A Warm Welcome

We warmly welcome into the Russian Church those who yesterday, the first day of the Church New Year, left the Patriarchate of Constantinople for us. Now their Russian Tradition can be affirmed and renewed. For the rest of us the final piece of the émigré jigsaw has fallen into place, a century after it began to fall apart. The freed Russian Church inside Russia has now been reunited with Carpatho-Russian parishes in the USA (the OCA), with the Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) (in 2007) and now with the faithful of the parishes of the Paris Archdiocese under Archbishop Jean (Renneteau), known as Rue Daru.

On this historic day we now look forward to the renewal of fraternal contacts and relationships and concelebrations. Today, in unity, angels and men alike rejoice.

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

St Alexander Nevsky Parish,

Norwich, England,

15 September 2019

Chamberlain or Churchill?

Political parties are always made up, on the one hand, of people who actually believe in something (conviction politicians) and, on the other hand, of careerists and opportunists, some strong, some weak, but for all of whom the money and power of business sponsors is the main thing. The latter use their chosen party as a mere springboard for (and victim of) their personal ambition and narcissism. They are always willing to sell out on principles for personal gain. In France, for example, no-one can become President without his personal political party, usually set up specifically to fulfil his ambition. In the UK, the division between conviction and career has always been the case in history in both the Conservative and Labour Parties.

In the latter case, this careerism has been clearly visible in recent times in the case of Prime Minister Blair. His policies led to the deaths of thousands as a result of his meddling in several countries and also to tens of billions of British pounds being wasted, in the end bankrupting the country. In the former case we can clearly see the same opportunism in the career of Prime Minister Cameron, in part responsible for the deaths and misery of a great many in Libya. (However, he who opened Pandora’s Brexit box already had as his ancestors both slave-traders and bankers, who financed the Japanese War against Russia 115 years ago).

Some eighty years ago we can see the same thing in the career of the Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. When, eighty years ago, on 3 September 1939 the UK finally took the decision to stand up to Hitler, his fate was sealed. For years before Chamberlain had been dilly-dallying with Hitler, cruelly betraying Czechoslovakia, carved up by Nazi Germany, Fascist Hungary and Fascist Poland (many forget the ruthless Polish persecution of Non-Poles and the German-Polish non-aggression pact of 1934). Thus, eventually, even Chamberlain had to stand up for principles, though he proved far too weak to lead, unable (like Theresa May?) to stand up to traitors and collaborationists like Lord Halifax, and he had to be replaced by Churchill.

One national newspaper had on 4 September the headlines: ‘Parliament Surrenders to the EU’. We cannot help recalling that Parliament as such was founded by the genocidal tyrant Cromwell, with a million murders on his hands, whose statue actually still stands outside Parliament. Once more today, the countries which make up the UK are faced with a choice: to live by principle or to swim with the tide of Continental divide and rule drift. Eighty years ago in 1939 it was the same. Now the choice may even come on the Feast of St Andrew the Fool for Christ, 15 October.

The choice, whenever it happens and whoever the Prime Minister is, will be between national identity and lucre. For some the former is higher than the latter. For others, many of them now elderly, only thirty pieces of silver count and the national principle can be betrayed. What will happen? Will Brexit happen? Nobody knows. The country is paralysed by a Business-sponsored Parliament which refuses to implement the will of the people and lacks the courage to hold a General Election.

 

Rue Daru Ends

At its General Assembly meeting, held, typically for it, in a Catholic church in Paris last Saturday, the delegates of the parishes and communities of the small Rue Daru Archdiocese voted by 58% to return to the Russian Orthodox Church and by 42% not to do so. It seems that as a result each community, most of which are tiny, will join whichever Orthodox Church it wishes to – providing of course that any Local Church wants them. (Most Local Churches do not want to take on untrained clergy and individuals who have a reputation as troublemakers, who do not have even their own church buildings and yet believe that, though they are in reality a tiny group of marginals, they stand at the centre of the universe!)

Moldovans who have taken over several previously virtually empty parishes in Paris, including the church on Rue Daru itself, will naturally return to the Russian Orthodox Church, as will those who still consider themselves to belong wholly to the Russian Tradition, as were the first three Rue Daru hierarchs, the last of whom reposed in 1981. Those in Belgium may plead with the Romanian Church to take them, though the Romanian Church is loath to do so. Some in England are looking with hope at Antioch, but again there is no certainty that it will want them. Others have already left for the Bulgarian Church (in Scandinavia) or the Church Outside Russia (in Italy). Some communities will simply be absorbed into local modernist Greek Dioceses and so disappear.

The 77-year old ill French Archbishop Jean, the very last bishop of the anti-monastic and anti-episcopal Rue Daru group, was so upset at the meeting at not getting the two-thirds majority he needed to take the group as a whole back into the Russian Orthodox Church that he threatened to retire. It is the ignominious end of a group founded by rebellious aristocrats and protestantising intellectuals, who, secularized to the extreme, were always prone to personality-driven, French-style rebellions, arguments, splits, libels and threats, a ‘panier de crabes’ as it was called in Paris forty years ago. Indeed the previous Archbishop Job, a schismatic Ukrainian, could only attend the Rue Daru church protected from physical assaults by five burly bodyguards who would stand during the services and escort any protestors out.

Meanwhile at the Greek church in Paris yesterday, Ukrainian schismatics were concelebrating with the notorious Greek Metropolitan Emmanuel. It is said that the Greek plan is to take over the historic Rue Daru church and hand it over to the schismatics. The whole Rue Daru debate has been characterized by the fantasies of priests who do not know how to celebrate services and unChurched but highly politicized laypeople who have no idea what the Church is, how the Church works and what it needs to make a bishop – three other bishops. Now it seems that Rue Daru parishes and communities who do not want to remain in the schismatic Patriarchate of Constantinople will be received back into the Russian Orthodox Church individually, not as a group. As to whether any other Local Church will want the others is unclear.

Over 12 years ago the main part of the Russian emigration, the Church Outside Russia with its Synod of Bishops, some 80% of the emigration, returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. They had understood that the Church in Russia was by then completely free from the Russian State. Clearly the Rue Daru émigré splinter fragment, which had broken away from the Church Outside Russia under political pressure in the 1920s, should have done the same then. This whole death-agony has dragged on for decades too long.  It refused to return and its then Archbishop Gabriel, yesterday’s convert, showed himself to be an intense Russophobe, uncanonically ordaining men priests without first training them and receiving all sorts of dissidents and strange individuals from elsewhere. Here then is the result.

In Memoriam: Archbishop George Tarasov (1893-1981)

The shocking news today, 31 August 2019, is that Archbishop Jean (Renneteau) of Rue Daru has been suspended by the Phanar. The latter appears to have finally lost leave of its senses, having replaced the Archbishop with the Archmodernist married priest Alexis Struve of the Fraternite Orthodoxe (and descendant of the Marxist Struve family, which helped overthrow the Tsar and the Christian Empire). This has scandalized everyone. However, let us recall better days at Rue Daru.

I must have met some hundred bishops in my life. Most were most definitely not saints, two perhaps were: Archbishop Antony of Geneva and Archbishop Antony of San Francisco. However, there were two others who I think were definitely saints: One was Metropolitan Laurus (Shkurla) and the other was Archbishop George (Tarasov). Curiously they both at one time had the same title: ‘of Syracuse’. The first had the title because he lived most of his life near the town of Syracuse in New York State, the other because he bore the title of the ancient Greek town in Sicily, which in 1820 gave its name to the Syracuse in New York State.

Much has been written in English about Metr Laurus, but little about Archbishop George. This latter, like the former, was a faithful bearer of the Russian Church Tradition, who strongly disliked novelties and loved Russian Orthodox piety. Archbishop George accepted everyone, of all nationalities and ages, as I can bear witness; he did not reject the non-intellectual, as some do, making clubs and cliques in tiny inward-looking ‘parishes’ and groups of celibate intellectuals, but equally he did not reject them. His heart was open to all – the clear sign of a saint, for all he wanted to do was to serve all who came and not some particular ethnic group or subculture.

George Tarasov (in the French transliteration Georges Tarassoff) was born in Voronezh in central European Russia on 14 April 1893. He studied at the Technical School in the city and then at the Higher Technical Institute in Moscow, where he graduated in chemical engineering. Later he studied aeronautics and in 1914 volunteered for the Imperial Air Force, which was then by far the largest air force in the world. His life changed in 1916. Aged 23, he was sent to the Western Front, with many other Russian military personnel, to help the faltering French war effort, as a pilot. After the 1917 betrayal of the Tsar, he remained on the Western Front, joining the Belgian Air Force reaching the rank of major.

Major George Tarasov was demobbed in 1919 and settled in Belgium, where he worked for various companies as a chemical engineer from 1921 to 1934.  However, in 1922, aged 29, he married a Russian called Evgenia Freshkop. The photograph of her which he showed us was that of a very gentle and kind woman with softness and nobility in her face. She was a zealous Orthodox. I was later reminded of her on meeting in Paris the delightful matushka of Fr Sergij Chertkov, Ludmila Chertkova, who did so much to soften him, taking off the edges of her husband with her gentle smile and innocent charm.

On 25 March 1928, Georges Tarasov was ordained deacon by Metropolitan Eulogius, who had not yet broken with the Russian Church, and on 3 February 1930, Deacon George reluctantly accepted the priesthood. He was then aged 36. He was appointed rector of the parishes in Ghent and Louvain. However, two years later, he was tragically widowed. He always loved his wife and at the end of his life he would speak to us of her, showing that she had always remained his ideal. He lived for her and patiently waited to meet her on the other side in God’s own time.

In 1933 Fr George was tonsured monk. Seven years later, in 1940, he was appointed rector of St Panteleimon’s parish in Brussels, though he continued to serve other Belgian parishes also. He was an exceptionally zealous and loving pastor, his task was always to serve others. During the German Occupation he was arrested at least twice and one interrogation lasted ten hours non-stop. In Brussels he then came to take over the second parish of St Nicholas, whose rector had been deported to Berlin

In 1945, just before he died, Metropolitan Eulogius at last returned to the Russian Church. However, Fr George was forced to remain under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as his distrusting parishioners refused to return. In 1948 Fr George was made an archimandrite by the new Rue Daru Metropolitan, Vladimir. Then on 4 October 1953 he was appointed Bishop for Belgium and Holland and the few Orthodox under Rue Daru in West Germany, with the title ‘of Syracuse’, though he continued to live in Brussels. Like Metr Eulogius, Metr Vladimir wanted to return to the Russian Church, but this was impossible for as long as the episcopate of that Church was held hostage by the militant atheist government of the Soviet Union.

After Metropolitan Vladimir died at the end of 1959, Fr George was appointed his successor, but received the rank only of archbishop, as Constantinople was downgrading the ever smaller Rue Daru group. Archbishop George continued to be a loving pastor, visiting his small and scattered archdiocese, and notably encouraged the use of French in services, even though he himself spoke it very badly. At the end of 1965, for purely political reasons, the very weak Patriarchate of Constantinople, politically manipulated, dropped the Rue Daru Archdiocese from its jurisdiction.

A month later, on 29 December, Archbishop George was forced by powerful laymen in Paris to proclaim the temporary independence of the Rue Daru Archdiocese. True, he could have returned to either part of the Russian Church, but he could not abandon his flock, who would not have returned with him, as had been the experience of Metr Eulogius in 1945. In the event, just over five years later, in January 1971, Constantinople repented and took back the Diocese.

Now there began a new trial: Archbishop George was increasingly persecuted by modernists and ecumenists from the ‘Fraternite Orthodoxe’, an anti-clerical, anti-monastic, anti-episcopal, mainly lay organization of protestantizing pseudo-intellectuals, many of them prosperous Parisian bourgeois or aristocrats. They would hiss at him at church, boo him and mock him quite openly, of which we are witnesses.

Archbishop George lived in poverty, his clothes bought for him by a faithful parishioner, Barbara Shpiganovich. He continued to serve the faithful, living and departed. One thing he took on himself was to pray for all the departed of his flock, as it was then dying out, and he had thousands and thousands of names. He would begin to commemorate them on Saturday evenings, praying for them far after midnight and then early on Sunday mornings. This was his Proskomidia.

The end of his life, ill and despised, living in his tiny flat and usually robed in a dressing gown, a St Seraphim of Sarov figure, found him in total poverty, with only photos of his past to remind him of happier times. Faithful to the traditions and piety of the Russian Church, he was rejected by the arrogant and persecuting modernists who had come to dominate Rue Daru and would later destroy it, forcing others to leave it. The intensely humble Archbishop George passed away on 22 March 1981 after a long illness. He was aged 87. His last message to his clergy and faithful was: ‘Tell them, I love them all’. His body lies in the crypt of the church of the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, south of Paris.

I cannot forget my first encounter with Archbishop George nearly forty years ago, at the Feast of St Sergius on 8 October 1979. I did not know then that I would get to know him better and he would even attend my wedding the following year. Archbishop George was a faithful Russian Orthodox and although he was persecuted by the secularist elements in his flock, he was only waiting to return to a politically free Russian Church. Sadly, he did not live to see that. If he were alive today, there is absolutely no doubt that he would long ago have returned to the Russian Church, as his predecessors also wanted to do. His passing was the turning-point in the history of Rue Daru as after him it descended on the long and sorry path of its absurd Russophobia and so break-up.

To Archbishop George – Eternal Memory

 

Who is Sovereign: Parliament or People?

The UK Prime Minister has decided to suspend the Westminster Parliament for a brief period as it refused to implement the will of the people to leave the European Union. Some are outraged by this, but they forget that the MPs in Parliament were not elected democratically, that is, by a majority of their constituents. In the singularly undemocratic UK system, most governments are in power simply because only 30-35% (not 50% +) of the 65% of the electorate who voted chose their representatives of the government in power. Little wonder that about a third of the electorate do not even bother to vote and cynicism about overpaid and unrepresentative politicians is at an all-time high. Minority governments, and they virtually always are in the UK, do not have respect. The people have been lied to all too often down the generations.

The refusal by MPs to implement the result of the Brexit referendum after three years (!) has proved that most MPs are indeed anti-democratic. The anti-democrats even call for a second people’s vote because, as they say, the people are so stupid that they got it wrong the first time! Such is their patronising elitism. The ruling Conservative Party was indeed put into fifth place at the recent European elections as a result of its failure to respect the electorate. And the then Prime Minister had to resign for failing to implement what she had been chosen to do and had promised to do. Most of those who wanted Brexit were fed up with losing out in the EU and some of them were indeed financially modest; most of those who were opposed to Brexit had profited from the EU and belong to the effete, wealthy and ultra-wealthy, power-loving Establishment class who control all the political parties.

Brexit was then to a large extent the choice of the underclass of 52%, despised and patronised by the Establishment and its condescending BBC propaganda mouthpiece. The people voted against the elite who had ignored them and had expressed contempt for them for nearly half a century. But the worm always turns and so the outrage of the arrogant and anti-democratic Remainers is very hypocritical. With the suspension of the Westminster elite, the present Prime Minister has left his own gilded cage and gambled that the people will be grateful to him. In Brussels the equally oligarchic and unelected elite is worried. If the UK leaves the EU successfully, it is inevitable that other countries (Hungary? Italy? The Czech Lands? Sweden? Denmark? Ireland? Others?) will also leave. The inevitable end of the tyrannical EU is in sight.

But what will replace it?

 

A Public Letter of Support to Archbishop Jean Renneteau of Rue Daru

La diaspora russe, toutes jurisdictions confondues, avait une mission très simple: de rester fidèle à la tradition russe malgré la servitude involontaire de l’episcopat de l’Eglise russe en URSS et en même temps d’apporter la lumière de l’Orthodoxie aux indigènes dans leurs langues occidentales. Les meilleurs représentants de chaque jurisdiction de la diaspora ont fait précisément cela. On peux penser à St Jean de Changhaï de l’Eglise hors Frontieres et à son fils spiritual, l’archévêque Antony de Genève, à Mgr Basile Krivosheine du patriarchat de Moscou à Bruxelles, ou encore à l’archévêque Georges Tarassoff de la Rue Daru (un saint à mon avis; à quand sa canonisation?).

A chaque fois que l’on ne respectait pas la fidèlité à la tradition russe et à la mission dans les langues locales, on se vouait au suicide spiritual. Nous l’avons bien vu avec Mgr Georges Wagner à la Rue Daru, qui détestait l’utilisation des langues locales et a ainsi perdu beaucoup de clergé et de fidèles (par exemple l’actuel Mgr Athénagore (Peckstadt), l’archiprêtre Nicolas Soldatenkoff, l’archimandrite Georges (Leroy) et nous-mêmes, ou à la tentative de Mgr Georges Grabbe de l’EORHF aux Etats-Unis qui avait esssayé de faire de l’Eglise un outil politique et sectaire de la guerre froide, ou à des individus du patriarchat de Moscou, qui, privés du troupeau russe politiquement disaffecté, avaient essayé de recruter des ouailles parmi des occidentaux naïfs avec des résultats lamentables.

Ma matouchka Sabine, (née Sardo), était présente à la Crypte lors de la réception de l’actuel Mgr Jean Renneteau en 1974, qui a été ensuite ordonné par Mgr Georges Tarassoff. Nous le soutenons sans réserve. Il faut que la Rue Daru retourne a l’Eglise-Mère, après avoir perdu son chemin après le décés de Mgr Georges Tarassoff en 1981. L’Eglise hors frontières a fait cette expérience il y a 12 ans et ainsi a affirmé notre victoire contre le sectarisme style vieux-calendariste qui avait infiltré l’EORHF aux Etats-Unis. Aujourd’hui l’EORHF devient l’Eglise orthodoxe du monde anglo-saxon. Depuis peu c’est le patriarchat de Moscou qui a établi son Exarchat de l’Europe Occidentale à Paris, avec bientôt des centaines de paroisses, et devient l’Eglise de l’Europe continentale. C’est maintenant à la Rue Daru, quoique devenue petite, de faire partie de cet Exarchat de l’Europe continental et de lui apporter son expérience pastorale.

L’archiprêtre Andrew Phillips, Angleterre (ancien de Saint Serge)

RECOLLECTIONS OF ARCHIMANDRITE NICHOLAS GIBBES (1876-1963)

A personal and unpublished memoir by David Beattie, former British ambassador to Switzerland, written on 3 August 1963, slightly edited.

Copyright

I had known of the existence of Fr Nicholas Gibbes for many years before I actually met him. As a monarchist and as one in touch with Orthodox circles I had always hoped and expected to meet him some day, but when the encounter finally took place it was unforeseen. In June 1961 I happened to be invited to tea at an Anglican vicarage in Bethnal Green. As we sat in the garden a strange figure appeared at the end of the path. This was Fr Nicholas, who was very friendly with my host and often used to drop in. A moment later, the long-awaited introduction had taken place. I realised that I had seen him before in the streets of Oxford and remembered that I had felt in my bones that this figure was probably Fr Nicholas.

I was introduced as one who had lately returned from Moscow, where I had been working for three weeks as an interpreter at a trade exhibition. He immediately devoted his attention to me, to the exclusion of the rest of the company. Without the slightest prompting he began to talk about the Russian Imperial Family. I was later told that this happened very rarely and that I had been “greatly honoured”, for the Family was something sacred to him and he did not lightly talk about it.

He told me that he lived very much with the Imperial Family at Tsarskoe Selo (although he used to go with the Heir to the Stavka (Military High Command) at Mogilev during the war). They led a simple life. The Emperor impressed him as a supremely good, kind man. The Empress too was always very kind, and very resolute about performing her family duties. It was a happy and devoted family, and it seems that Fr Nicholas was enchanted by them. He was especially fond of the Heir, the Tsarevich Alexey; “He was a very lively, delightful boy; I always felt sad when I was away from him.” He bore his illness with great courage, and in spite of his pain was high-spirited enough to be naughty and mischievous at times. He seems to have had considerable character and strength of will even at that early age.

Fr Nicholas said that the children were kind and considerate. On one occasion he was due to give an English lesson to the Grand Duchess Anastasia and (I think) the Grand Duchess Tatyana. He forgot about it. When he remembered, he had just enough time to rush over to the Palace, where he arrived breathless – and without a tie! To appear like that before a member of the Imperial House was of course a heinous crime, but the Grand Duchesses were so kind or well-trained that in spite of their youth they not only made no comment but even refrained from giggling. Nor did they mention it to anyone else, as they might well have done in a moment of thoughtless amusement, for Fr Nicholas heard no more about it. He was horrified when he returned to his rooms and there discovered his tielessness.

Fr Nicholas said that Rasputin was not much more than a name to him, although he had heard rumours and had caught glimpses of him in the corridors. He did not consider him particularly influential or harmful: he thought of him as an ordinary peasant, naively cunning, but endowed with healing powers. He did, however, tell one amusing story in this connection, in a style of self-deprecating irony. Gibbes’ status as a tutor was that of a Court Employee. His salary was very low, for it had been fixed in the time of Alexander II and the Empress, who as a German and a Victorian was very economical, refused to raise it. The uniform was as humble as the salary: “It was like a postman’s. I refused to wear it, and used to turn up in a tweedy English lounge suit.” Gibbes’ great ambition was to be appointed a Gentleman of the Court, a rank which carried with it a larger salary and a more resplendent uniform. “One day the Emperor came up to me and said, ‘Gibbes! You really must have dinner with Rasputin one day soon. Go and see him next Tuesday and arrange an appointment.’ I thought to myself, ‘Good! If I can get into Rasputin’s good books I will have enough influence to get myself made a Gentleman of the Court.’ But alas, Rasputin was murdered before I could dine with him and so I never got my uniform!”

At the moment when the Monarchy fell in March 1917 Fr Nicholas was in the town of Tsarskoe Selo. He immediately returned to the Palace, but was refused admittance. He would not return to England, but stayed in the neighbourhood of the Palace. In August the Family were moved to Tobolsk. Gibbes and the Swiss tutor Pierre Gilliard followed them and were at last allowed to join them there. Fr Nicholas said that the Emperor was particularly glad to see him, for he had been deserted by almost all his courtiers – the very men who should have been the most loyal.

Life at Tobolsk was not unpleasant. At times, however, sad thoughts would inevitably find expression. When this happened it was the Emperor who kept up everyone’s spirits. He would tell little jokes or stories and recall amusing incidents, such as the time when a little dog ran across the parade ground during a particularly solemn military ceremony. Fr Nicholas was impressed by the harmony of the Family. There was never a harsh word, and all were buoyed up by a profound religious faith.

Fr Nicholas then outlined his career after 1918. He took a post in the North China Customs and refused to return to England because of the shabby treatment which he felt it had meted out to the Emperor and his family. When he was ordained he took the name of Nicholas in memory of the Emperor. The new Sino-Japanese war forced him to leave China, and he came back to England in 1936. “I was sorry that I arrived after the death of George V; I am sure that he would have helped me.”

This conversation lasted for over an hour. Fr Nicholas was a short, thin, rather bent little man. He had very rosy cheeks, twinkling bright blue eyes and a snow-white beard, rather straggly and not thick, coming roughly to a point at the middle of his chest. Although he was not poor (he had at least a house in London, a house at Broadstairs and two tied cottages in Oxford) he seemed to be dressed in an extraordinary collection of rags. He dressed very humbly, in a threadbare old cassock. His right hand held a stick and on his left arm there hung a disreputable black shopping bag. He got about entirely by himself, albeit not very quickly. He was perfectly self-sufficient and his mind completely clear. He must then have been about 85. He was a lucid and witty talker, and a delight to listen to. He struck me as being at once simple and practical. His remarks about the Imperial Family were devoted and affectionate. His own faith seemed unquestioning, but he was no mystic. In spite of his appearance and past he was utterly English in his practical approach to mundane matters, and indeed in his humour. He was quite ready to look after his own interests, and in this respect his remarks on Rasputin and George V are illuminating. He was a man to be appreciated and not argued with.

My next meeting occurred on May 30th 1962, when I encountered him in St Giles at Oxford. It was very hot and sunny, and Fr Nicholas seemed rather more frail and hunched than before. I went up and made myself known, as he had instructed me to do at our previous meeting if ever I saw him again. He seemed pleased to see me, and we walked down to the Oxford Union together. He explained that he had come up to get rid of his cottages: because they were tied cottages the old widows who lived in them paid only eight shillings a week in rent and he could not screw it up any further. Then he asked me if I could get hold of a lorry to transport a mosaic icon weighing half a ton which he wanted to present to Walsingham. (I could not oblige.) Suddenly he asked, “Do you know how I keep so young?” (for in some ways he was a young man in spite of his physical appearance). “No, Father, I don’t”, I replied. “Well, I will tell you. Have you ever observed the ways of the serpent? He sheds his skin regularly, and that’s just what I do. In my flat in London I have a very strong electric fire and a very small cubicle. I turn on the fire and wait until the cubicle is very hot. Then I take off all my clothes, pour water all over myself, and go and sit in the cubicle. Very soon all my skin falls off and I come out young again. But do you know” (this with an amused and quizzical glance at me), “I can’t find any pupils to follow my example!”

The weather was so hot, and Fr Nicholas seemed so tired, that from time to time during the day I dropped into the Union to make sure that all was well with him.

The next day was Ascension Day, when several traditional ceremonies are performed at Lincoln College. As I entered the Quad shortly after lunch I saw the unearthly figure of Fr Nicholas standing there in the sunshine. He explained that he had mistakenly thought that term was over, and having seen me the previous day he thought that I was staying up to do some extra work. He had therefore come to Lincoln to find me and cheer me up in case I was feeling lonely. I thought this a kindly gesture.

Fr Nicholas told me that I could always visit him at London or Broadstairs; if the latter house was full there would always be room for me in the hay-loft! I was never able to take advantage of these invitations.

When I saw Fr Nicholas in May 1962 I realised that his physical strength was leaving him and I felt that it would be our last meeting. He died at St Pancras Hospital in London on March 24th 1963 at the age of 87. One could not feel regret at hearing of his death: that would have seemed strangely inappropriate. I remembered rather the great pleasure of talking with him, a pleasure all the greater because every one of our meetings was so unexpected. Above all there was the affection and respect which he inspired. How could one feel regret for him? For I am quite sure that in his simple, matter-of-fact way Nicholas Gibbes looked forward to seeing Alexey and the Family once again.

David Beattie

3 August 1963

 

First Afternote (originally typed soon after 3 August 1963)

Fr Nicholas and the Russian Churches in London

Archpriest Nicholas Popov (Manchester) told me in 1959 that Fr Nicholas Gibbes made his submission to Moscow because he felt that as the land of Russia must have a monarch, so must the Church of Russia have one ruler. I felt from our conversations that Fr Nicholas Gibbes was not entirely happy about Ennismore Gardens. He preferred the more homely and used appearance of Emperor’s Gate, and complained that Bishop Antony (Bloom) had a mania for polishing, gilding and burnishing anything that could be made to look new and smart. At the same time he resented the very natural annoyance felt by Emperor’s Gate about his change of jurisdiction. He said that Bishop Nikodim had been very rude not to invite him within the iconostasis when he was present on one occasion. He also remarked that “Nikodim had formerly been very arrogant, but more recent events had caused him to change his tune.” I do not know what he meant by this.

Second Afternote (based on a diary entry for 9 November 1963)

Fr Nicholas’s Papers

After Fr Nicholas’ death Timothy Ware (now Metropolitan Kallistos) and I were worried that his papers and effects might be dispersed and lost. We thought that every effort should be made to preserve them and perhaps use them for writing and publishing a memoir of him. These latter plans came to nothing because Timothy Ware soon afterwards went to Princeton University and the Foreign Office posted me to Moscow. But as a first step we asked to see George Gibbes, Fr Nicholas’ Russian adopted son. He received us at Fr Nicholas’ London home, 17 Robert Street, near Euston Station, at 2 15 pm on Saturday, 9 November 1963. Robert Street was at that time a rapidly decaying thoroughfare (it has since been demolished), but No. 17 was kept well enough.

George Gibbes had taken care to check our bona fides. He had even looked up Fr Nicholas’ note of my first meeting with him in June 1961, which he had carefully recorded in his diary and which George Gibbes showed me. George Gibbes was very reluctant that any account of Fr Nicholas should appear under a political imprint such as that of the Monarchist Press Association, and he also wanted a rather larger work than the MPA could have produced. He was in fact thinking of writing one himself.

The exciting thing was that Fr Nicholas had kept everything, including even correspondence with his tutor at Cambridge and such other items as his correspondence with the White Army government in Siberia. There were many photographs and boxes of documents. We were shown Fr Nicholas’ little cell, which was being kept exactly as it had been. As often happens with rooms which have been left undisturbed after someone has died, it felt as if Fr Nicholas was actually there in spirit. It was a tiny room, very simple and lined with books and icons, two photographs of the Tsarevich and one of the Empress. The books were curiously mixed: Bibles and theological works, together with the “Law Home Companion”. There was a very old (600 years) and worm-eaten icon which George Gibbes said had once been entirely obscure, but which during the last months of Fr Nicholas’ life had gradually regained its colours. On the day of his death the images of Our Lady and Child had glowed faintly as if illuminated by a spotlight. There was also an icon from the house at Tobolsk. We were told that other relics, including a chandelier from the Ipatiev house at Ekaterinburg, were safe in Oxford.

We left reassured about the fate of Fr Nicholas’ papers, at least for the time being. I believe that the chandelier and icons from the chapel at Marston Street, Oxford, later went to Luton Hoo. They are now said to be in safe storage, but I do not know where, nor in whose custody.

David Beattie,

Colchester

10 November 2018

 

 

Towards a Map of Western European Holiness

By origin the word Europe means ‘the land of the sunset’, that is, the west, for it lies at the western tip of the 54.5 million square kilometres of the Eurasian Continent. Measuring 10.5 million square kilometres, only one fifth of the whole of Eurasia, Europe from a Church viewpoint can be divided into three parts. Over 50%, or 5.5 million square kilometres, 4.5 million square kilometres in Russia and just over 1 million in the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, is canonical Russian Orthodox territory. The second part covers 1.4 million square kilometres and is the territory of various Local Orthodox Churches, the Romanian, Serbian (whose territory includes all of ex-Yugoslavia), Greek, Bulgarian, Polish, Czecho-slovak, and Albanian. This is two-thirds of Europe. There remains the final third of 3.6 million square kilometres.

This may be called Western Europe, even though it includes Central Europe, Hungary and Finland. The name can be justified because this part of Europe has for nearly one thousand years been isolated from the Church. This was as a result of the spiritual delusions, and so intellectual and political disaffection, jealousy and hostility towards the Church, of the governing elite of Western Europe. In other words, this is ex-Catholic and ex-Protestant Europe. Going from west to east and north to south, this means the 25 countries of: Iceland, Ireland, the British Isles (the three countries of Wales, England and Scotland), Norway, Denmark (and the Faeroes), Sweden, Finland; the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany; France, Monaco, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Hungary; Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, San Marino and Malta.

There exist many maps of this Western Europe. Some show the borders of the various states and the main cities; others show seas and lakes, hills and mountains; others show population density; others show the main roads and railways; others show the longevity of the population. And yet, although a millennium ago this Western Europe had a history of holiness, that is, of Orthodoxy, because this history has been forgotten, there is as yet no map showing the places hallowed by its saints who received the holiness brought to it from the east. If we drew up such a map of its saints, we would find huge variations. For example, in the very sparsely-populated Nordic countries, over one third of the area, we find little holiness, with no known native saints in Iceland and Finland and only a handful in Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

However, in the rest of this Western Europe we find a very different situation. The centre of its holiness is what is now Italy (and San Marino), close to the source of the Faith in the East with the capital of Rome. From here holiness spread north to Gaul, now France, the second centre of holiness, to southern England and from there to the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany and from there to Austria and Hungary. From Gaul holiness also spread east to Switzerland, south and west to Andorra, Spain and Portugal, and north to what is now Belgium and above all to the thebaid of saints in Ireland, converted by the monastic life brought to them from Egypt via Gaul. Their influence spread back to east and south, to all the Celtic lands, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, and also to northern England, Belgium, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The first saints of this First Western Europe are of course the leading apostles, Peter and Paul, together with St James the Apostle in Galicia, as well as a huge number of internationally-venerated martyrs, especially in Rome, like St Pancras of Taormina (1st cent.),  St Clement (100), St Ignatius of Antioch (c. 107), Sts Sophia, Hope, Faith and Love (2nd cent.), St Tatiana (225), St Cecilia (230), St Hippolytus of Rome (c. 235), St Agatha (251), St Lawrence (258), St Eugenia (262), Sts Chrysanthus and Daria (283), Sts Sebastian and Comps (287), St Maurice of Agaunum and the Theban Legion (287), St Anastasia of Rome (304), St Lucy of Syracuse (304), Sts Agapia, Chionia and Irene (304), St Vincent of Spain (304), St Eulalia of Barcelona (304), St Januarius of Pozzuoli (c. 305), St Alban of Verulamium (c. 305), St Pancras (early 4th cent), St Agnes (c. 350).

It includes Church Fathers like St Justin Martyr (165),  St Irinei of Lyon (200), St Hilary of Poitiers (368), St Ambrose of Milan (387), St John Cassian (433), St Vincent of Lerins (445), Blessed Jerome of Stridon (c. 420), St Leo the Great (461), St Gregory the Great, called the Dialogist (604), St Maximus the Confessor (662). It includes pious bishops with Gallo-Romans like St Martial of Limoges (c. 250), St Saturninus of Toulouse (257), St Julian of Le Mans (Cenomansis) (3rd cent), St Paulinus of Nola (431), St Germanus of Auxerre (448), then later St Remigius (533), St Germanus of Paris (576), St Gregory of Tours (594), St Leander (601), St Valery (621), St Fulgentius (633), St Isidore of Seville (636), St Eligius (660), St Omer (670), St Amand (675), St Julian of Toledo (690), St Lambert (705), St Hubert (727), St Gregory of Utrecht (776).

It includes monastic founders like St Martin the Merciful of Tours (397), St Genevieve of Paris (500), St Benedict of Nursia (550), St Martin of Braga (580), St David of Wales (589), St Columba of Iona, Enlightener of Scotland (597), St Columban of Luxeuil (615), St Hilda of Whitby (680), St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (687), St Odile of Alsace (720). It includes confessors who evangelized whole stretches of this Europe, like the Roman-Britons St Ninian, Apostle of the Picts (450), St Patrick, Enlightener of Ireland (461), the English St Willibrord-Clement in the Netherlands (739) and St Boniface of Fulda, martyred in Frisia (754), St Anschar of Hamburg (865). It includes pious kings and queens, St Bathilde (545), St Oswald (642), St Clotilde (680), St Edmund of East Anglia (869), St Edward the Martyr (879), St Olaf of Sweden (950), St Olaf of Norway (1030).

The list of saints is immense. There are some ten thousand names of saints of Western Europe, martyrs and confessors, men and women, internationally-venerated and only locally-venerated, some with highly detailed lives, others little more than names. Forty-five years ago we began work on the Saints of England, despite the lack of any encouragement. Then thirty-five years ago we began work on the Saints of what is now France. However, that work was interrupted by the negativity of the then Exarchate in Paris and other concerns, one of which was work on the Saints of Iberia twenty-five years ago. That work helped lead to their recent adoption into a feast of the Diocese of Iberia under Archbishop Nestor. Now with a real Russian Exarchate for Western Europe in Paris, we will be turning our attention back to the Saints of what is now France.

Centralism and Autocephalism: Two False Models of the Church

There was a time when the Orthodox Church consisted of five, and then four Patriarchates, as well as autocephalous Churches in Cyprus and Georgia. Yet today there are as many as fourteen (and some claim fifteen) Independent (Autocephalous) Churches. And most of them are small and some of them are very small indeed. This profusion of autocephalies over the last 200 years is seen as a movement towards Protestant-style nationalism, as with ‘the Church of England’, ‘the Church of Sweden’, ‘the Church of Norway’ etc. On the other hand, today there is a desire by many in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, one of the smallest Churches, to gather all of the Local Churches together, following their model of Roman Catholicism. What is the Orthodox view, between these competing centrifugal and centripetal theories?

It is clear that there can be no such thing as a Church with universal jurisdiction, which is the Papal aberration and its false theology. Any such organization will inevitably fall to the thirst for power and imperialist corruption, precisely as we can see down the centuries in Roman Catholicism since 1054, when it was first invented. This is where the contemporary Phanariot imperialism of Constantinople is wrong and will never succeed. On the other hand, some sort of European tribalism, according to which there should be a national Church for each small tribe living on the Western tip of Eurasia also seems absurd. All of ex-Catholic/ex-Protestant Western Europe forms a very similar cultural area and suffers very similar conditions. Why should each small ethnic sub-group have its own national Church there?

This is the sense of the present Exarchate of Western Europe of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose destiny is to become the single Local Church of Western Europe, replacing the old Roman Orthodox Patriarchate. It should one day include all of ex-Catholic and ex-Protestant Europe, including Germany and all the Nordic countries, together, naturally, with Finland, and possibly with Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Lands and Slovakia. Each country could then well develop into a Metropolia with a Synod of bishops, but not into an individual Church, similar to the situation in the Baltic States. This would mean that the present Churches of Poland and Czechoslovakia would give up their politically-motivated autocephalies, which is a possibility.

At the very least, there has to be one Patriarchal Church per Continent. Certainly, there should be one Church for North America, one for Latin America, one for Oceania and one for Africa – as there already is with the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Those who live on each of these Continents surely have so much in common that there would seem to be no need for national or Autocephalous Churches for each country on them. This would mean four Autocephalous-Continental Churches. The problem comes with Eurasia, which is essentially one huge Continent, with over 54 million square kilometres (just over three million forming Western Europe), larger than North America, South America and Oceania put together and nearly twice the size of Africa. Here there are so many cultures that there has to be more than one Local Church.

We have already spoken of one Church for ex-Catholic/ex-Protestant Europe. However, there would also need to be a Church for Balkan Europe, perhaps called the Church of Constantinople (but centred perhaps in Thessaloniki, the city of the Apostles of the Slavs, so without Greek racism or phyletism). This would unite the present six Autocephalous Churches of Romania, Pech (Serbia and all the South Slav Lands), Greece, Constantinople, Bulgaria and Albania into one. Clearly, the Eurasian Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, covering one seventh of the Earth’s surface, would remain Autocephalous. The Arab-speaking Patriarchate of Antioch, still little for the moment, would have to take on itself the evangelization of the Arab Middle East, overcoming the narrow ethnic barriers of controlling families.

There should be Autocephalous Churches for China and India, once they have grown, as these are huge civilizations, whose populations together number one third of the world’s people. And there should also be a Church for ex-Buddhist/ex-Muslim South-East Asia (hoped for and anticipated by the establishment in 2018 by the Russian Orthodox Church of an Exarchate there). As for the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, though tiny, it must remain as the Mother-Church of all. It could also take into itself the Churches of Georgia and Cyprus, which would help internationalize it, as must happen if the Patriarchate of Jerusalem is to be taken seriously once more. This would make Twelve Autocephalous, Patriarchal Churches in all. Would this not be enough for the long-awaited evangelization of the world?