Marriage, Loss, and Prešov

St. Alexis Toth’s ordination and marriage in 1878, the early death of his wife and only child that left him a widower, and the offices he held in the Prešov eparchy — seminary professor, secretary to the bishop, chancellor of the diocese — before he gave them up to emigrate to America in 1889. The widowhood is not incidental: it is precisely why the Ireland confrontation turned on the principle of the Eastern married clergy rather than on Toth’s own marital state.

Tradition: Carpatho-Rusyn / American Orthodox

Ordination and Marriage (1878)

In keeping with the Eastern discipline that a man marries before ordination if he is to be a married priest, Toth married Rosalie Mihalich, herself a priest’s daughter, and was ordained to the Greek Catholic priesthood in 1878 — the OCA life giving the ordination as 18 April 1878, to serve as second priest of a Uniate parish (OCA, “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth,” oca.org; the OCA life naming Rosalie Mihalich and the 1878 ordination). The marriage into another clerical family was, again, entirely characteristic of the hereditary Rusyn priesthood: the clerical caste renewed itself by such unions (Magocsi, Our People, 2005, ch. 1; Erickson, Orthodox Christians in America, 1999, ch. 2).

Widowhood

The marriage was brief. Toth’s wife and their only child died while he was still a young priest, leaving him a widower (OCA, “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth”; acrod.org, “St. Alexis Toth,” which states that his wife and only child died while he was serving as a priest). The devotional lives read this early bereavement as the sorrow that freed him for the labors and the exile to come; the historical point to fix is narrower and more consequential.

Because Toth was a widower, he was, by every Eastern canonical reckoning, fully eligible to continue in the priestly ministry: a widowed priest does not remarry, but he remains a priest. This matters decisively for the Minneapolis story. When Archbishop John Ireland refused to recognize Toth, the objection could not honestly rest on Toth’s own marital irregularity, for there was none — he was a widower, not a man living in marriage (Erickson, ch. 2; D. Oliver Herbel, Turning to Tradition, 2014, ch. on Toth). The clash was therefore not about Toth as an individual but about the legitimacy of the Eastern-rite married priesthood as such in the American Latin Church: Ireland’s refusal expressed a rejection in principle of once-married Eastern clergy, of which Toth’s widowerhood was merely the occasion (Herbel, ch. on Toth; see The Ireland Encounter). Getting this right guards the narrative against a common flattening — that Ireland “refused a married priest” — when the sharper and better-documented truth is that he refused an Eastern priest whose Church ordained married men, using a widower as the test case.

The Offices at Prešov

Between his ordination and his emigration, Toth rose to positions of real standing in the Prešov (Eperjes) eparchy. The lives credit him with a cluster of offices, held over the 1880s: professor at the Greek Catholic seminary of Prešov, teaching canon law and church history — one account naming his appointment in 1881, under Bishop Nicholas (Mikuláš) of Prešov, as director of the united Greek Catholic seminary and professor of canon law and church history; and administratively, secretary to the Bishop of Prešov and chancellor (administrator) of the eparchy (OCA, “Saint Alexis Toth and the Return to Orthodoxy of the Uniates in North America”; acrod.org, “St. Alexis Toth,” giving the secretary-and-chancellor offices; the diocesan life naming the 1881 seminary appointment). Whatever the exact titles and dates — the sources vary in their precision — the substance is agreed and important: on the eve of his emigration Toth was not an obscure village pastor but a canonist, seminary professor, and diocesan official near the center of his eparchy’s life.

[Disputed: the exact offices and their dates. The OCA and ACROD lives variously describe Toth as director/professor of the Prešov Greek Catholic seminary (teaching canon law and church history), secretary to the Bishop of Prešov, and chancellor of the eparchy, with the seminary appointment dated to 1881; the precise sequence and titulature are not uniformly given. The collection reports the cluster of offices as attested and does not fix a single administrative chronology.]

The Decision to Emigrate (1889)

That a man of this standing should leave it for a mining-town parish across the Atlantic tells its own story about the pressures on the Rusyn clergy and the pull of the emigrant colonies. In 1889 Toth was appointed pastor of St. Mary’s Greek Catholic parish in Minneapolis, a newly organized Rusyn immigrant community, and sailed for the United States, arriving in November 1889 (OCA, “Saint Alexis Toth and the Return to Orthodoxy of the Uniates”; the diocesan life dating his arrival to 15 November 1889 and his first Divine Liturgy at St. Mary’s to Thanksgiving Day, 27 November 1889). Whether he came as a man seeking a new field, as one pressed by the Magyarizing climate of the Hungarian Church, or simply as a priest sent to a flock that needed one, the sources do not agree in emphasis; what is certain is that he arrived a learned, senior, widowed Greek Catholic priest — and that within weeks the American Latin hierarchy would treat that entire résumé as disqualifying.

The offices he laid down at Prešov are worth holding in view for the rest of the story. Toth did not drift into Orthodoxy from the margins of the Greek Catholic Church; he moved out of its administrative heart. When he later argued the case against the Unia, he argued as one who had taught its canon law and run a chancery — a former insider’s authority that gave his pamphlets and his witness their particular weight (see His Arguments).

See Also

References

  • Orthodox Church in America. “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth, Confessor and Defender of Orthodoxy in America”; “Saint Alexis Toth and the Return to Orthodoxy of the Uniates in North America.” oca.org — used as locators to the diocesan life.
  • American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. “St. Alexis Toth.” acrod.org — used as locator.
  • Herbel, D. Oliver. Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
  • Erickson, John H. Orthodox Christians in America: A Short History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Magocsi, Paul Robert. Our People: Carpatho-Rusyns and Their Descendants in North America. 4th rev. ed. Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2005.