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Adam Drozdek GAGARIN and the PETRINE PRIMACY

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Adam Drozdek GAGARIN and the PETRINE PRIMACY Gagarin and the Petrine primacy 73 PERSPEC†TIVA Legnickie Studia Teologiczno-Historyczne Rok VIII 2009 Nr 1 (14) Adam Drozdek GAGARIN AND THE PETRINE PRIMACY The reception of Catholic ideas by Russian thinkers in the nine- teenth century was not common. One reason why Chaadaev’s first Phi- losophical letter became so scandalous was not only that he criticized the backwardness of Russia, but also because of the reason he gave for this situation and the proposed solution. According to Chaadaev, the source of Russian downfall was the isolation of the Russian Church, and the remedy he proposed was the return to the universal Church1. For Chaadaev, this was just a philosophical solution since he himself did not become a Catholic. However, his ideas were taken very serio- usly by the first editor of his writings, prince Ivan Gagarin. Gagarin not only became a Catholic, but he also became a Jesuit priest and extremely active in the cause of bringing Catholicism to Russia. The nineteenth century witnessed the reception of Catholicism among Russian intellectuals to the point of converting to Catholicism, to mention only Gagarin’s aunt, Sofia Svechina, Mikhail S. Lunin, prince Petr B. Kozlovsky, E. A. Golitsyn, and Vladimir Pecherin. A decision could hardly ever be fickle since it had serious consequences, such as the possibility to be sent to Siberia and losing all property. 1 Gagarin wrote about Chaadaev at some length in his Tendances catholiques dans la société russe. „Correspondant” 50:1860 p. 286-318, where he also reproduced Chaa- daev’s first Letter. 74 ADAM DROZDEK 1. GAGARIN AND HIS BOOK WILL RUSSIA BECOME CATOHOLIC? The way to Gagarin’s conversion was long and induced primarily by intellectual reasons, and his contacts with Western Europe were made while holding a post of a minor official in Russian foreign se- rvice. As a young man he lamented in his journal the fact that he did not find a firm idea to which he could devote his life, and he thought that he would devote his life to his fatherland: „to you, my fatherland, I will offer my life and my thoughts. My occupations, my work, my efforts, my life – I will give it all to you”; „may my life be active! Science, I will devote it to you; to you and to liberty, fatherland, and humanity”2. As he wrote in his Notes about my life3, before his conversion, Ga- garin saw Christianity from the perspective of social progress as „the phase of the development of human thought higher in comparison with that which it reached up to the time of Antiquity” and Protestant philosophy stemming from it as a new progress leading to the freedom of thought. He was not attracted to Protestantism but to the dualism that presupposed two opinions on every subject. It seemed to him that truth arose as the result of such fruitful tension. The existence of only one principle was fruitless and deadly (263). Intellectual stagnation in Russia was the result of the lack of two opposite doctrines battling one with another. The history of Europe has known this dualism long before the emergence of Protestantism which, he considered the sour- ce of European civilization. Protestantism was only a result of a more general cause. Gagarin found in the history of Europe the following opposing opinions: The Enlightenment philosophy of the 18th century and Christianity; Jansenists and Jesuits; Protestantism and Catholicism; Hussites, Wycliffians, Lollards, Albigensians [Cathars] and the Church (264); 2 И. ГАГАРИН. Дневник. Записки о моей жизни. Переписка. Москва: Языки ру- сской культуры 1996, entries for 26 Sept. 1834 p. 109, and 2/14 Nov. 1834 p. 130. 3 Ibidem. Gagarin and the Petrine primacy 75 Guelfs [supporters of the pope in the 13-14th century Italy] and Ghibellines [supporters of the German emperor]; empire and priesthood [the conflict of the Hohenstauf dynasty with the papacy in 12-13th centuries]; Muslims and Christians. He discovered that in each of these conflicts, one side was always the same – namely the Catholic Church – always attacked and always victorious (265). He understood then that this Church was „the nece- ssary foundation of European civilization” (266). He came to this co- nviction in 1836 or 1837, long before his 1842 conversion, i.e., „there is a wide gap between a solid opinion and the act of faith” (267). The act of faith came later, a fact not mentioned in his journal, which ends two months before his conversion. As Gagarin wrote late in his life: „Under German influence I got used to the idea of an impersonal God, which simply meant confessing atheism. The society in which I lived was far from battling such tendencies; it [even] encouraged them (…) I can say that never was I so far away from religion as in these two years I lived in Munich [1833-1835]”. The problem to which he was par- ticularly sensitive was the place of Russia in Europe: „In what lies this common trait that exists between various European countries, which is lacking in Russia? This was a problem which stood before me in Mu- nich, the problem with which I constantly wrestled and which finally led me to the Catholic Church”4. He wrote in 1845 to his aunt about de Maistre that „in the hands of Divine Providence his works were instrumental in my conversion and salvation”. To Samarin he wrote, „Jesuits did not convert me”. The foundation was set by Chaadaev in 1835 and 1836, and the work was finished by Murav’ev’s Truth of the universal Church”5. Gagarin disliked the narrowness of theological ideas in Murav’ev’s book and his aggressive attacks on Catholicism. And so he converted to Catholicism in 1842, and in the next year, he became a member of the Society of Jesus. In 1856, Gagarin published his most influential work, Will Russia become Catholic?6 The title was so provocative that for the 1858 Ru- 4 Letter to Bakhmeteva, Jan. 1875, quoted by Р. ТЕМПЕСТ. Между Рейном и Сеной, an introduction in Гагарин. p. 16-17. 5 The letter to his aunt and a letter to Samarin are quoted by Темпест. p. 40. 6 J. GAGARIN. La Russie sera-t-elle catholique? Paris: C. Douniol 1856. 76 ADAM DROZDEK ssian translation it was changed to About the reconciliation of the Ru- ssian and Roman Church. This slim volume was Gagarin’s credo, and scores of later booklets and articles were, in a way, commentaries on the 1856 publication. Gagarin began with quoting approvingly the words of Alexander II from a manifesto issued to the Russians after signing the treaty of Paris that concluded the Crimean war (1856) in which the tsar em- phasized the fact that social order was based on religion and thus all reforms should begin in the religious sphere (vi). Gagarin’s message was that Russia’s economic and civilizational backwardness was caused by isolationism in religion, in separation of the Eastern Church from Rome. That is, the union of the Churches should be appealing even to the non-religious because only such a union can establish a sufficiently strong basis for economic and social progress in Russia. Importantly, such a union with Rome did not mean the renunciation of Russian identity of the Eastern Church. „When retaining its venerable rites, its antique discipline, its national liturgy and its proper physiog- nomy, the Russian Church can reenter into the harmony of the univer- sal Church” (vii). Gagarin emphasized the fact that the integrity of the Russian Church has always been important to Rome and the union of the two Churches did not mean Latinization of the Eastern Church. For the Catholic Church, Russian bishops and priests are genuine bishops and priests, and they truly perform the sacrifice at the altar (2). „Russian catechisms have gaps rather than errors and whatever defects they could include, they are complemented and corrected by the offices of the oriental liturgy” (2-3). A few regrettable recent alterations were due to irregular intervention of civil powers (3). The Catholic Church has always made reconciliation attempts, and Gagarin mentioned the bull of Benedict XIV of 1755 (4) and popes Leon X and Clement VII, who had reproached those criticizing the Greek Church for using fermented bread for communion, the marriage of priests, and the dis- tribution of bread and wine to all (7-8). In this, they followed the Council of Florence (12). For almost all Russians, Catholicism was a synonym of Latinism which in turn was synonymous with Polonism (17; equating Catholicism with Polonism would become particularly important after the January Uprising in Poland in 1863). A confusion of Catholicism with Latin rites was to be the biggest obstacle in accep- ting Catholicism. The Russians must be convinced that by becoming Catholic they could retain communion in two forms, use fermented bread, their Slavic liturgy, and married clergy (18). Gagarin and the Petrine primacy 77 The need to unify the Churches stemmed from the philosophical principle that „truth is one and universal” (21). Therefore, the Church must be one and universal, but it must also be independent. „Jesus Christ, sovereign master of heavens and earth, charged it with showing to people the way of salvation; He established it as infallible interpre- ter of His word and His law” (23). The authority of the Church comes only from Christ. The unity of the Church is menaced by exaggeration of the national spirit, its independence – by claims and encroachments of temporal powers (24). This is what Gagarin called Byzantinism be- cause in Byzantium emerged for the first time the tendency „to trans- mit into the Church the national spirit to oppose it to the catholic spirit, the tendency to concentrate the government of this national Church in the hand of the prelate or assembly of prelates submissive to the influ- ences of political powers and at the same time to weaken as much as possible the ties that bind this Church with the universal Church” (29).
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