The Yanovsky Correspondence

Semyon Ivanovich Yanovsky — chief manager of the Russian-American colonies from 1818 to 1820 — arrived in Alaska a skeptical, free-thinking child of the Enlightenment and left St. Herman’s disciple. His letters, written decades later to the abbot of Valaam, are the single most important written witness to Herman’s words and bearing, including the famous shipboard conversation about loving God. This file presents what those letters actually contain, the chain by which they reached the 1867 Valaam Life, and Yanovsky’s own end as a monk.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (glorified by the OCA and ROCOR, 1970)

A Skeptical Arrival

When Semyon Ivanovich Yanovsky took up the post of chief manager (governor) of the Russian-American colonies, he was by his own later confession an educated man of the world and a religious skeptic. He had absorbed the rationalist literature of his age and regarded faith as something a thinking man had outgrown. [Disputed: Yanovsky’s term as chief manager is given as 1818–1820 in the colonial administrative lists; some lives, following his own letters, describe his governorship of “all the Russian-American colonies from 1817 to 1821,” and place his first meeting with Herman in 1819 (orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska; OCA, Chronology of the Life of St. Herman of Alaska, entry for 1819). The discrepancy reflects the difference between the formal dates of office and Yanovsky’s own recollection of his years in America.]

The encounter that undid his skepticism was not a debate but a friendship. Yanovsky and Herman fell into conversation, and the conversation did not end. By Yanovsky’s own account, “we conversed with him every day until, and sometimes later than, midnight, about the love of God, about eternity, about the salvation of the soul, and about Christian life. Sweet speech poured from his lips in an unceasing stream!” (Yanovsky, letter to Abbot Damascene, as reproduced in the 1867 Valaam Life; Little Russian Philokalia vol. 3, St. Herman Press). The governor who had come to administer a colony found himself, night after night, catechized by an unordained monk in a deerskin smock.

The Conversion

What the rationalist literature could not give him, Herman’s words and prayers did. Yanovsky describes the change as total and as wrought from without rather than argued into him:

“Through such continual conversations and by the prayers of the holy Elder, the Lord completely converted me to the path of truth, and I became a true Christian.” (Yanovsky, letter to Abbot Damascene, in the 1867 Valaam Life; Little Russian Philokalia vol. 3)

The conversion was the decisive event of Yanovsky’s life, and it is the reason his testimony exists at all. He did not become a chronicler of Herman; he became his disciple, and the letters he wrote half a century afterward are the overflow of a debt he never stopped acknowledging.

The Shipboard Conversation on the Love of God

The most celebrated of all the sayings of St. Herman comes through Yanovsky’s pen, and it belongs properly to this witness chain. Yanovsky records that on one occasion Herman fell into conversation with a group of educated officers from a visiting ship. The Elder began by asking each of them what he loved above all and what he most desired for his happiness. The answers came: riches, glory, a beautiful wife, a fine ship to command. Herman gathered the replies into a single question — was it not true that each man wished for whatever, in his own judgment, he considered best and most worthy of love? They agreed. Then, the Life records:

“‘Tell me,’ he continued, ‘what could be better, higher than all, more superlative and most worthy of love, if not the Lord our Jesus Christ Himself, Who created us, adorned us with such good qualities, gave life to all, maintains and nourishes everything, loves everyone, Who is Himself love, and is more wonderful than all people? Shouldn’t one therefore love God far more than all things, and desire and seek Him more than anything?’” (1867 Valaam Life, on the testimony of Yanovsky; Little Russian Philokalia vol. 3; cf. orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska)

The officers agreed readily — “Well, yes! That is self-evident!” — and Herman pressed the point home. When they affirmed, easily, that of course they loved God, the Elder answered with the words for which he is best remembered:

“I, a sinner, have been trying for more than forty years to love God, and I cannot say that I love Him perfectly.” (Herman, as reported by Yanovsky in the 1867 Valaam Life; Little Russian Philokalia vol. 3; orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska)

The force of the saying lies in its order: Herman does not deny the officers’ love of God so much as expose the difference between assent and the labor of a lifetime. The man who had worn chains and slept on a board for four decades confessed himself a beginner; the gentlemen who answered “of course” had not yet begun. [Disputed: the saying circulates in two slightly different settings. In one telling the interlocutors are “officers of a Russian ship” and the climactic question is simply “But do you love God?”; in the fuller version preserved in the Life the conversation opens with the question of what each man most loves and desires. Both forms derive from Yanovsky’s testimony as transmitted through the Valaam Life; the wording “more than forty years … I cannot say that I love Him perfectly (or completely)” is stable across the translations (orthochristian.com; orthodoxcanada.ca, Saint Herman of Alaska).] What the discipline of attestation requires is that the saying be quoted as what Yanovsky’s letters report Herman to have said — which is exactly the warrant the Church has always claimed for it.

The Letters and Their Transmission

Yanovsky’s testimony reached the wider Church through a specific and datable chain, and the integrity of the famous sayings depends on it. After his years in America, Yanovsky returned to Russia and, in old age, settled near the St. Tikhon of Kaluga Monastery. In 1865 the abbot of Valaam Monastery, Damascene (Damaskin), received a letter from Yanovsky, then living in Kaluga, in which the old man explained that he had personally known “the former monk of Valaam monastery, the esteemed holy man and great ascetic,” that he had preserved two of Herman’s own letters as a treasure, and that he offered both the letters and his own recollections to the monastery (orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska; pravmir.com, Saint Herman of Alaska).

It was this correspondence — Yanovsky’s long memoir-letters to Abbot Damascene, together with the two letters of Herman that Yanovsky had kept — that became one of the primary sources for the Life of St. Herman compiled and published at Valaam (the prima vita underlying the printed Life is dated to the mid-1860s; the Life is conventionally cited as the 1867 Valaam Life). The same Yanovsky correspondence is the source of the account of the martyrdom of St. Peter the Aleut, contained in a letter Yanovsky wrote to Damascene dated November 22, 1865 (orthochristian.com; cf. OCA, Martyr Peter the Aleut).

Two consequences follow for how Herman’s words must be handled. First, the famous sayings — the shipboard conversation, the confession of forty years’ striving — are not independently documented; they are what Yanovsky’s letters report, written down four to five decades after the events by a devoted disciple. Second, that provenance is unusually good for a hagiographic source: it is a named eyewitness, a man of education and standing, who preserved physical letters and whose testimony entered the Life within his own lifetime and under his own signature. The honest description is therefore neither “St. Herman said” as a bare historical fact nor a dismissal, but: as preserved in the letters of Semyon Yanovsky and transmitted through the Valaam Life.

Yanovsky’s Later Life: The Monk Sergius

Yanovsky’s conversion under Herman was no passing enthusiasm; it shaped the remainder of a long life and ended in the cloister. After returning to Russia he became, in time, a spiritual son of Elder Anthony (Putilov) of Optina Monastery, placing himself within the Optina tradition of eldership that was the great renewal of Russian monasticism in the nineteenth century (orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska; arizonaorthodox.com, St. Herman of Alaska).

In his old age he himself entered monastic life. He ended his days at the St. Tikhon of Kaluga Monastery, southwest of Moscow, as the Schemamonk Sergius (orthochristian.com; orthodoxcanada.ca, Saint Herman of Alaska). The arc is complete and deliberate: the Enlightenment governor who came to Kodiak to manage a fur company, converted by a monk who refused all rank, ended as a monk of the highest monastic degree — the Great Schema — under the name Sergius. He had written his memoir-letters precisely so that the man who converted him would not be forgotten, and it is largely through those letters that St. Herman is known to the Church at all.

References

The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska (the 1867 Valaam Life), reprinted in Little Russian Philokalia, vol. 3: St. Herman of Alaska. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood / St. Herman Press. Online edition: orthochristian.com/47984.html (transmits Yanovsky’s letters to Abbot Damascene, the shipboard conversation, and the “more than forty years” saying).
Yanovsky, Semyon Ivanovich. Letters to Abbot Damascene (Damaskin) of Valaam, 1865, as published in the Valaam Life of St. Herman; the letter recounting the martyrdom of St. Peter the Aleut is dated November 22, 1865.
Korsun, Sergei, and Lydia Black (trans./ed.). Herman: A Wilderness Saint — From Sarov, Russia, to Kodiak, Alaska. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2012.
Canadian Orthodox History Project. “Saint Herman of Alaska.” orthodoxcanada.ca (used to locate the conversion, the shipboard saying, and Yanovsky’s end as Schemamonk Sergius).
“Saint Herman of Alaska.” pravmir.com (used to locate the 1865 letter to Abbot Damascene and the two preserved letters of Herman).
Orthodox Church in America. “Chronology of the Life of St. Herman of Alaska” and “Martyr Peter the Aleut.” oca.org (used to locate the 1819 meeting and the November 22, 1865 letter).