Dmitry Vladimirovich Dolgushin,
Doctor of Philology, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“Maybe This is the Last Time I Talk to You…”: Sermons and Letters from Archpriest Gerasim Pavsky to Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-2-13
The article introduces into scientific circulation new materials related to the activities of one of the outstanding Russian church leaders of the first half of the 19th century – Archpriest Gerasim Pavsky. Being an outstanding biblical scholar, linguist, teacher, in 1826 he was appointed a teacher of the law and confessor of the heir to the throne, the future Emperor Alexander ΙΙ and performed these duties until his forced resignation in 1835. Despite the fact that publications about Pavsky began to appear soon after his death, many episodes of his biography are still not really studied, and many aspects of his worldview remain unidentified and unclear. One of the main reasons for this situation is a limited source base. And today, papers about Pavsky, as a rule, continue to rely on the corpus of sources that was introduced into scientific circulation in the second half of the 19th century. Meanwhile, the state of the archives allows it to be expanded quite significantly, including in the part related to Pavsky’s teaching activities at court. This is intended to be facilitated by the materials published in the article, preserved in the personal fond of Alexander II in the State Archives of the Russian Federation. They represent five autographs of Pavsky. Three of them belong to 1827–1828 and contain the texts of “conversations” – sermons of Pavsky to the heir to the throne, the other two are letters of Pavsky to the heir, written in 1835 (this year was dramatic for him, he was forced to leave his student). The extracurricular conversations with students were part of the responsibilities of teachers in Russia at that time. The order of the Main Board of Schools dated April 24, 1819 made it obligatory for teachers of the Law of God “on Sundays and holidays before mass” to read to the students “explanations of the Gospel”. Pavsky followed this practice, which was entrenched in pedagogical everyday life, and even expanded it: in addition to conversations about the daily Gospel and the Apostle, which he held with the heir every Sunday, during the fast, he arranged conversations about confession, at Christmas and Easter – conversations about the meaning of the celebrated event. There were also discussions on topics not related to the liturgical circle. The texts of conversations were compiled by Pavsky in advance – either in rough or whitewashed – and, probably, were first read, and then (at least in some cases) handed over to the student as a keepsake. A significant part of this kind of texts was published (mainly from rough autographs) in the Collection of the Russian Historical Society by N.I. Barsov, who apparently received them from the editor of Russkaya Starina M.I. Semevsky, to whom they were transferred by the grandson of Pavsky G.A. Orlov. This publication, however, did not include those conversations, the autographs of which were kept not in the home archive of Pavsky, but in the archive of his royal student. They are published in this article with the scientific commentary. The topics of the published instructions of Pavsky are similar to V.A. Zhukovsky’s themes in pedagogical communication with the heir to the throne: the life and work of Alexander Nevsky, the harmonious arrangement of nature, testifying to the wisdom of its Creator, the need for self-observation and moral perfection. The texts of the published letters quite capaciously reflect the circumstances of Pavsky’s resignation and characterize his relationship with the heir to the throne.
Publishing: 28/04/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 22.02.2022
How to cite: Dolgushin D.V. “Maybe This is the Last Time I Talk to You…”: Sermons and Letters from Archpriest Gerasim Pavsky to Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 2 (22), pp. 206–225. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-2-13.pdf]
Links: Issue 2 2022
Keywords: G.P. Pavsky, V.A. Zhukovsky, Alexander II, court pedagogy, tsarist pedagogy, politics of memory, great chain of being, teaching theology in Russia, biblical studies in Russia