02 — From Merchant to Monk
The hinge of the whole life: the 1920 decision by which Vasily and Olga Muravyov together left the world — he to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, she to a convent — as the Bolshevik state was confiscating everything they owned, and the tonsure that made the merchant into the monk Varnava and then the schemamonk Seraphim. These files set the renunciation against the catastrophe of its moment and describe the great Petersburg monastery in which it took place.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (20th-c. elder; Soviet period)
The renunciation of 1920 is the act on which everything that follows depends, and it carries a particular force because of its timing: it was made not in the secure church of the empire but at the moment the Church was being crushed, when entering a monastery meant entering a building the state had marked for destruction. This section examines the decision itself — the joint monastic vocation of husband and wife, the donations to the monasteries — and then the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the premier monastery of the north, where Muravyov was tonsured and where he would serve through the worst of the early Soviet assault.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Renunciation of Wealth | The 1920 decision; the joint entry of Vasily and Olga into monastic life; the donations to monasteries; the renunciation read against the simultaneous Bolshevik confiscation of all private wealth. |
| The Alexander Nevsky Lavra | The great Petersburg monastery; Muravyov’s tonsure there; the monastic name Varnava (Barnabas) and the later schema-name Seraphim, taken in honor of St. Seraphim of Sarov. |
See Also
- The Merchant Vasily Muravyov — what he was before the renunciation
- Spiritual Father in the Time of Terror — his service at the Lavra after tonsure
- Orthodoxy: Soviet Persecution — the assault on the Church that frames the renunciation
References
- Filimonov, Valentin P. Вырицкий старец преподобный Серафим [Vyritsa Elder St. Seraphim]. St. Petersburg, 1990s–2000s.
- Pospielovsky, Dimitry. The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1984.
- Davis, Nathaniel. A Long Walk to Church. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003.