The Baptism by Fr. Seraphim (Bityukov)

In 1935, when Alexander Men was some six months old, he and his mother Elena were baptized in secret at Zagorsk by Archimandrite Seraphim (Bityukov), a priest of the catacomb church living in hiding. The act was illegal, dangerous, and performed by a cleric who had refused communion with the church administration the Soviet state tolerated — and it placed Men, from infancy, inside the persecuted rather than the permitted Church.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Moscow Patriarchate)

What Happened

The baptism is recorded consistently across the sources. Men and his mother Elena Semyonovna were secretly baptized in Zagorsk by Archimandrite Seraphim (Bityukov) of the banned catacomb church when the child was about six months old — that is, in the summer or early autumn of 1935, the year of his birth (English Wikipedia, art. “Alexander Men,” citing the standard biographies; Russian Wikipedia, art. “Мень”; Orthodox Encyclopedia, art. “Мень Александр Владимирович,” which records the secret infant baptism of 1935). [Disputed: the surname of the baptizing priest appears in the literature as Bityukov (Битюков), Bityugov (Битюгов), and Batyukov (Батюков); Russian reference works give his secular name as Sergei Mikhailovich and treat the variants as spellings of one man, but no single form is universal.]

Zagorsk — the Soviet name imposed on Sergiev Posad, the town of the Trinity–St. Sergius Lavra — is not incidental. The Lavra had been closed in 1920 and its brotherhood scattered; a good deal of what survived of monastic and clerical Russia had gone to ground in and around the town, precisely because it was the town it was. Men was baptized in the shadow of the closed Lavra. Fifty-five years later he was murdered a few kilometres away, in Semkhoz, within the same municipal district.

Who Fr. Seraphim Was

Archimandrite Seraphim (Sergei Mikhailovich Bityukov, 1878–1942) was a Russian priest of the catacomb church who spent his last years hidden in a house at Zagorsk, serving the Liturgy on a secret altar. He died on 19 February 1942 and was buried, according to the Russian accounts, beneath the floor of the house, under the place where the altar of the hidden church had stood (Russian Wikipedia, art. “Серафим (Битюков)”; biographical materials collected at fudel.ru, “Архимандрит Серафим (Сергий Михайлович Битюгов, 1878–1942)”).

The detail is worth dwelling on, because it says exactly what kind of Christianity Men was baptized into. A priest who could not be buried in a cemetery was buried under his own floorboards, under his own altar, by people who could not hold a funeral. This was the Church in 1942: hunted, hidden, and still celebrating.

What “Catacomb Church” Means Here

The phrase requires precision, because it is often used loosely.

After Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky)’s Declaration of 1927, which pledged the loyalty of the Russian Church’s administration to the Soviet state, a substantial body of bishops, clergy and laity refused to accept that settlement. Some broke communion outright; many simply ceased to commemorate Metropolitan Sergius at the Liturgy — the “non-commemorators” (непоминающие) — and continued to serve in private houses, cellars and forests as parishes were closed around them. These clandestine communities are what the Russian literature calls the catacomb church or the True Orthodox Church. They were not a single organized body but a spectrum, ranging from clergy who regarded the Sergian administration as fallen to clergy who regarded it merely as compromised and who intended no permanent schism.

Fr. Seraphim belonged to this world, and the community around him at Zagorsk — which included laypeople who had come to Christianity from the Moscow intelligentsia — was one of its cells. Men’s mother and aunt were received into it, and Men grew up in it (see The Catacomb Community).

Two things follow, and both should be stated plainly because they are sometimes blurred by both Men’s admirers and his detractors.

First, the baptism was canonically valid and is not in dispute. Baptism by a priest of the non-commemorating clergy is baptism; nobody in the controversy over Men has ever suggested otherwise, and the Moscow Patriarchate ordained him without any question arising on this head.

Second, Men himself did not remain in the catacomb church. He was ordained a deacon in 1958 and a priest in 1960 in the Moscow Patriarchate, served in its parishes for thirty years, published some forty articles in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate between 1959 and 1961, and was buried by a Patriarchal metropolitan (Russian Wikipedia, art. “Мень”; Orthodox Encyclopedia, art. “Мень”). He was formed by the catacombs and he served in the official Church. That combination — the underground formation and the canonical service — is unusual, and it explains a great deal about him: he had no illusions about the compromises of the institutional Church, and he refused to leave it.

Why the Secrecy Matters

It is easy to read “secretly baptized” as a picturesque detail. In 1935 it was not.

The year of Men’s baptism sits at the beginning of the most violent phase of the Soviet assault on the Church. Within two years, the terror of 1937–1938 would kill Orthodox bishops, priests, monastics and laity in numbers that the Moscow Patriarchate itself now commemorates in the synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors (see The New Martyrs of Russia). To baptize an infant in a hidden room was to expose the priest to arrest and probable death, and to expose the mother to arrest and the loss of her child. Elena Men did it anyway, and she did it as a Jewish woman with no communal support for the decision on any side.

This is the fact that stands behind Men’s later and much-criticized confidence in speaking to unbelievers. He did not think of Christianity as a heritage that could be assumed; he had watched it be, in his own family, a decision made at risk. And he did not think of the Church as coextensive with its buildings and its permissions, because the Church he was baptized into had neither.

A Note on What This Does and Does Not Establish

Men’s admirers sometimes present the 1935 baptism as a kind of seal — an early consecration to the destiny that ended on the path at Semkhoz. This collection does not make that move. A baptism is a sacrament administered to an infant who understood nothing of it; the significance it acquired is the significance his later life gave it. What the baptism establishes is narrower and more useful: that Men’s Christianity was received, not chosen in adulthood; that it came to him through the persecuted Church rather than the tolerated one; and that the persons who gave it to him — his mother, his aunt, a hunted archimandrite — had all paid something for it.

References

Православная энциклопедия [Orthodox Encyclopedia], art. “Мень Александр Владимирович” (pravenc.ru/text/2562996.html). (Records the secret infant baptism of 1935.)
English Wikipedia, art. “Alexander Men.” (“At six months old, Men and his mother were secretly baptized in Zagorsk by Archimandrite Seraphim (Bityukov) of the banned Catacomb Church.”)
Russian Wikipedia, arts. “Мень, Александр Владимирович” and “Серафим (Битюков).” (The baptism; Fr. Seraphim’s dates 1878–1942, death on 19 February 1942, and burial beneath the floor of the house under the site of the secret altar.)
Biographical materials on Archimandrite Seraphim collected at fudel.ru, “Архимандрит Серафим (Сергий Михайлович Битюгов, 1878–1942).” (Secular name and dates; the Zagorsk community.)
Daniel, Wallace L. Russia’s Uncommon Prophet: Father Aleksandr Men and His Times. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016. (The catacomb milieu of Men’s childhood, from the family memoirs.)
Hamant, Yves. Alexander Men: A Witness for Contemporary Russia (A Man for Our Times). Trans. Steven Bigham. Oakwood Publications, 1995.