches of the Kursk province. One can imagine what impact they had on the semi-literate parishioners, who are accustomed to trusting the image more than the father's speech. Secondly, Tolstoy's brother in the literary workshop A. I. Kuprin. In 1913, his story "Anathema" was published, which spoke of the torment of the protodeacon, who received an order to anathematize the "bolarin Leo Tolstoy" during his service (but in the end the protodeacon refused to do this, proclaiming "many years" to Tolstoy).
The intelligentsia, deceived by Kuprin's genius, took his invention at face value, and no one remembered that from 1869 until the revolution in the Russian Church, when proclaiming anathemas in the rite of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the names of either heretics or state criminals were not mentioned.
However, how typical is the announcement of anathema to a particular person in Christianity? This is a tricky question that can confuse even a savvy theologian. Nevertheless, if we turn to tradition, then, firstly, it should be noted that most often heresy is understood as preference for one line instead of the whole picture, and a heretic is one who persists in his erroneous opinion in front of the church tradition. Based on this, there was an opinion in church literature that anathemas could be imposed only on certain teachings, but not on people.
Secondly, the position, most likely expressed by St. John Chrysostom and supported by Blessed Augustine, is that one should not curse either the living or the dead. Therefore, some doctrine is often anathema, and not its founder. The authority of these Teachers of the Church is very high, and their opinion is often decisive for the clarification of any controversial issue. And since they were negative about the curse, then their followers should not curse anyone, including heretics.
However, the leaders of the heretical teachings are more to blame than their flock. It was precisely because of this, perhaps, that many believers thought that Tolstoy must be declared anathema for having created heresy. As a result, this delusion (consisting in the fact that the wishful was taken for reality), allegedly announced to Leo Tolstoy, took possession of the minds of many non-specialists in this matter, and not only laymen, but also ordinary priests (remember the same John of Kronstadt).
That is why this delusion has survived to this day, even despite the explanation of Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin that: "The Synodal definition should not be perceived as a curse, but as a statement of the fact that the writer's convictions were very seriously at variance with Orthodox teaching." That is, despite the factual recognition by the Orthodox Church of the fact that there was no anathema to Leo Tolstoy.
IGOR BOKKER