JUDITH COHEN ZACEK

The Russian Society and the Catholic

The brief history of the Russian Bible Society has served historians as a convenient barometer with which to measure changes in the cli- mate of both public and official opinion in the reign of Alexander I. The organization's rise and fall also well reflected the contradictory tendencies within the Russian Orthodox Church at the time.1 On the one hand, various high-ranking Orthodox Church officials, spurred by the tsar's initiative, zealously supported the aims and activities of the Society, seeking thereby to broaden the availability and facilitate the reading of the Holy Scriptures and, in the long run, to raise the moral and spiritual levels of the Orthodox flock. On the other hand, significant elements within the Orthodox hierarchy looked with grow- ing alarm upon what they considered the "religious indifferentism" and "misguided ecumenism" underlying the Society's work. By skill- fully playing upon Alexander I's increasing fears of revolution and sedition - the R. B. S. was, in a sense, "foreign" in origin, an off- shoot of the British and Foreign Bible Society - and by utilizing jealousies and rivalries within the tsar's own circle of advisors, the Orthodox opponents of the R. B. S. managed to convince the tsar (himself once the ardent advocate and patron of the Society) that the organization constituted a threat to the hegemony of the official State Church. Discredited by "heretical" associations, the Society fell victim to a cabal formed by obscurantist monks, Russian xenophobes, and palace intriguers. Within the Russian Orthodox Church, the struggle over the Bible Society centered about the person of Arch- bishop Filaret, an enthusiastic promoter of the Bible Cause, whose eventual rise to the position of Metropolitan of Moscow was temporari- ly halted by the victory of the Bible Society's opponents. The in the Russian Empire, too, was deeply affected by the rise and fall of the Russian Bible Society, and the conflict be- tween the Catholic adherents and opponents of the R. B. S. similarly focused upon a colorful, highly controversial individual: the Roman

1. See Judith Cohen Zacek, "The Russian Bible Society and the Russian Orthodox Church," Church History, XXXV, 4 (December 1966), 411-437. Catholic Metropolitan, Archbishop Stanislaw Siestrzencewicz-Bohusz.2 Born in 1731 of a Cathodic mother and a Calvinist father, Siestrzence- wicz-Bohusz was a member of the Lithuanian szlachta. After a Cal- vinist education at home and in Western , brief military ser- vice in Prussia and Lithuania, and a short career as a tutor on the Radziwill estate, Siestrzencewicz-Bohusz chose his mother's faith and entered a Piarist seminary, completing the course in 1763.3

To a great extent, the subsequent career of Siestrzencewicz-Bohusz was bound up with the changing relations between St. Petersburg and the Papacy, and the conflict over the Russian Bible Society within the Roman Catholic Church cannot be understood without reference to Siestrzencewicz-Bohusz's biography. His rise to prominence was accelerated by the Polish Partitions, which brought vast areas of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under Russian rule, for Catherine II found in him a willing supporter of her efforts to en- large the autonomy of the Catholic Church in the Russian Empire vis-a-vis the Holy See. Despite Papal disapproval, Catherine named him Bishop of the newly-created diocese of Belorussia in 1773 and Archbishop in 1782, and demanded recognition of the appointment. Outraged by the empress's actions, the Vatican withheld its approval until 1782, when Siestrzencewicz-Bohusz was finally consecrated and assumed the direction of the Roman Catholic Church in the Russian Empire, a position he would hold for more than forty years. Later, Catherine tried in vain to secure a cardinalate for her appointee. Failing in this, she nonetheless obtained for him enormous powers as head of what was, in effect, a "national" Catholic church. His authori- tarian impulses, his determination to control all facets of the Catholic Church in Russia, and his collaboration with the Russian government all served to arouse widespread opposition to him within the Catholic clergy, especially among the Jesuits (who, since Papal dissolution of

2. For biographical data on Siestrzencewicz-Bohusz, see: Pyccxuu 6uozpacfiu- necKUu Mosapb (CII6.-IIr., 1896-1918), XVIII, 388-392; Stanislaw Zalqski, Les Jesuites de la Russie-BLanche (Paris, 1890), I, 257-273; D. A. Tolstoi, Romanism in Russia, an Historical Sketch, trans. Mrs. M'Kibbin (London, 1874), I, 331-336; and the excellent recent biography by A. A. Brumanis, Aux origines de la hi6rarchie latine en Russie: Mgr. Stanislas Siestrzencevuicz-Bohusz, Premier arche- veque-metropolitain de Mohilev (1731-1826) (Louvain, 1968). 3. Siestrzencewicz-Bohusz himself explained his conversion to Catholicism as the result of his love for a wealthy Polish noblewoman, who refused to hear the marriage proposal of the Calvinist tutor. (But when he converted to Catholicism she refused him again, allegedly remarking that a man who so easily changed his faith might just as easily change his wife.) Brumanis rejects this explanation, however, for it was around this time that Siestrzencewicz-Bohusz became acquain- ted with Bishop Ignac Massalski of Vilna, who recognized Siestrzencewicz- Bohusz's great scholarly, social, and linguistic talents and convinced him to enter the priesthood, promising him a brilliant future. See Brumanis, pp. 7-9.