Memory and Institutions: The Commemorative Landscape of St. Tikhon

The institutional and devotional afterlife of St. Tikhon: the Donskoy Monastery shrine where his incorrupt relics were rediscovered in 1992; the American foundations that bear his name at South Canaan, Pennsylvania; the Moscow St. Tikhon Orthodox University (PSTGU) and its database of the New Martyrs; the iconographic conventions that fix his image; the 2017 centenary of the restored Patriarchate; and his place within the synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (glorified 1989)

The Donskoy Shrine and the Relics

St. Tikhon died on March 25 / April 7, 1925, and was buried in the small winter (summer-church) chapel of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, where he had spent much of his last captivity (OCA, “Repose of Saint Tikhon”; obitel-minsk.org, “Life of the Holy Patriarch Tikhon”). For decades the fate of his remains was uncertain. After the Soviets closed the monastery — and after they installed a crematorium in one of its churches — it was widely feared that the Patriarch’s body had been exhumed and burned, the regime’s final erasure of a man it had tried to discredit in life (OCA, “The Recovery of St. Tikhon’s Relics in February 1992”).

The fear proved unfounded. On the night of February 19, 1992, the bells of the Donskoy Monastery rang to announce that the relics had been found, concealed in the monastery grounds and — despite a crypt at one hundred percent humidity, after sixty-seven years in the earth — almost entirely incorrupt (OCA, “The Recovery”; Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov), “The Uncovering of the Relics of Patriarch Tikhon,” orthochristian.com). On April 5, 1992 (the Sunday of St. John Climacus), some fifty bishops solemnly translated the relics into the Great Cathedral (Bolshoy Sobor) of the Donskoy Monastery, where they were enshrined in a place of honor by the soleas (OCA, “The Recovery”; roca.org, “Patriarch Tikhon’s Relics Discovered”). The shrine at Donskoy is today the principal site of his veneration in Moscow, and the finding of his relics is itself commemorated in the calendar on February 9/22 (OCA, “Finding of the Relics of Saint Tikhon of Moscow”). That the discovery came in 1992 — three years after his Moscow glorification and at the very dawn of the post-Soviet revival — gave it the force of a vindication, the buried confessor surfacing intact as the Church that had buried him was itself returning to life (see The Relics).

The American Foundations: South Canaan

Long before he was Patriarch, Tikhon was Bishop of the Aleutians and North America (1898–1907), and the institution most directly his is the one he helped plant in the Pennsylvania countryside. St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Monastery at South Canaan, Pennsylvania — the oldest operating Orthodox monastery in North America — was founded in 1905 by the hieromonk (later archimandrite) Arseny (Chagovtsov) with the blessing of then-Archbishop Tikhon (Belavin) (OrthodoxWiki, “St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Monastery”; sttikhonsmonastery.org, “Founding of the Monastery”; Wikipedia, “Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary”). Arseny, who had arrived in America in 1902, envisioned a “mother house” to which monastics laboring in the scattered North American mission could return for spiritual renewal; on June 26, 1905, Tikhon and Arseny purchased the land for the monastery (sttikhonsmonastery.org, “Founding”; cross-checked against OrthodoxWiki). The monastery was dedicated to St. Tikhon of Zadonsk — the Patriarch’s own patron saint — so that the institution and the man came in time to share a single name (see Bishop of North America, American Legacy).

Attached to the monastery, St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary was established in 1938 as a pastoral school, by resolution of the Sixth All-American Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in North America (Wikipedia, “Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary”; OCA, “St. Tikhon’s Seminary”). Today it is one of the three seminaries of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) — the autocephalous church that descends from the very mission Tikhon once led — and the monastery hosts an annual Memorial Day pilgrimage that is among the largest Orthodox gatherings in North America (OCA, “St. Tikhon’s Seminary”). The South Canaan complex is thus the American hinge of his memory: the place where the Apostle to America is honored on the continent he served, by the church his episcopate helped form.

PSTGU and the New Martyrs Database

In Moscow, the name carries a different mission. The St. Tikhon Orthodox University for the Humanities (PSTGU) — founded in 1992 as the St. Tikhon Theological Institute and granted university status in 2004 — is among the largest Orthodox institutions of higher learning in the world, and it took Tikhon’s name precisely because its founding purpose was bound up with the era of persecution he opened (Wikipedia, “Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University”). Its Department of the Contemporary History of the Russian Orthodox Church has made the twentieth century — the age of the New Martyrs — its principal field of research.

The university’s signature undertaking is its database of the New Martyrs and Confessors. Rather than confining itself to those already canonized, the project gathers information on all who suffered for Christ and the faith under the Soviet yoke; by the mid-2010s it had documented on the order of 35,000 persons, compiling for each whatever could be recovered — biographical data, details drawn from interrogation and investigation files opened after 1991, photographs, writings, and letters (OrthoChristian.com, “About 35,000 New Martyrs included in database of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University”). The database (published as the Za Khrista postradavshie / “Those Who Suffered for Christ” resource) underlies much of the documentary work behind the canonizations of the New Martyrs and stands as a scholarly monument to the persecution — a research mission that is, fittingly, named for the confessor-Patriarch in whose patriarchate the martyrdom began.

Iconography

St. Tikhon’s iconography fixes a few stable elements. He is shown vested as a patriarch and, most distinctively, wearing the white klobuk — the white monastic cowl that in the Russian tradition is the prerogative of the Patriarch of Moscow (and of the Metropolitans of Kiev and certain others), restored to use with the Patriarchate itself in 1917. The white klobuk is the single most legible marker of his office in the icon, signaling at a glance that this is the first Patriarch of the restored line. He commonly holds a Gospel book or blesses with his right hand, and his features follow the well-attested photographs of him — a full beard and a notably gentle, rounded face (Legacy Icons and Uncut Mountain Supply, “St. Tikhon of Moscow” icon descriptions, used to locate the standard iconographic type). A distinctively American type pairs him with St. Raphael of Brooklyn, the Syro-Arab bishop he consecrated, the two shown together as builders of the North American Church (Legacy Icons, “Saints Tikhon and Raphael”).

Beyond his individual image, Tikhon appears prominently in the great Council (Sobor) icon of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, commissioned for the Moscow Patriarchate’s jubilee glorification in 2000. There, set against the rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the host of martyrs is arrayed in ranks, and the confessor-Patriarch stands among the foremost — his white klobuk marking him within the assembly he is depicted as heading (Columbia University, “Icon of the New Russian Martyrs,” used to locate the composition of the 2000 Council icon). The icon is the visual counterpart of the synaxis: a single image gathering the whole multitude of the Soviet-era saints around the Patriarch whose reign their martyrdom began.

The 2017 Centenary

The year 2017 marked the centenary of the events that defined his life: the 1917–1918 All-Russian Local Council, the restoration of the Patriarchate, and Tikhon’s election by lot on November 5, 1917 (see Moscow and the Council, The Lot). The Moscow Patriarchate marked the anniversary across the year. Centenary commemorations included a translation of his relics tied to the anniversary of his enthronement (OrthoChristian.com, “Centenary of enthronement of St. Tikhon of Moscow to be celebrated with transfer of his relics”), and culminated in a Bishops’ Council in early December 2017 convened for the centenary of the Restoration of the Patriarchate and Tikhon’s election. The 1917 Council Fathers were themselves liturgically commemorated, a new feast of the Holy Fathers of the 1917–1918 Local Council having been established (OrthoChristian.com, “Feast of Holy Fathers of 1917–1918 Local Council established”). The commemorations were notably church-wide and inter-Orthodox: primates and representatives of the Local Orthodox Churches gathered in Russia for the occasion, and the OCA’s primate, Metropolitan Tikhon — himself named for the saint and head of the church descended from Tikhon’s American mission — addressed the Bishops’ Council, a deliberate closing of the circle between the Apostle to America and the autocephalous church he had foreshadowed (OrthoChristian.com, “Primates of Local Churches visiting Russia for centenary of restoration of Russian patriarchate”; OCA, “The 100th Anniversary of St. Tikhon’s Election, Enthronement”).

His Place in the Synaxis

St. Tikhon belongs, formally and devotionally, to the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia — though his standing within it is distinctive, since he is venerated specifically as a confessor (one who suffered for the faith but was not executed for it) rather than as a martyr in the strict sense (see The Death and the Poisoning Question on the contested manner of his death). ROCOR glorified him on November 1, 1981, as part of its great glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Soviet Yoke, and the Moscow Patriarchate glorified him separately in October 1989, ahead of its own jubilee glorification of the wider host in 2000 (see 1981 and 1989). In both the icon and the calendar he functions as a kind of head of the synaxis: the first hierarch of the restored Patriarchate, under whom the persecution began and around whom the multitude of its saints is gathered. His feast days — his repose on March 25 / April 7, the finding of his relics on February 9/22, and his glorification on October 5/18 — anchor the New Martyrs’ commemorative cycle (OCA, “St. Tikhon of Moscow,” feast listings; cf. New Martyrs and Confessors).

See Also

References

  • Orthodox Church in America. “The Recovery of St. Tikhon’s Relics in February 1992”; “Finding of the Relics of Saint Tikhon of Moscow”; “Repose of Saint Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, Enlightener of North America”; “St. Tikhon’s Seminary”; “The 100th Anniversary of St. Tikhon’s Election, Enthronement.” oca.org.
  • Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov). “The Uncovering of the Relics of Patriarch Tikhon.” orthochristian.com.
  • The Archives of Orthodox America, “Patriarch Tikhon’s Relics Discovered.” roca.org.
  • The Monastery of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. “Founding of the Monastery.” sttikhonsmonastery.org. Cross-checked against OrthodoxWiki, “St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Monastery (South Canaan, Pennsylvania),” and Wikipedia, “Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary” (aggregators used to locate dates per METHODOLOGY §2.3).
  • “About 35,000 New Martyrs included in database of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University.” orthochristian.com. With Wikipedia, “Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University,” for the institution’s founding and university status.
  • OrthoChristian.com. “Centenary of enthronement of St. Tikhon of Moscow to be celebrated with transfer of his relics”; “Feast of Holy Fathers of 1917–1918 Local Council established”; “Primates of Local Churches visiting Russia for centenary of restoration of Russian patriarchate.”
  • Columbia University, “Icon of the New Russian Martyrs” (columbia.edu); Legacy Icons and Uncut Mountain Supply icon descriptions — used to locate the standard iconographic type (white klobuk; the Tikhon–Raphael pairing; the 2000 Council icon).
  • obitel-minsk.org, “The Life of the Holy Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and All Russia” — biographical frame, used to locate dates.