GENTLE & BOLD: THE LIFE OF ST TIKHON of MOSCOW

Information on the life of Saint Tikhon Bellavin is still limited in the English language. His story at oca.org provides more detail on his work in America and is cited here only twice. Apart from two other articles, the rest of the information in this article comes from the only biography currently available in English, Jane Swan’s Chosen for His People: A Biography of Patriarch Tikhon (Jordanville: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2015), first published in 1964. This article focuses on details not readily available.

When Russia’s Czar Nicholas II, along with his wife and five children, were executed in a bloody mass shooting in 1918, a group of Christians concerned for the life of Patriarch Tikhon traveled through the night to beg him to escape the country. Tikhon jokingly admonished them for waking him from his sleep, then flatly refused to leave. During those days he would walk in the evening in the garden which had high walls surrounding it. Children would perch there, and Tikhon was always ready to greet his young friends with apples and candy, and they would have long conversations. This anecdote of the future Saint Tikhon was not a stretch nor a well-drawn up piece of propaganda. It reflects the testimony given about him throughout his life as a peaceful and gentle soul who desired no violence or malice for anyone.

And yet, during those same years, he could make pronouncements like the following to the supporters and perpetrators of evil: “Reports reach us daily concerning the astounding and beastly murders of wholly innocent people . . All this fills our hearts with a deep and bitter sorrow and obliges us to turn to such outcasts of the human race with stern words of accusation and warning, in accordance with the command of the holy apostle: “Them that sin reprove in the sight of all, that the rest also may be in fear” (1 Tim. 5:20).

For those church leaders who succumbed to the temptation to participate in the evil regime’s efforts to corrupt the Church, and then repented, Tikhon lovingly forgave them. As the Kontakian we sing says: A gentle manner adorned thee, You showed kindness and compassion to those who repented, You were firm and unbending in confessing the Orthodox faith. The gentle but bold Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin was born and raised in 1865 in a rural village of Russia. Tall and blonde, he proceeded to theological school where his classmates lovingly referred to their friend, so mature for his years, as “bishop” and “patriarch.” During his first year as a priest, the archbishop made Vasily his assistant. The talented priest then taught Moral and Dogmatic Theology at the seminary. The synod made this promising young man a bishop at age 32, stretching by six months the canonical rule of 33 years.

Vasily took as his name Tikhon, the saint from Zadonsk. Tikhon immediately showed success in his city of Kholm by gaining respect from the Catholics and Uniates in his district and at the same time winning many of them over to Orthodoxy. He performed services in churches whenever it was possible, tirelessly traveling on foot or in a humble carriage, meeting after liturgy with family after family until late in the night. When word got out that Tikhon was accessible to anyone who asked, the number of services and family gatherings only increased. After one year, in 1897, the synod announced that Tikhon would be moved to Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. Riots broke out in Kholm. He held a service in each parish of his diocese before leaving. Street fighting occurred to prevent his transfer, and when the train departed, people threw themselves down on the tracks and had to be forcibly removed. His work in Alaska and America flourished.

The number of churches increased four-fold and the American diocese was made an archdiocese. Tikhon became an archbishop at age 40 and was made an honorary U.S. citizen. His popularity continued with Americans after he became patriarch. Author Donald Lowrie traveled to Moscow to interview Tikhon in 1923, and the exchange was included in a book published by the YMCA. He referred to the patriarch as “calm, unhurried, and fearless” in contrast to the many others so fearful under the persecution. The interviewer’s first impressions were “a firm handclasp and kindly eyes with a decided trace of humor and ever a hint of fire in the back of them . . . that, and his beaming smile.” “What is the most urgent need of the Orthodox Church which the Christian world outside can supply?” the YMCA man asked the patriarch. “Send us Bibles,” he replied. “Never before in history has there been such a hunger for the Scripture in the Russian people . . . and we have no Bibles to give them,” he noted. “Our presses have been confiscated.”

Tikhon’s accessibility was also noted. “It is a common belief that anyone, be he bishop or priest or the most obscure layman, who has real need of his advice or decision, may get to see the Patriarch.” In contrast, Lowrie also noted the fierce side of Tikhon with his anathemas and public confrontations: “Who can publish such sentences in the face of powerful enemies against whom he has not the slightest physical defense?” In 1907, Tikhon was transferred from America to the Russian city of Yaroslavl. His popularity continued in Yaroslavl, as he would agree to serve in even the smallest of village parishes. He climbed the church belfries to ring the bells. He maintained “the same friendly manner, usually speaking kindly and always ready with a joke.” Tikhon was then transferred to Vilnius. In Yaroslavl, the people did not riot as they did in Kholm, but rather made him an honorary citizen, the first time a bishop ever received such an honor. While in Vilnius, the First World War commenced, and Tikhon traveled to the front lines and conducted services for soldiers while under bombardment. He was given a military award for distinguished service.

When elections took place for a new Metropolitan of Moscow, the selection of Tikhon was a shock to many, as he was up to that point a simple bishop in rural Russia and supposedly unknown in the city. As was his practice, the new metropolitan immediately began visiting every possible parish and family. At this same time, the political situation was collapsing. Bishops and priests were being murdered.

A procession of clergy and layman in three different cities was cut down by machine gunners. Not long after, Tikhon was made Patriarch of Russia in 1917, the highest ecclesiastical office in the land. But when he accepted the position, Tikhon foresaw the coming tragedies and said “lamentations, mourning, and woe,” quoting the Prophet Ezekiel after he ate a tasty scroll that became bitter to his stomach. During this period, Tikhon was under tremendous pressure to help the military of the “White Russians,” who supported the Czar over the “Red Russian” Bolsheviks, atheists who were outlawing Christianity and murdering Christians. But he refused to do so, while also refusing to stop the White Russians from following their conscience. The “establishment of any particular form of government is not the work of the Church, but of the people themselves,” he pronounced. Tikhon was less concerned about the collapsing political situation, which could only lead to physical death, and far more concerned with the growing movement within the Church to “reform” and “restore” it, and ultimately destroy the soul. Eventually to be known as the Living Church, this progressive movement that aligned with the Bolsheviks championed, among other adaptations, marriage for bishops, marriage for priests after ordination, and even marriage for monastics. Eventually all monasticism was condemned by the Living Church and the Bolsheviks closed all city monasteries.

When the Bolsheviks unlawfully imprisoned the Czar in Yekaterinburg, the Living Church leaders condemned Tikhon for sending a patriarchal blessing, along with blessed bread, to the royal family, charging the patriarch with “counter-revolutionary activity,” an accusation often leading to execution. Days later, after the royal family had been shot and murdered, friends came to swift Tikhon away from trouble, but he refused, saying such an action would only play into the hands of the enemies of the Church. Those with him that night said they “were awed by his peace of mind.” This attitude from Tikhon came not long after had been attacked in his carriage by an insane woman who knifed him several times as he was leaving Christ the Savior Cathedral. But the patriarch was wearing two thick robes that day and only received a small wound.

Among the many horrors endured by Tikhon, he was put on trial to testify regarding 18 of his fellow clergymen, pronounced guilty for refusing to sell the instruments of the eucharist so the proceeds could help the poor. The times were indeed terrible, as famine and related illnesses killed as many as five million in Russia and cannibalism was not uncommon. Tikhon had insisted that, while land and buildings and other non-sacred church property could be sold, those items sacred to the altar could not. He reminded the accusers that the Church would willingly donate money for the value of the instruments, but the government authorities refused the money. The Bolsheviks assured him his 18 men would be executed. According to an eye-witness, “The elder cast a kind and loving glance at the ministers of the altar and said clearly and firmly: ‘I have always said, both to the investigative authorities and to all the people, that in this I alone am guilty. These are merely my army of Christ, which is obediently carrying out the orders of the leader given it by God.’ . . . Here the voice of the Patriarch rose and was audible in all corners of the immense hall; and he himself seemed to grow when, turning to the accused, he raised his hand and blessed them, loudly and distinctly saying: ‘I bless the faithful servants of the Lord Jesus Christ to suffer and die for Him.’

The accused fell to their knees.” When brought out for their executions, the 18 clergymen continually shouted “Christ is Risen!” and the large crowd returned with, “Indeed, He is risen!” Hundreds of bishops and thousands of priests were eventually executed. Tikhon was spared, as the Bolsheviks both feared the reaction of the people and hoped to compromise the patriarch for their ends. Tikhon said martyrdom would have been much easier. With so many clergy murdered, and with Tikhon’s refusal to publicly back the White Russian army or any political movement, the patriarch placed himself in a position to be hated on all sides. With apparently no sense of his future exaltation as a saint in the church, Tikhon said: “Let my name perish in history, only that the Church might live.” And yet his refusal to involve the Church in politics did not place him in a position to win favor with the Bolsheviks, whom he squarely condemned in a formal anathema early in his rule as Patriarch: “The humble Tikhon: “. . . The commands of Christ regarding the love of neighbors are forgotten and trampled upon . . . Recall yourselves, ye senseless, and cease your bloody deeds. For what you are doing is not only a cruel deed; it is in truth a satanic act, for which you will suffer the fire of Gehenna in the life to come, beyond the grave, and the terrible curses of posterity in this present, earthly life.” “. . . By the authority given to us by God, we forbid you to approach the Mysteries of Christ and anathematize you . . . I adjure all of you who are faithful children of the Orthodox Church, not to commune with such outcasts of the human race in any manner whatsoever: “Cast out the wicked from among you” (1 Cor. 5:13). “. . .

The enemies of the Church seize rule over her property by force of death- dealing weapons; but you, rise to oppose them with the strength of your faith, with your own nationwide outcry which would stop those senseless people and would show them that they have no right to call themselves protagonists of the people’s welfare . . . for they are directly against the conscience of the people. “And if it should be necessary to suffer on behalf of the cause of Christ, we invite you, beloved children of the Church, to suffer along with us in accordance with the words of the holy apostle: ‘Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?’” (Rom. 8:35). “. . . join, voluntarily, not by force, the ranks of spiritual fighters, who will oppose the external violence with the force of their genuine spirituality; we then positively affirm that the enemies of the Church of Christ shall be shamed and shall be dispersed by the might of the cross of Christ, for the promise of the divine cross-bearer is immutable: ‘I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’” (Matt. 16:18). —Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Jan. 19, 1918.

Clearly confronting the Bolsheviks with great courage, Tikhon was often placed in the unpopular position to forbid support of their opposition. Even when a people’s army of 25,000 emerged to protect the relics of Saint Sergius from desecration by the Bolsheviks, Tikhon could not bless the army and instead counseled peace at all costs. Much of the rest of Tikhon’s life, until his death in 1925, involved his house imprisonment at the Donskoy Monastery, where he received regular visits from his psychological torturers. The day before his arrest, an attendant with him at a service asked him about his interrogators. “They were very strict today,” he said. “So what will happen to you?” “They promised to cut off my little head,” he answered with a smile. But then he whispered: “Do not provoke them.” He was arrested the following day.

His health began to fail and the always peaceful and calm patriarch suffered “fainting spells” and “intense trembling.” One Bolshevik agent insisted again and again he sign a document to be sent to Britain’s Archbishop of Canterbury assuring the Western world there was no persecution of Christians in Russia. Tikhon refused. Reports say the very mention of the agent’s name, Tuchkov, caused the patriarch to tremble, but he always agreed to see him, always by himself, taking on the burden alone. When Tikhon was ultimately hospitalized, the doctors described him as “an old, gray, skinny man, who was highly nervous but never complained.” According to biographer Jane Swan, “when dressed in his patriarchal garments, the patriarch made an imposing picture, but in bed with only the hospital nightclothes, he became a small shrunken old man.”

Visitors were kept out for time but “soon the patriarch was exchanging jokes with the doctors, and news of his improvement traveled outside the hospital. At once, Tuchkov, Tikhon’s particular [secret police] torturer, appeared. At first Dr. Bakunna was able to stave him off, but by the third week, the agent began making long calls on the patriarch, always being closeted with him alone.” Tuchkov “kept trying to persuade him to sign the document turning the Church into a state church, to retire, and to live in the south of Russia for his health. [A] second agent would attempt to bribe the patriarch with promises of increased privileges for the church, cancellation of prison sentences for churchmen, and so on, and when that failed, the agent would make open threats.

After each interview, Tikhon would be completely exhausted and show signs of nervousness and trembling . . . but on hearing about a woman patient in the same hospital who had become hysterical before an operation, insisted on rising and going to her with prayers and words of comfort.” On March 25, 1925, the patriarch asked for morphine for his pain. At 10 pm he told a nurse that “the night would be long, long, dark, dark.” But soon after the doctor told him he was dying. “What time is it?” he asked. “11:45 p.m.” “Thank God,” the patriarch replied and began to cross himself saying “Glory to Thee O God, Glory to Thee O God, Glory . . .”—and then he died. Over 150,000 gathered for the repose of Patriarch Tikhon Bellavin. A line of people over a mile long, four abreast, waited outside to pay their respects. “Approximately 100 to 120 people passed by every minute, and the procession continued until the last person passed the coffin.”

—Compiled by Dean W. Arnold for the Patronal Feast of St. Tikhon Mission, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Oct. 12, 2019.