Western Saints Restoration

St. John’s research into, and restoration of the Orthodox veneration of, the saints of the pre-schism West — the holy men and women of Gaul, Britain, Ireland, the Low Countries, and the Latin lands who had lived and died in the undivided Church before 1054 but had fallen out of the Orthodox calendars of the East; the principle that drove the work — that the Christian West before the schism is part of the Orthodox patrimony and its saints are the Church’s own; the saints he is documented to have championed, among them St. Genevieve of Paris, St. Patrick of Ireland, and St. Alban of Britain; the deathbed testament to St. Alban that he left his disciples; and the distinction between this recovery of Western saints and the separate question of Western-rite liturgy.

Tradition: ROCOR (glorified 1994; Moscow Patriarchate veneration affirmed 2008)

The Principle: The Pre-Schism West as Orthodox Patrimony

The theological conviction behind all of St. John’s Western work is simple and was, in his time, far from obvious. The Church was undivided until the rupture between Rome and Constantinople that is conventionally dated to 1054. Everyone who lived and died in the communion of that undivided Church — including the bishops, martyrs, monastics, and missionaries of the Latin West — was, by that fact, an Orthodox saint, whatever the later history of the Western Church. Many such saints had been venerated only locally in the West and had never been entered into the calendars of the Eastern Churches; after the schism, Orthodox memory of them faded almost entirely. St. John held that this forgetting was an impoverishment to be repaired: the saints of the ancient West were not Roman Catholic figures to be admired from outside but the Orthodox Church’s own, to be restored to her honor.

His commitment to this principle was a direct extension of his lifelong devotion to the saints. As one historian of ROCOR’s calendar puts it, “St. John (Maximovitch)’s interest in and devotion to the Church’s saints extended to Western European saints dating from before the schism of the Latin Church, many of whom, venerated only locally, were included in no Orthodox calendar of saints” (rocorstudies.org and related ROCOR sources). He treated the recovery of these saints as ordinary Orthodox pastoral work, not antiquarian curiosity.

The Research and the Method

As Archbishop of Western Europe (1951–1962), St. John was uniquely placed to do this work: he governed precisely the lands where these saints had lived. He “carefully researched the lives of ancient Western saints” and made their veneration a charge upon his clergy (rocorstudies.org). His method was pastoral and concrete: “he would insist that the priests in Europe under him learn about the Orthodox saints of their area, find where their relics were preserved, and conduct services for them” (orthochristian.com/154781.html, “Orthodoxy in the Low Countries”). The recovery thus proceeded diocese by diocese and parish by parish — clergy locating the local pre-schism saint, finding the relics, and beginning to serve him liturgically — rather than as a single decree from the top.

The fruit of this labor was lasting. “Thanks to his work in collecting lives of saints, a great many pre-schism Western saints became known in the Orthodox Church and continue to be venerated to this day” (orthodoxcanada.ca, “Saint John (Maximovitch)”). It is this collecting and championing — together with the report his work prompted within ROCOR — that the sources credit, more than any other single cause, with the modern Orthodox revival of the Western saints.

The Saints He Championed

The standard lives name a short, well-attested core of saints St. John specifically brought back to Orthodox attention. The two most consistently cited are St. Genevieve of Paris (Sainte Geneviève, the fifth-century patroness of Paris) and St. Patrick of Ireland — the lives single these out: “a great many pre-schism Western saints became known… two of these are Saint Genevieve of Paris, and Saint Patrick of Ireland” (orthodoxcanada.ca). St. Genevieve was especially natural to him: he governed from Paris, the city of which she is patroness, and her relics and memory were close at hand.

The third saint with whom St. John is most closely and personally associated is St. Alban of Britain, the protomartyr of the British Isles. The connection is attested in a striking form: those who were near him at the end remembered “his last words to them about the veneration of St. Alban of Britain — and they saw this as his testament to their brotherhood: a call to honor and make known the saints of the West” (Archpriest Andrew Phillips, “On the Revival of the Veneration of Local Western Saints in the Orthodox Church,” orthochristian.com/91953.html and orthodoxengland.org.uk). His attention also turned to the saints of ancient Gaul and Helvetia (Switzerland): it was “Archbishop St. John’s work with the Orthodox Church of France that had originally evoked the fathers’ interest in ancient Gaul,” and the broader recovery of the Swiss and Gallic saints traces back to the interest he kindled (Phillips, orthochristian.com/91953.html).

The number and identity of saints attributable specifically to St. John’s personal initiative, as distinct from the wider movement he set in motion, is not exhaustively documented; the names firmly pinned to him in the lives are St. Genevieve, St. Patrick, and St. Alban, with the Gallic and Helvetian saints attached to him through the work he prompted. Other names that circulate in later lists belong to the continuing project rather than to documented acts of St. John himself, and are not asserted here as his personal initiatives.

From St. John’s Work to the Calendars

St. John’s recovery of the Western saints did not end with him; it became, in the words of the ROCOR sources, “a venerable ROCOR tradition.” After his repose in 1966, “the fathers remembered his love for Western Orthodox saints, his work to spread their veneration among Orthodox Christians and his last words to them about the veneration of St. Alban of Britain,” and took this as his testament (Phillips, orthochristian.com/91953.html). The St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood at Platina — Fr. Seraphim Rose and Abbot Herman, formed in part by devotion to St. John — carried the work into print in English (see Section 08 — ROCOR Context). In our own time the Saints of the British Isles Liturgical Project, launched in the ROCOR Diocese of Great Britain in 2020 under Bishop Irenei, explicitly continues St. John’s labor, gathering the liturgical texts of dozens of pre-schism British saints (orthochristian.com/147363.html; orthochristian.com/140547.html).

The effect reached beyond ROCOR. On March 9, 2017, the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate, on a report from Metropolitan Clement of Kaluga and Borovsk, formally entered into the Russian Orthodox calendar the names of more than fifteen pre-schism Western saints — among them St. Alban of Britain, St. Patrick of Ireland, and St. Honoratus of Arles, founder of Lérins — describing the inclusion as a reminder of the era of the undivided Church (orthochristian.com/101734.html, “St. Patrick of Ireland and Other Western Saints Officially Added to Russian Orthodox Church Calendar”; pravmir.com). This act of the same Church that received St. John for veneration in 2008 stands at the far end of a line that runs back to his research in Paris and Brussels — though the 2017 decision was a synodal act of its own time and is not attributed directly to St. John here.

Saints, Not Rite: A Necessary Distinction

It is essential to distinguish two things that are easily confused. The veneration of pre-schism Western saints — honoring holy persons of the undivided Church — is one matter; the Western-rite liturgy — celebrating the Orthodox services in a restored ancient Western form, such as the Gallican Liturgy of the Orthodox Church of France — is a separate matter (treated in Paris and Brussels). St. John was deeply involved in both, but they are not the same project, and his support for the one does not stand or fall with the history of the other.

On the saints, St. John’s position is uncontroversial within Orthodoxy and has been broadly received: the saints of the undivided Church are Orthodox saints, full stop. On the Western rite, the picture is more contested — the Orthodox Church of France he oversaw passed, after his death, through controversy, and the place of a restored Western rite in Orthodox life remains debated. The sources establish that St. John “did much to revive Western pre-schism liturgical forms” (westernrite sources; rocorstudies.org), but the durable and uncontested core of his Western legacy is the restoration of the saints. This file states only what is documented: that he researched and championed specific pre-schism Western saints; that he prompted their entry into Orthodox veneration; and that this is distinct from the separate, more disputed question of Western-rite worship.

See Also

• Paris and Brussels — the Western European archdiocese during which this research was done, and the distinct question of the Gallican rite
• Bishop of Shanghai — the devotion to the saints and the commemoration of names that this work extended
• Orthodoxy Guide — Church Calendar — the Orthodox calendar into which the Western saints were restored
• Orthodoxy Guide — ROCOR Exile Period — the Church Abroad within which the Western-saints tradition took root

References

• Phillips, Archpriest Andrew. “On the Revival of the Veneration of Local Western Saints in the Orthodox Church.” orthochristian.com/91953.html (and events.orthodoxengland.org.uk). (St. John’s work with the Orthodox Church of France evoking interest in ancient Gaul; his last words on the veneration of St. Alban of Britain as his testament to the brotherhood; the call to honor the saints of the West.)
• Canadian Orthodox History Project. “Saint John (Maximovitch).” orthodoxcanada.ca. (His collecting of saints’ lives bringing many pre-schism Western saints to Orthodox knowledge; St. Genevieve of Paris and St. Patrick of Ireland named.)
• “On the Western Liturgical Tradition.” rocorstudies.org, June 16, 2013. (St. John’s research into ancient Western saints as Archbishop of Western Europe; the distinction between Western saints and the Gallican rite of the Orthodox Church of France.)
• “Orthodoxy in the Low Countries. Part 6–8.” orthochristian.com/154781.html. (His insistence that priests under him learn the local saints, locate their relics, and serve them.)
• “St. Patrick of Ireland and Other Western Saints Officially Added to Russian Orthodox Church Calendar.” orthochristian.com/101734.html (and pravmir.com). (The Moscow Patriarchate Holy Synod’s decision of March 9, 2017, on a report by Metropolitan Clement, to add more than fifteen pre-schism Western saints including Sts. Alban, Patrick, and Honoratus of Arles.)
• “ROCOR Diocese Gathers Hymnography for 95 Pre-Schism British Saints” and “ROCOR London Diocese Compiling All Known Liturgical Texts to Saints of British Isles.” orthochristian.com/147363.html; orthochristian.com/140547.html. (The Saints of the British Isles Liturgical Project, launched 2020, as a continuation of St. John’s tradition.)
• Rose, Fr. Seraphim, and Abbot Herman (Podmoshensky). Blessed John the Wonderworker. 3rd rev. ed. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1987. (The Platina brotherhood’s transmission of St. John’s devotion to the Western saints into English.)