The English-Language Books

Between 1898 and 1899 Sebastian Dabović published three English-language books — The Holy Orthodox Church, Lives of the Saints, and Several Lectures and Sermons, and Preaching in the Russian Church — among the earliest works of Orthodox instruction, hagiography, and homiletics printed in English in America. Written by a native-born American priest for an English-reading public, they anticipate by a decade the more famous liturgical Englishing associated with Isabel Hapgood.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox / American (glorified 2015)

Three Books at the Turn of the Century

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, while still a young hieromonk of the Russian Mission, Sebastian produced a small but pioneering body of published work in English:

• The Holy Orthodox Church, or, The Ritual, Services and Sacraments of the Eastern Apostolic (Greek-Russian) Church (1898) — a compact exposition of Orthodox worship, the liturgical services, and the sacraments, written to explain the faith and its rites to an English-reading audience (Sebastian Dabovich, The Holy Orthodox Church, 1898; OrthodoxWiki, “Sebastian (Dabovich),” and the search records of the digitized editions, used as locators).
• The Lives of the Saints, and Several Lectures and Sermons (1898) — a collection of hagiography together with his own lectures and sermons, bringing the Orthodox calendar of saints and his own preaching into English (Dabovich, Lives of the Saints, 1898; OCA, “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich,” oca.org, listing the works).
• Preaching in the Russian Church: Or, Lectures and Sermons by a Priest of the Holy Orthodox Church (1899) — a volume of his lectures and sermons as delivered in the Russian Mission, preserved on archive.org and reprinted in modern editions (Dabovich, Preaching in the Russian Church, 1899, digitized at archive.org, item preachinginrussi00daborich).

The titles and dates given here are those the collection can verify against the digitized texts and the catalog records; the brief’s tentative attributions (“The Holy Orthodox Church 1898(?), Preaching in the Russian Church 1899(?)”) are, on this evidence, confirmed rather than doubtful, and the third book, Lives of the Saints, belongs with them (archive.org and library catalog records for the several editions; OrthodoxWiki, “Sebastian (Dabovich),” used as locator).

What the Books Are

These are not works of speculative theology but of mission — instruction, hagiography, and preaching aimed at making Orthodoxy intelligible and available in English. The Holy Orthodox Church is essentially a catechetical and liturgical primer: it walks the English reader through the structure of Orthodox worship and the meaning of the sacraments, precisely the knowledge an immigrant’s Americanized children, or an inquiring American, would lack (Dabovich, The Holy Orthodox Church, 1898). Lives of the Saints carries the synaxarial tradition — the Church’s memory of her saints — into English, joined to Sebastian’s own homiletic reflections. Preaching in the Russian Church preserves the actual sermons and lectures of a working missionary priest, and so gives us Sebastian’s own voice as a preacher, not merely his biography (Dabovich, Preaching in the Russian Church, 1899).

Their genre matters for understanding the man. Sebastian wrote as a pastor and evangelist reaching for the printed word as another instrument of mission, alongside the travelling and the parish-building. The books are the literary limb of the same body of work as the parishes: both aim to plant and nourish the faith in a land where it was new and its language foreign.

Why They Matter: Priority

The historical significance of these books lies chiefly in their earliness. The landmark of liturgical English in American Orthodoxy is usually and rightly dated to Isabel Hapgood’s Service Book of 1906, produced with the blessing of the future Patriarch Tikhon (see the repository’s English Liturgy Movement). Sebastian’s books precede Hapgood’s Service Book by nearly a decade. They are not a full liturgical translation of the kind Hapgood produced — that is Hapgood’s distinct and greater achievement — but they are among the first sustained works of Orthodox instruction, hagiography, and preaching composed and published in English in America, and by an American-born Orthodox priest at that (see Preaching and the English Liturgy). In the story of how Orthodoxy learned to speak English on this continent, Sebastian belongs near the beginning.

Two cautions keep the claim honest. First, Sebastian was not writing in a vacuum: there were scattered earlier English pieces — sermons, articles, occasional translations — in the American Orthodox press, and the impulse toward English was already stirring in the mission (repository, English Liturgy Movement). His books are pioneering, not solitary. Second, their significance is more that they exist — that a priest of the 1890s judged English-language Orthodox books worth writing and printing — than that they exercised a wide or lasting influence on later liturgical translation, which flowed mainly through Hapgood and the later translation families. Their importance is that of a first attempt and a witness to a conviction, and that is significant enough (Dabovich, works of 1898–1899; repository, English Liturgy Movement).

Survival and Reprinting

That Sebastian’s books survive and are read today is itself part of their meaning. Preaching in the Russian Church has been digitized and is freely available, and all three titles have been reissued in various print-on-demand and “classic reprint” editions (archive.org, preachinginrussi00daborich; commercial reprint catalog records, used as locators). This afterlife means that Sebastian, almost uniquely among the early American missionary clergy, can still be read in his own words — a resource for the source-critical assessment of his life (see Documents and Hagiography) and a rare direct access to the mind and voice of a saint of the American mission. Where most of his contemporaries reach us only through others’ accounts, Sebastian left books; and the books, more than any tribute, are the proof of what he thought the American Church needed.

See Also

• Preaching and the English Liturgy — Sebastian as preacher and translator in the English movement
• Documents and Hagiography — his books as primary sources for his own life
• The English Liturgy Movement — Hapgood’s 1906 Service Book and the wider history
• The Tireless Traveler — the missionary work the books served

References

• Dabovich, Sebastian. The Holy Orthodox Church, or, The Ritual, Services and Sacraments of the Eastern Apostolic (Greek-Russian) Church. 1898.
• Dabovich, Sebastian. The Lives of the Saints, and Several Lectures and Sermons. 1898.
• Dabovich, Sebastian. Preaching in the Russian Church: Or, Lectures and Sermons by a Priest of the Holy Orthodox Church. 1899. Digitized at archive.org, item preachinginrussi00daborich; reprinted in modern editions.
• Orthodox Church in America. “Venerable Sebastian Dabovich.” oca.org — used as locator for the list of his published works.
• “Sebastian (Dabovich).” OrthodoxWiki — used as locator for the titles and dates.
• Orthodoxy in America (this repository). The English Liturgy Movement — the Hapgood Service Book of 1906 and the wider context.