07 — Disputes and Relationships
The contested zone of Philaret’s career: his guarded relationship with Aleksei Khomyakov and the Slavophiles, whose ecclesiology of sobornost’ he admired in part but whose lay theologizing and idealization of pre-Petrine Russia he held at arm’s length; and the charges brought against Philaret himself — conservatism shading into timidity, an autocratic and exacting temperament, frosty relations with the over-procurator and with brother hierarchs. These files present both sides without hagiographic varnish and without the hostile caricature, naming the scholars who read the man differently.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Synodal period)
No assessment of Philaret of Moscow can stop at the Catechism and the Synodal Bible. He was the dominant hierarch of the Russian Church for nearly half a century, and a man of that weight gathers disputes — over theology, over the proper relation of Church and learning, and over his own character. This section gathers the contested matter. The first file treats his wary, qualified relation to the Slavophile movement and its lay theologian Aleksei Khomyakov, whose ecclesiology became one of the most influential currents in modern Orthodox thought even as the Synodal authorities — Philaret among them — kept Khomyakov’s theological essays from free publication in Russia. The second turns the lens on Philaret himself and weighs, even-handedly, the charges that have followed him: that his caution was timidity, that his rule was autocratic and his manner cold, that he quarrelled and kept his distance. The aim throughout is the one the methodology requires: name the positions, cite the scholars, and let the reader see where the record is genuinely two-sided.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Philaret and the Slavophiles | His guarded relations with the Slavophiles and especially with Aleksei Khomyakov (1804–1860): the Slavophile ecclesiology of sobornost’, Khomyakov’s The Church Is One, and why the church authorities — Philaret included — viewed a layman’s theology, partly published abroad, with caution; the tension between the Slavophile critique of the Westernized Synodal church and Philaret’s standing as its chief hierarch; and the points where they in fact converged, above all on the Russian Bible. |
| Controversies and Critics | The even-handed treatment of the charges against Philaret: his conservatism and prudence during the Nicholas years, read by critics as timidity; the charge of an autocratic, exacting, sometimes severe temperament in governing clergy and Church; his frosty relations with the over-procurator Protasov and with other hierarchs — balanced against the defense of his pastoral concern, integrity, and the respect he commanded. |
See Also
- Dogmatics and the Fathers — the theological awakening and the patristic turn that the Slavophiles and Philaret approached from different directions
- The Battle for the Synodal Translation — the Russian Bible, the cause on which Philaret and the Slavophiles ultimately stood together
- Church and Autocracy under Nicholas I — the church-state order that bounded both Philaret’s caution and his power
- Hagiographic vs. Critical Portraits — the saint-versus-statesman historiography that these disputes feed
- The Synodal Period — the institutional system the Slavophiles criticized and Philaret governed
- The Russian Patristic Revival — the wider nineteenth-century recovery of the Fathers
References
- Florovsky, Georges. Ways of Russian Theology. Trans. Robert L. Nichols. Belmont, MA / Vaduz: Nordland / Büchervertriebsanstalt (Collected Works, vols. 5–6), 1979. (Treats Khomyakov and the Slavophiles, Philaret’s theology, and the Synodal reaction.)
- Nichols, Robert L. “Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow and the Awakening of Orthodoxy.” In Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, ed. Robert L. Nichols and Theofanis George Stavrou, pp. 206–229. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978.
- Khomyakov, Aleksei S. The Church Is One. (W. J. Birkbeck, ed., Russia and the English Church during the Last Fifty Years, vol. 1. London: Rivington, Percival & Co., 1895; repr. SPCK, 1917, containing Khomyakov’s ecclesiological essays in English.)