February 24, 1901

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Martin Antonenko

A Fixture
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Jul 11, 2008
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Tolstoj Is Excommunicated!


On February 24, 1901, the world-famous writer Lew Nikolawitsch Count Tolstoj is thrown out of the Russian Orthodox Church!



Previously, he had used his growing fame to campaign more and more for the politically and religiously persecuted...:





You have to know that the orthodox patriarchy saw itself as the most important pillar of the state and increasingly supported the state's reactionary persecutions of those who thought differently - often demanding and triggering them!

From 1881 Tolstoy had turned intensively to religious questions. In a series of conversations with leading clergy such as the Metropolitan of Moscow, and on trips to various churches and monasteries, he developed an aversion to the ritual form of religiosity he encountered.

The dissemination of his views in "Church and State"...



... and "What is a Christian allowed to do and what not?" drew resistance from political and church institutions.

Tolstoy is particularly concerned about three things:

The official church has degenerated into a mere stirrup holder of the reactionary tsarist power!



The practice of religion in the official church (the Holy Synod) is severe and punitive, without the slightest empathy.



Religious celebrations and performances have degenerated into magnificent but only purely formal acts...:



Tolstoy's views found mass adherents, especially among young and intellectual Russians, who henceforth called themselves "Tolstojans"...:





State and church reacted:

Tolstoy had been under police surveillance since 1882, his writing "My Confession and What My Faith Consists of" ...



...was immediately banned when it appeared! Tolstoy was deliberately rumored by the Church to be mentally ill.

When Tolstoy emphasized his responsibility as an author in the face of the increasing criminal prosecution of his followers, the answer was: “Herr Graf! Your fame is too great for our prisons to house!”

The publication of the novel "Resurrection"...



... finally led to the fact that the de facto head of the official church, the chief procurator of the Holy Synod Tolstoy, Konstantin Pobjedonoszow...



...Tolstoy was excommunicated on February 24, 1901 because he - allegedly -

• “deny the God praised as Trinity”;
• “deny the risen from the dead God-man Christ”;
• “deny the virginity of Mary before and after the birth of Christ”;
• "blaspheme the mystery of the Lord's Supper"; (Tolstoy denied miracles in themselves and
especially the transformation of the communion bread into the body of Jesus).

Tolstoy shows little remorse. "The teaching of the Church is a theoretically contradictory and pernicious lie," says a letter in reply to the synod, "almost everything is a collection of gross superstition and magic."

But this was "not an unqualified denial, behind it there was always a deep belief in the work of God in the world and the effort to fathom the true divine law," Tolstoy described his attitude himself.

Also on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Tolstoy's death...



...on November 20, 2010, Patriarch Cyril of Russia..



.... saw no reason to lift the ban, at least posthumously.

The Church in Russia today, under Putin, is moving in the same waters that Tolstoj so vehemently criticized at the time.



Leo Tolstoy himself would - I'm sure - give a damn!

He will be remembered long after the Kremlin's tyrant has been forgotten...
 

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