Skoptsy

A red-hot metal rod is pressed against the root of the reproductive organ with ferocious determination. Burning criminal pain pierces and breaks the body, the painful shock neutralizes the consciousness of the adept, blood gushes down the thighs like a fountain... So Lieutenant Selivanov signed his insane fanaticism with a voluntary gesture. The formula of sin is indicated in the Scriptures: "... the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16). "In order to free oneself from 'babbling', one must be castrate," Selivanov declared, pointing to a passage from Matt. 19:12. Selivanov's followers were discovered in Russia in 1772, and he himself was expelled from the Khlystov ship for this act and soon headed for the Tula province. There he preaches "from the roof" about a certain "fiery baptism" to which he subjected himself, "washing away the babble of sin." In Tula, Selivanov soon gained followers, who by 1775 were already 60 people. Children were also castrated with the consent of their parents. "Teachers" often, infecting their followers with this idea, castrated them by getting them drunk or turning off their consciousness with some other potion. A terrible, torn scream rushed to the heights of light and sorrow as the mind returned to the desecrated body, but nothing could be corrected. And the capture of the "teacher" began by the crippled adept who saw the light, where the first were simply killed. History is replete with similar phenomena in moments of spiritual upheaval. Many centuries have passed, and even today it is still terrible to read about the zeal of the gals-eunuchs, when they whirl in a frenzied dance, scourge until they bleed, until they fall down in exhaustion. Many, who have come only to look at the spectacle, become infected with madness, suddenly start dancing themselves and, grabbing one of the swords lying right there at the ready, castrate themselves... The fanatical character of the sect is determined by a certain "great" ("royal") and "small" seals. With the "royal" seal, both the sexual organ ("the key of the abyss") and the testicles ("the gates of hell") are removed, and with the "small" seal, only the scrotum is removed. In women, the clitoris and sometimes the breasts are removed. In 1775, an investigation was carried out in the case of the eunuchs, and soon there followed harsh sanctions by state officials against fanatics. Selivanov went into exile in Siberia, his active follower Shilov - in Riga. The heresy gave a powerful growth in the Orel, Kaluga, Tambov, and Tula provinces. Selivanov flees from Irkutsk and secretly appears in Moscow. He was soon arrested, and Tsar Paul I, having learned about the incident, demanded that Selivanov be personally introduced to him. By his order, an audience tete-a-tete took place, after which the tsar proposed to lock the criminal fanatic in a psychiatric hospital for life, which was done. However, after the death of Paul I, the Skoptsy actively established their own communities in Russia – "ships", and only from 1819 the authorities again really faced the problem of sectarianism of this orientation, when the soldiers – the foundation of any power, the intelligentsia, the inhabitants who fell under the influence of the "ship" – were castrated. Selivanov was subjected to church admonition, but, as is known, there was no way back for him. Exile to the Suzdal monastery followed, which became a detonator for the followers of the great martyr to turn him into a great martyr. Pilgrims from the sectarians considered it a great honor to get their idol's nails, hair, and bread scraps in Suzdal. The most drastic measures against the eunuchs were taken by Tsar Nicholas II, declaring them the most "harmful" sect. For one suspicion of belonging to the Skoptsy, they were tried. Sectarians fled to Romania and Turkey, settling en masse in Bucharest, Iasi, and Izmail. In 1871, a new trend arose among them, the so-called "New-Skopsky movement". On the whole, having transformed and adapted to the conditions of survival in any state with its laws, the leader of the Novoskopje movement, Kuzma Lisitsin, pointed out the priority of the moral castration of the heart over the carnal castration. And the latter, he asserted, could be done on the deathbed at an old age, which the Lord would count as a lawful castration. At the same time, Lisitsin even pointed to many Russian princes and nobles, satiated with an excess of sins of various kinds, who took schema on their deathbeds... He was believed, and a split occurred among Selivanov's supporters. The doctrinal feature of the eunuchs is as follows. Adam and Eve were created with ethereal bodies that had no sexual characteristics. As a result of disobedience, God puts seals on them – these distinctive features that make the first people carnal, and since the presence of these signs is the seal of sin, it must be destroyed. Encirclement among them is called "whitening" and "new baptism." They have a particularly revered and Orthodox saint - the martyr Moses Ugrin. Later, the sectarians would again break up into talks—Kutkintsy, Prokolysh, Kruchenyki, where their very name testifies to the fact that the sectarian interpretation appeals to the practical form of liberation from carnal bonds. In our time, materials about their followers who preserved the teaching in Siberia and the Far East occasionally appear in the press. But on the whole, of course, there is no need to talk about the mass nature of the sect, since such a form of "baptism" will certainly scare away even a lover of religious exoticism. It would be more correct to say that in our time, eunuchs are the lot of curious historical antiques and are of interest only to a narrow circle of specialists.

About Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy received from God a great talent for artistic perception and reflection of the world, which allowed him to write the historical literary canvas "War and Peace", the psychological drama "Anna Karenina", and at the end of the 70s he began the atheistic treatise "Confession" and ended his anti-church activity with the philosophical opus "Critique of Dogmatic Theology". As is known, children's faith is the foundation on which all subsequent religious life of a person is based. And Christ Himself spoke about this: "... Let the little children go, and forbid them not to come to me..." (Matt. 19:14). Tolstoy, in his own words, lost this childish faith forever by the age of 16, turning into a nihilist. He wrote: "... I have lived in the world for 55 years and with the exception of... 15 childhood years, 35 years I lived as a nihilist, in the sense of the absence of any faith." Having reached the point of complete spiritual devastation and being on the verge of suicide, Tolstoy tried to mechanically perform the external rites of the Orthodox Church. However, this was self-deception, because all the rituals took place in his absence of faith in God. Therefore, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that traditional Orthodoxy is a lie. Having lost faith in a personal God, Tolstoy began to look for "spiritual crutches", which became for him the French philosopher (in our textbooks – "enlightener") J.-J. Rousseau, who was an open opponent of Christianity in general. Rousseau's ideas had a decisive influence on the entire subsequent life of Tolstoy. He wrote: "Rousseau was my teacher from the age of 15"; during these years, he wore a medallion with a portrait of Rousseau around his neck instead of a pectoral cross. "Many of his pages are so close to me that it seems to me that I wrote them myself...," Tolstoy admitted, "quite recently (in 1905; Tolstoy is 77 years old), I happened to read some of his works, and I experienced the same feeling of elevation and satisfaction that I experienced when I read him in my first youth." But could such a powerful talent be directed towards the destruction of strongholds? Could the enemy of the human race use his writing skills to destroy shrines? Yes, he could. Then the question arises, when did Tolstoy get this "ally"? The first moment of possession can be attributed to a biographical fact. As a 27-year-old officer, being near Sevastopol, one day after a frenzy of night revelry and a major loss, Tolstoy recalls in his "Diary": "... The conversation about divinity and faith led me to a great, enormous thought, the realization of which I feel capable of devoting my life. This thought is the foundation of a new religion of Christ, but purified of faith and mystery, a practical religion, which does not promise future bliss, but gives bliss on earth." Tolstoy devoted the entire second half of his life to this proud idea (until the end of the 70s until his death in 1910). In 1899, the novel "Resurrection" was published in the magazine "Niva". Direct, rude and blasphemous attacks on the Orthodox Church took place in chapters 39 and 40. It is too offensive for the Orthodox feeling to quote these passages from the novel, so it is better to omit them. The cup of patience of the Orthodox Church was overflowing, and the question arose of excommunicating the heretic writer from it. On February 20-22, 1901, a special decision of the Holy Synod was made. We quote verbatim: "The Holy Synod, in its concern for the children of the Orthodox Church for their protection from destructive temptation and for the salvation of those who err, having a judgment on Count Leo Tolstoy and his anti-Christian and anti-church false teaching, considered it opportune, in preventing the violation of the peace of the Church, to publish through the publication in the Tserkovnye Vedomosti the following Epistle: "By the grace of God. The Holy All-Russian Synod to the faithful children of the Orthodox Catholic Greek-Russian Church, rejoice in the Lord." We beseech you, brethren, to guard yourselves from those who stir up strife and strife, except the doctrine which ye shall learn, and turn away from them (Rom. 16:17). From the beginning, the Church of Christ endured the blasphemy and attacks of numerous heretics and false teachers, who sought to overthrow it and shake in its essential foundations those who were based on faith in Christ, the Son of the Living God. But all the powers of hell, according to the promise of the Lord, could not prevail against the Holy Church, which will remain invincible forever. And in our days, by God's permission, a new false teacher, Count Leo Tolstoy, has appeared.

Count Tolstoy preaches all this continuously, in word and in writing, to the temptation and horror of the entire Orthodox world, and in this way, undisguisedly, but clearly before all, consciously and deliberately denied himself from all communion with the Orthodox Church. The attempts that came to his senses were unsuccessful. For this reason the Church does not consider him to be her member, and cannot do so until he repents and restores his communion with her. Now he testifies to this before the whole Church for the affirmation of the rights of those who stand and for the enlightenment of those who have gone astray, and especially to the new admonition of Count L. Tolstoy himself. Many of his neighbors, who keep the faith, are sorrowful that at the end of his days he remains without faith in God and the Lord our Savior, having renounced blessings and prayers and all communion with it. Therefore, bearing witness to his falling away from the Church, praying together and praying, that the Lord grant him repentance to the understanding of the truth (2 Tim. 2:25). We pray, O merciful Lord, do not desire the death of sinners, hear and have mercy on him, and turn him to Thy holy Church. Amen." The original was signed by: Humble Anthony, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga. Humble Theognost, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia. Humble Vladimir, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna. Humble Jerome, Archbishop of Kholm and Warsaw, Humble Jacob, Bishop of Kishinev and Khotyn. Humble Boris, Bishop. Humble Markel, bishop. At first, Tolstoy did not want to respond to the above-mentioned decision of the Synod, but then, on April 4, 1901, he decided to respond. His "answer to the Synod" was widely known at that time and there is no need to quote it in full. We will cite only those passages where the writer denounces himself: "The fact that I reject the incomprehensible Trinity, which has no meaning in our time, the fable of the fall of the first man... blasphemous (?) story about God, born of a Virgin, who redeemed the human race, then this is quite just. It is also said that I reject all sacraments. This is absolutely fair. I believe that the will of God is most clearly and understandably expressed in the teaching of the man Christ, whom I consider the greatest blasphemy to understand by God and to pray to. Yes, I really renounced the Church, ceased to perform its rites, and wrote in my will to my relatives that when I die, they would not allow church ministers to see me, and that my dead body would be removed as soon as possible, without any incantations or prayers over it, as one removes a disgusting and unnecessary thing, so that it does not interfere with the living." The sister of the famous Russian philosopher Professor L.M. Lopatin, recalling her conversation with Tolstoy's sister, nun Maria, conveys the characteristic words of this mother about her beloved brother: "What kind of person was Lyovochka? Absolutely wonderful! And how interesting he wrote! But now, as I sit down to my interpretations of the Gospel, I have no strength! True, there has always been a demon in him...", and Lopatina adds on her own behalf: "I have never doubted it" (Ivan Bunin. "The Liberation of Tolstoy". Paris, 1937. P. 125). In response to the decree of the Holy Synod. of the Synod on the excommunication of Leo Tolstoy, his wife Sophia Andreevna Tolstaya wrote a harsh ill-considered letter to the Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Anthony of St. Petersburg, who was the first present in the Synod. On March 24, 1901, in No. 17 of Tserkovnye Vedomosti, published under the auspices of the Holy Synod, a letter from Countess S.A. Tolstoy and the Metropolitan's reply were published. Both of these letters are bibliographic rarities these days, so we will cite them in full in order.

Letter to S.A. Tolstaya:

"Your Eminence! Having read yesterday in the newspapers the cruel decree of the Synod on the excommunication of my husband, Count Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, and seeing your signature among the pastors of the Church, I could not remain completely indifferent to this. My sorrowful indignation has no bounds. And not from the point of view that my husband will die spiritually from this paper: this is not the work of people, but the work of God. From a religious point of view, the life of the human soul is known to no one except God and, fortunately, is not subject to it. But from the point of view of the Church to which I belong and from which I will never depart, which was created by Christ to bless in the name of God all the most significant moments of human life: birth, marriages, death, sorrows and joys of people... which must loudly proclaim the law of love, forgiveness, love for enemies who hate us, pray for everything – from this point of view, the order of the Synod is incomprehensible to me. It will evoke sympathy (except for the Moscow Vedomosti), and indignation among people and great love and sympathy for Leo Tolstoy. We have already received such statements — and there will be no end to them — from the whole world. I cannot help but mention the grief I experienced from the senselessness of which I had heard earlier, namely, the secret order of the Synod that priests should not perform the funeral service in the church of Leo Nikolaevich in the event of his death. Who do they want to punish? — a deceased person who no longer feels anything, or those around him, believers and people close to him? If this is a threat, then to whom and what? Is it possible that in order to bury my husband and pray for him in church, I will not find either such a decent priest who will not be afraid of people before the real God of love, or a dishonest one, whom I will bribe for this purpose with a lot of money? But I don't need that. For me, the Church is an abstract concept, and I recognize as its ministers only those who truly understand the meaning of the Church. If we recognize as the Church people who dare to violate the higher law – the love of Christ – by their malice, then all of us, true believers and attending the Church, would have left it long ago.

It is easy to refute my words with hypocritical arguments. But a deep understanding of the truth and people's real intentions will not deceive anyone. February 26, 1901 Countess Sophia Tolstaya. This letter is widely known. It was also cited by Alexandra Tolstaya, Tolstoy's daughter, in her two-volume work "The Father", ed. Chekhov, New York, 1953 And the wise, calm, correct, profound, and spiritually tactful answer of Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky) is usually not given anywhere. Alexandra Lvovna did not bring him either. This lies on her conscience. It is necessary to listen to the other side, i.e. the judgment of the Orthodox Church through the mouth of its First Hierarch. Therefore, we cite the answer of Metropolitan Anthony. "Gracious Empress, Countess Sophia Andreevna! Not what the Synod did when it announced your husband's falling away from the Church, but what he did to himself by renouncing faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, our Redeemer and Savior. It was to this renunciation that your sorrowful indignation should have been poured out long ago. And it is not from a scrap of printed paper, of course, that your husband dies, but from the fact that he has turned away from the Source of eternal life. For a Christian, life is inconceivable without Christ, according to Whom "he who believes in Him has eternal life and passes from death to life, but he who does not believe will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him" (John 3:15-16; 36:5-24), and therefore only one can say about the one who denies Christ that he has passed from life to death. This is the death of your husband, but he alone is to blame for this death, and no one else.

And therefore, from the point of view of this Church, the location of the Synod is quite comprehensible, understandable and clear, like God's day. And the law of love and forgiveness is not violated by this in the least. God's love is infinite, but it does not forgive everyone and not for everything. "Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not forgiven, neither in this life nor in the life to come" (Matt. 12:32). The Lord always seeks with His love, but sometimes a person does not want to meet this love and flees from the face of God, and therefore perishes. Christ prayed on the cross for His enemies, but in His high-priestly prayer He uttered a word bitter for His love, that "the son of perdition is lost" (John 17:12). Of your husband, while he is alive, it cannot yet be said that he is dead, but the perfect truth has been said of him, that he has fallen away from the Church and is not a member of it until he repents and reunites with it. In its epistle, speaking of this, the Synod testified only to existing facts, and therefore only those who do not understand what they are doing can be indignant at it. You receive expressions of sympathy from all over the world. I am not surprised at this, but I think you have nothing to console yourself with. There is the glory of man and the glory of God. "The glory of man is like a flower on the grass: the grass is withered, and its flower is gone; but the word of the Lord endures forever" (1 Pet. 1:24-25). When last year the newspapers carried the news of the count's illness, the question arose for the clergy in all its force: should he, who had fallen away from the faith and the Church, be honored with a Christian burial and prayers? Appeals to the Synod followed, and in the guidance of the clergy it secretly gave and could give only one answer: it should not be if he dies without restoring his communion with the Church. There is no threat to anyone here, and there could be no other answer. And I do not think that there is any priest, even a dishonest one, who would dare to perform a Christian burial on a count, and even if he performed such a burial on an unbeliever, it would be a criminal profanation of the rite. And why do violence to your husband? After all, without a doubt, he himself does not want to perform a Christian burial over him. Since you, a living person, want to consider yourself a member of the Church, and it is really a union of living rational beings in the name of the Living God, then your statement that the Church is an abstract concept for you falls by itself. And in vain do you reproach the servants of the Church for malice and violation of the higher law of love, commanded by Christ. There is no violation of this law in the Synodal Act. This, on the contrary, is an act of love; The pastors of the Church are ordained by the Lord, and they themselves proudly, as you say, have acknowledged themselves at the head of it. Diamond mitres and stars are worn, but this is not essential in their ministry. They remained pastors, dressed and in rags, persecuted and persecuted, and will remain so forever, even if they are blasphemed and called contemptuous words. In conclusion, I apologize for not answering you right away. I waited for the first sharp outburst of your grief to pass. God bless you and protect you, and have mercy on your count, your husband! Anthony, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg. A year after his excommunication (1902), Tolstoy wrote the legend "The Destruction and Restoration of Hell." And then in the same year the even more mocking and blasphemous "Appeal to the Clergy". Fr. John of Kronstadt responded to this "Appeal." "Tolstoy thinks, speaks and writes on the basis of godlessness and complete denial of the saint who bears the seal of God's revelation. Pride, self-conceit, self-deification, contempt for God Himself and the Church — this is its primary foundation; He has no other grounds. Before us is a sophist and ignorant of the truths of the faith, who has not experienced the saving faith of Christ, and he can easily distract from the true faith and lead into pernicious unbelief... Under the vivid impression of excommunication from the Church, he decided to throw mud at it as much as possible, and he conveys all the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and distorted events in a mocking tone, undermining in those who read all respect for the Holy Scriptures; over everything that is dear to a Christian, which he has been accustomed to look at since childhood with deep reverence and love, like the Word of God... He mocks impudently. Tolstoy transfers his insults to the clergy, to the Church, to the Holy Scriptures and to the Lord Himself, and says: "... whether there was such a harmful book in the world, which has done so much evil, as the book of the Old and New Testaments." This is directly related to Tolstoy's works, it was not more harmful than them. The Renans, the Büchners, the Schopenhauers, the Voltaires are nothing in comparison with our godless Russian Tolstoy. Tolstoy's writing in the "Conversion" from the Christian point of view is only madness" ("Father of Kronstadt and Count Leo Tolstoy", Jordanville, 1960). Only the leader of the proletarian revolution, who, by the way, immediately saw in the heretic Tolstoy "the mirror of the Russian revolution," can compete in such attacks against the Church and her followers, in mockery of the sacred. On November 7, 1910, at 7:10 a.m., Hegumen Varsonofy telegraphed to Bishop Veniamin of Kaluga: "Count Tolstoy has died... He died without repentance. I was not invited." When Elder Barsanuphius was asked by correspondents for an interview on the occasion of the death of Count Tolstoy, he replied: "Here is my interview: although he is a Leo, he could not break the rings of the chain with which Satan had bound him."

What is the mistake and tragedy of the Russian writer?

In the long history of literature, no writer has been able to surpass Leo Tolstoy in his ability to depict the truth of the world as it is. His works are of the greatest importance, in them one can feel the inexorable skill in conveying the unadorned reality of every day of life. How real are the feelings and impulses of Anna Karenina in her sincere love for Vronsky, or the dignity and honor of Russian officers in War and Peace! But again, it is only necessary to return to the religious and philosophical work of the writer, then in his essays, explanations to the Gospel and treatises, one can trace the tossing and turning of a broad rebellious mind, which cannot find peace in anything and fix its gaze on anything. The ideals of the Gospel that Tolstoy encountered beckoned him like fire, and his inability to live up to these high principles eventually consumed all the writer's spiritual and physical strength. Like a salmon going to spawn, it went against the tide all its life and eventually died of moral exhaustion. The writer literally sought to follow the teachings of Jesus, and this desire was so strong that members of his family often raised murmurs because it directly affected their interests. For example, after reading the Gospel appeal to the rich man, Tolstoy wanted to free his serfs, renounce the copyright to the publication, and transfer the estate to the peasant community. His wife Sofia Andreevna had the greatest difficulty in convincing her husband of the inadmissibility of such a decision, and even then she was forced to hire a detachment of armed Chechens to guard the estate. Lev Nikolayevich continued to walk in peasant clothes, ploughed the land with a plow, wove bast shoes, refused hunting, meat, eggs, wine and tobacco, did not wear leather clothes. He compiled for himself "Rules for the development of moral willpower, lofty feelings and the elimination of base ones". However, he was never able to achieve the self-discipline he had set out for himself. More than once, Tolstoy, without shame, publicly in front of guests solemnly took a vow of conjugal abstinence and even divided bedrooms, but he could not hold out in this vow for long, because of which he felt burning shame in front of his loved ones. (Sofia Andreevna was pregnant from her husband 16 times.) Tolstoy wrote his last novel, Resurrection, in support of the Doukhobors. The entire fee was transferred to pay for their emigration to Canada. Tolstoy's philosophy of non-resistance to evil by violence, which greatly interested the writer, and had its roots in the Sermon on the Mount, had a noticeable influence on Mahatma Gandhi, M. Luther King and other major political figures. And yet Tolstoy's search for holiness ended in disappointment. He failed to put into practice what he himself preached. His wife, Sophia, wrote about this: "There is little true warmth in him; His kindness does not come from the heart, but from principles." She recalls that Lyova, gritting his teeth, could bring a tub of cucumbers to a peasant, but not once in the 32 years of their married life did he bring his child or her a glass of water. Attempts to passionately advance towards perfection did not lead the writer to peace and tranquility. He was proud even in his apparent humility. He refused the Church, the sacraments, and Communion. He challenged its hierarchical structure, forgetting that if someone, knowing the way home, walks along it drunk, then this path will not become less true and correct because the person going home staggers from side to side. Until his death, his diaries and letters preserve the writer's return to the sad theme of failure, which reveals the abyss between the ideals of the Gospel and his personal life. Tolstoy's biographer A.N. Wilson notes that the writer suffered from "a fundamental theological inability to understand the meaning of the Divine Incarnation; his religion was entirely based on law and not grace, was a scheme for the improvement of human nature, and not an insight from the Lord descending into the fallen world." Hence his great digression, as a logical finality, the denial of His Resurrection from the dead, which brought to naught all of Tolstoy's Christianity, for "if Christ is not risen, then your faith is in vain." Graceless holiness is graceless because it is built on the rationalistic principle of improving human nature. Tolstoy seemed to legally substantiate and sanction such a "good". The absolute nightmare of communism is precisely that it wants to forcibly organize good, it wants to force virtue. All reactionary and revolutionary inquisitors, from Torquemado to Robespierre and Dzerzhinsky, considered themselves to be the bearers of absolute good (i.e., holiness, but not Divine). They killed in the name of good, sincerely considering it the right decision. Man is above the Sabbath. Man is above abstract good. This is the essence of grace-filled holiness, completely polar to Tolstoy's morality.

Bogorodichny Center

The history of the emergence of ecclesiological heresies can be divided into three periods. In the first period, divisive tendencies prevailed, when independent heretical societies were formed, which considered themselves to be the Church, and all others to have fallen away from it. (This process continues in the West even now.) At the second stage, unifying tendencies began to prevail in Christianity, where one wing of this movement called for the external unification of all confessions, ignoring all dividing factors, and the other wing called for unification on an internal basis. At the beginning of the 20th century, there appeared a teaching about a new coming Universal Church, the Church of the so-called Third Testament and the approaching era of the Holy Spirit. In the last third of the 20th century, this teaching embraced a number of sectarian groups. Even some of those who officially called themselves "Orthodox" began to declare that a "new Pentecost" was approaching. It was then that they declared that the Church, founded by Christ, had already lost its salvific significance, and the so-called "New Church" – the Mother of God – had accepted succession from the "old" Church for the salvation of its children. The disseminator of this false teaching was a public organization formed in 1986, calling itself the "Mother of God Center." Despite the direct testimony of St. The Theotokos, however, assert that this is not so, attributing their fabrications to the Mother of God, who supposedly proclaimed through their prophets that She is the head of the Church. Where does this "church" have a hierarchy? Everything is simple to the point of banality: "Those who are ordained in the church are those on whom the Right Hand that supplies the seals has been." The question arises: how to determine on whom the Hand has been? The answer is as follows: according to the charismatic gift of the Spirit. Here we see a typical case of self-sanctification followed by the manipulation of the credulity of their parishioners. The founder of this sect was "Archbishop" Ioann Bereslavsky, who at one time graduated from the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, studied philosophy and sociology. Later, as he admits in his articles, he immersed himself in esotericism, even specially went to the Kabbalah school for his initiation, studied the ancient Hebrew language. The rush for the truth continued for years and years. Of course, these searches were sincere, but in no way justifies him the fact that having completely lost his way, Bereslavsky, like Ivan Susanin, although in sincere error, took a lot of people with him. Bereslavsky is not a traditional iconographic saint, although he is broad and handsome; He is a modern educated man, a philologist with great erudition. The starting point for the creation of the center was 1984, when in Smolensk, as he claims, he was seized with extraordinary fear at the icon "Hodegetria", because "it seemed that fiery lightning would immediately incinerate the sinner before the face of the Most Pure One..." In recent years, "Archbishop" John has developed a new genre of spiritual journalism – the small so-called "intimate conversations". So far, about a hundred of them have only been published. The Bereslavsky Center works closely with clubs, schools, universities and other secular organizations. Now the adherents of the "Center" are stationed in 50 cities of Russia, not counting the near abroad. They created the "Institute of the Wisdom of God", opened theological (?) faculties in people's universities and schools of piety for children. "Vladyka" often speaks to a wide audience, travels abroad at the expense of the "Center", ordains priests for himself. In the near Moscow region, he opened a convent. It has several monasteries in other areas.

Teaching on the Church, the Sacraments and the Eucharist