Tolstoy

There are two classes of fanatics, the cold and the hot – that is, fanatics from reflection and fanatics by temperament. It is easy to know to which Pobedonostsev belongs. His looks betray him. He is old and of a spare build, his nose is pointed, his eyes are keen and penetrating, he wears spectacles, his forehead is fringed with a few grey hairs, his face is clean-shaven, and his expression is keen.¹¹⁶

Both Pobedonostsev and Tolstoy, who were almost exact contemporaries, felt Russian society needed to be healed, but they certainly differed in their diagnosis of its ailments.

When Tolstoy fell ill at the end of 1899, while he was completing Resurrection, the Holy Synod decided first to ban all prayers in his memory after his death, anticipating that he might not have much longer to live. When he regained his health it then pressed on with its ill-conceived excommunication plan. In his zeal to shore up the foundations of the Orthodox Church, Pobedonostsev had long ago clamoured for Tolstoy to be excommunicated, but it was Metropolitan Antony of St Petersburg who now took the initiative, motivated by fears that even the clergy might succumb to Tolstoyanism. There was some justification for this. In 1898 Grigory Petrov, a charismatic young priest in St Petersburg, had published a book called The Gospel as the Foundation of Life which focused on the Tolstoyan idea of the practical application of Christianity in everyday living; it went into twenty editions. In early February 1901 Petrov was reprimanded by Metropolitan Antony for discussing Tolstoy in a positive light at a meeting of the Religious-Philosophical Society: he had declared that Tolstoy was doing for Russian society what Virgil had done for dante, by leading people who had lost their way spiritually out of purgatory.¹¹⁷ The process to excommunicate Tolstoy was initiated the next day, and was announced ten days later. Nicholas II was apparently angry not to have been asked for his approval beforehand, and Pobedonostsev was forced to apologise.¹¹⁸

Metropolitan Antony had actually been keen to act earlier, so that the Synod’s edict could be announced on 18 February, which was the first Sunday of Great Lent. Until 1869 it had been traditional to pronounce an annual anathema in church against enemies of the state on the first Sunday of Lent, just before the ‘Victory of Orthodoxy’ week, and no doubt the Church would have liked to include Tolstoy in its roster of heretics at least in memory of the traditional proclamation:

To those who do not believe that the Orthodox monarchs have been raised to the throne by virtue of a special grace of God – and that, at the moment the sacred oil is laid on them, the gifts of the Holy Ghost are infused into them anent the accomplishment of their exalted mission; and to those who dare to rise and rebel against them, such as Grisha Otrepev, Ivan Mazeppa, and others like them: Anathema! Anathema! Anathema!¹¹⁹

Back in 1837 the German travel writer J. G. Kohl had the chance to witness the ‘cursing of the heretics’ first-hand at the Kazan Cathedral in St Petersburg, and so many believers wanted to attend, he claimed, that police had to be called to keep order. He described it as ‘the most extraordinary, incomprehensible, and terrible service of the Eastern Church’, the only one where cursing could be heard in a country where the people were generally more inclined to bless nearly everything:

The anathematizing began with a long service, with singing, reading, opening and shutting of doors; lighting of tapers, and burning of incense; coming and going, &c … [The Venerable Metropolitan] stepped forward and called down anathemas upon a number of people; on the false demetrius, on Boris Godunoff, Mazeppa, Stenka Razin and Pugatsheff; and after these political heretics followed the religious ones, but they were only mentioned in general terms. Each person or class was first characterized by a few introductory words, their names pronounced, and then followed two or three times, like thunder after lightning, the word: anafema, anafema …¹²⁰

Tolstoy was in lofty company. In 1901, clergy in Russian churches had to make do with an anathema on Tolstoy’s Resurrection, rather than on his person. Nonetheless it was a huge event of huge social and political significance.