Catherine the Great

One towering exception to this submissive attitude was Arseniy Matseyevich, metropolitan of Rostov, who was a fierce opponent of any state interference in church affairs, and especially of the secularization of church properties. Sixty-five years old, a Ukrainian nobleman by birth, a member of the Holy Synod, he presided over the richest of all the church sees (the see owned 16,340 serfs), and he believed firmly that the church had been granted its property not for secular but spiritual purposes. Fearless, passionate, and equipped with a thorough knowledge of theology, he prepared to use his pen and his voice to challenge the empress. He hoped that a scheduled face-to-face meeting with the new autocrat would provide him an opportunity to convince her that he was right and she was wrong.

Early in 1763, Catherine was to make a pilgrimage from Moscow to Rostov to consecrate the bones of Saint Dimitry Rostovsky, known as Saint Dimitry the Miracle Worker, a newly canonized saint who had been Arseniy’s predecessor. The bones were to be placed in a silver shrine in the presence of the empress, after which Arseniy meant to speak to her. But as the time approached, Catherine postponed her visit.

When this delay was announced, Arseniy seized the initiative. On March 6, 1763, he forwarded to the Holy Synod a violent denunciation of the policy of secularization, which, he declared, would destroy both church and state. He reminded the Synod that on her accession, Catherine had promised to protect the Orthodox religion. He railed against the suggestion that the church should be responsible for education in philosophy, theology, mathematics, and astronomy; its only Christian duty, he thundered, was to preach the Word of God. Bishops should not be responsible for establishing schools; this was the duty of the state. If the church were secularized, he said, bishops and priests would no longer be shepherds of their people but “hired servants, accountable for every crust of bread.” He aimed harsh words at his clerical colleagues in the Holy Synod, who, in this crisis, “sat like dumb dogs without barking.”

He rose before the assembled clergy of Rostov and condemned those who challenged the church’s right to its property in land and serfs: these were “enemies of the church … [who] stretch out their hands to snatch what has been consecrated to God. They want to appropriate the wealth formerly given to the church by the children of God and by pious monarchs.”

Arseniy had miscalculated. He had underestimated Catherine’s strength and that of other powerful elements in the Russian state arrayed against him. The high nobility were deeply secular; local landowners wanted more access to church-owned land and labor; government officials, struggling with the state’s financial condition, agreed with Catherine that the wealth and revenues of the church should be used for secular purposes.

When Catherine read Arseniy’s petition to the Synod, she realized that it was aimed directly at her. Describing the metropolitan’s arguments as “perverse and inflammatory distortions,” she insisted that “the liar and humbug” be punished as an example. Commanding the Synod to act, she signed a decree committing Arseniy for trial. On March 17, the offending cleric was arrested and brought under guard from Rostov to a monastery in Moscow for examination. In a series of nocturnal sessions, the members of the Synod interrogated their former colleague. Catherine, who was present, listened as Arseniy brought up questions of her right to the throne and the death of Peter III. “Our present sovereign is not native and not firm in the faith,” the archbishop cried. “She should not have taken the throne which should have gone to Ivan Antonovich [Ivan VI].” The empress, covering her ears, shouted, “Stop his mouth!”

The Synod’s verdict was not in doubt. On April 7, Arseniy was found guilty, sentenced to loss of ecclesiastical rank, dismissed from his see, and banished to a remote monastery on the White Sea. He was denied the use of pen and ink and condemned to do hard labor three days a week, carrying water, chopping wood, and cleaning cells. His ecclesiastical degradation was staged at a public ceremony in the Kremlin. Arseniy, appearing in flowing robes, was ritually disgraced: one by one, his ecclesiastical garments were removed. Even during this procedure, he refused to remain silent, shouting insults at his fellow churchmen and predicting that all would die violently. Four years later, incarcerated in the far north, he was still denouncing Catherine as a heretic and despoiler of the church, and still challenging her right to the throne. The empress then deprived him of all religious status and had him transferred to solitary confinement in a cell in the fortress of Reval on the Baltic. Here, the fiery voice was finally silenced: until his death in 1772, his guards, who spoke no Russian, knew him only by the name Andrew the Liar.