Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Church History

The Centenary of the Orthodox Mission in North America

Professor Alexander Lopukhin

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The modern English translation and the cover design are © 2026 Royal Archives. All rights reserved.

The underlying source text is in the public domain.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Translated by Royal Archives

Source: Столетие православной миссии в Северной Америке

Cover: Sitka Bay, Alaska by Theodore J. Richardson (American, 1855–1914), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:centenary_orthodox_mission_north_america:en:1

Introduction

The Author

Alexander Pavlovich Lopukhin was born on the tenth of October 1852 in the village of Mityakino, in the Saratov province, the son of a parish priest. He was schooled first at the Saratov theological seminary and then, from 1874, at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1878. Even as a student he had drawn near to the world of learned journals, doing correctional and literary work in their editorial offices and publishing, while still at the Academy, a substantial study of the Old Testament prophets. Languages came easily to him, and by the time he left the Academy he had already marked himself out as a gifted and disciplined young biblicist with an unusual command of English. That command shaped the course of his life.

In July of 1879 he was appointed psalmist—a reader and chanter—at the Russian embassy church in New York, and there he served for the next several years, into the early 1880s. It is on this American sojourn that the present volume rests. A man of learning set down in a young and restless country, Lopukhin watched its religious life with the double attention of a churchman and a scholar, and what he saw impressed him so deeply that it colored the whole of his later work. He came home neither a partisan of America nor its detractor, but its first serious Russian interpreter, convinced that a nation so unlike his own had a great deal to teach and a great deal to warn against.

On his return he made America the subject of his early scholarship. In 1881 he defended and published his master’s dissertation, Roman Catholicism in America, and over the decade that followed he issued a series of studies, sketches, and lectures on the religious and social life of the United States. Meanwhile his academic career advanced steadily: he was named professor of comparative theology at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy in 1883, and from 1885 held the chair of ancient civil history until his death. As an editor he became one of the most industrious figures in Russian church publishing, guiding the journal Strannik (The Wanderer) and launching, as a free supplement to it, the great enterprise for which he is best remembered—the Explanatory Bible (Tolkovaya Bibliya), a running commentary on every book of Scripture. He lived to complete only its first volume, his own commentary on the Pentateuch; he died on the twenty-second of August 1904, at the height of his powers, and the work was carried to completion by others across a dozen volumes between 1904 and 1913. He was buried at the Nikolskoye cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The five American writings gathered here belong to the earliest and freshest season of that career—the reports of an observant young reader before he became the editor of the Russian Orthodox Bible.

The Work: Occasion & Purpose

The five pieces in this volume were written across roughly a decade and a half, but they form a single sustained inquiry: what does the religious life of the United States actually look like, and what can an Orthodox Russia learn from it? Lopukhin approached America at a moment when almost no serious Russian account of the country existed. “We often call Americans our friends,” he wrote in one of these prefaces, “but only rarely do we admit that we scarcely know them at all.” His purpose, first and last, was to close that gap—to replace rumor and caricature with patient, first-hand observation.

Religion in America (composed at the turn of the 1880s) is his broad survey of the American religious landscape: the extraordinary energy of a people who, cut off from the old centers of belief by an ocean, had not lost their religious instinct but intensified it, together with the ceaseless “ferment” of denominations that instinct produced.

Roman Catholicism in America, subtitled A Study of the Present Condition and the Causes of the Rapid Growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States of North America, was his master’s dissertation of 1881. It sets itself a precise historical question—how a body that began in “insignificance” had risen within a single century toward the first rank among American churches, and that in the very country that had first written the separation of church and state into its law.

Life Across the Ocean, subtitled Sketches of the Religious, Social-Economic, and Domestic Life in North America, is the largest and most personal of the five—a book-length travelogue that carries the reader from St. Petersburg through Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Paris, and London, across ten days of ocean, and into the streets, churches, holidays, and households of New York. Its later chapters turn homeward to the small Russian community and its embassy church in the American city.

The Transoceanic West in Its Religious and Moral Aspect began as a set of public lectures delivered in St. Petersburg during Great Lent, later gathered into a book. Here the occasion is explicitly Russian: Lopukhin frames America as a case study offered to an educated Russian society that he saw drifting toward “religious individualization”—the ordering of belief by private reason rather than by the Church.

The Centenary of the Orthodox Mission in North America (1894) marks the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first Russian monastic missionaries at Kodiak Island in 1794. It is the most narrowly historical of the five, recounting the mission’s origins in the fur-trading voyages of the North Pacific and the labors of its first monks.

Taken together, the occasion of these works is one man’s determination to render America intelligible to his countrymen—its Protestant multiplicity, its Roman Catholic ascendancy, its constitutional experiment in religious liberty, and, closest to his heart, the young Orthodox mission planted on the same continent.

Argument & Structure

For all their variety of form, the five writings can be read as movements of a single argument, and it helps to see how each is built.

Religion in America opens from a single observation: the American people are intensely, restlessly religious, and their many confessions are less settled institutions than currents in a continuous search for religious truth. From this Lopukhin traces what he calls the process of “ferment”—the collision and reconciliation of diverse religious elements—through the Episcopal Church’s turn toward “catholicity” and its overtures to the Orthodox East, and on to the specifically American problems of religious liberty of conscience and religion in the public school. Its structure moves from a general diagnosis of the national temperament to particular test cases in law and education.

Roman Catholicism in America is the most rigorously organized of the five, built in three large parts: the first steps of Roman Catholicism on the continent (including the early Jesuit missions among the native peoples); its struggle for the freedom to exist amid Puritan and colonial hostility; and its external and internal growth into a major American body. Lopukhin’s governing question is causal—why growth so rapid, in soil so seemingly unfavorable—and he answers it historically, tracing the interplay of immigration, organization, and the discipline of a centralized church against the fragmentation around it.

Life Across the Ocean is structured as a journey and then a residence. Its first movement, “On the Way to America,” is pure travel writing—the European capitals, the Atlantic crossing. The second, “Beyond the Ocean,” settles into American life through its holidays and habits: Christmas and carnival, Easter in America, the Bible in America, the “kingdom of the dollar,” revival meetings, and the fraternal lodges he calls “the knights of mystery.” A third movement, “Native Echoes,” turns to the Russians abroad—their festivals and sorrows, the Russian church in New York, and the Americans who found their way into it—before closing with social and economic notes on emigration and the promise of the new land. The reader who wants Lopukhin the man, rather than Lopukhin the analyst, will find him here.

The Transoceanic West follows the shape of the lectures that produced it. A first reading argues for the importance of studying American religious-moral life at all, and surveys the American public conscience—its Sunday schools, temperance and civic societies, and the moral seriousness Lopukhin admired in American democracy. A second reading turns to what he saw as the doctrinal and practical difficulties of a purely Protestant order—the multiplication of sects and the “unlimited arbitrary will” of independent preachers—and then to the countervailing American striving toward church unity, the revivals, and the Episcopal reach toward firmer catholic ground. The movement is from what America does well to the deeper question its divisions raise, and back to the yearning for unity those divisions provoke.

The Centenary of the Orthodox Mission proceeds chronologically from the North Pacific voyages of Russian traders and the expeditions that fixed the relation of the Asian and American coasts, through the merchant Shelikhov’s decision to consolidate the scattered “sowing of Christian seeds” into a properly organized mission, to the arrival and first labors of the monks at Kodiak. It is narrative history, told with evident reverence for the “simple monks” who, expecting no such destiny, carried the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Theological & Spiritual Significance

What gives these American reports their lasting interest is that Lopukhin never wrote as a mere correspondent. He read American religion theologically, and he read it as a mirror held up to his own society.

His deepest concern was the relation between religious truth and religious form. America struck him as living proof that “religious need lies in the very nature of the human spirit and is as eternal as the human spirit itself”—a standing rebuke to the “cold and soulless skepticism” he saw corroding an older Europe. He admired without reserve the vitality of American faith: a people among whom science and religion lived, as he put it, “in harmonious unity,” where educated men occupied themselves with religious questions and the skeptical literature of the old world “found almost no sale.” Against the materialism that had swept mid-century Europe, America seemed to him evidence that the human spirit turns back, inevitably, toward the mysterious and the holy.

Yet he saw the American situation as unfinished, even unstable—a vast “ferment” in search of a truth it could not quite reach. The multiplication of confessions and the authority he saw vested in the individual preacher and the individual conscience seemed to him to answer the hunger for religious truth with endless motion rather than rest. He was struck, accordingly, by every American movement toward unity and toward firmer, more ancient ground: the Episcopal turn to “catholicity,” the overtures toward the Orthodox East, the recurring protest of religious feeling against fragmentation. In these he read a genuine and hopeful longing.

His account of the rapid growth of Roman Catholicism belongs to the same analysis. He treated it not as a threat to be denounced but as a historical phenomenon to be explained—the success of a disciplined, centralized, and organized body in a landscape of division—and precisely as evidence of the same American hunger for authoritative, catholic form. His observations on Protestant and Roman Catholic America alike are reported as a historian reports, describing what each communion held and how each fared, without setting one against another as the arbiter of the whole.

For his Russian readers the moral was pointed but irenic. In The Transoceanic West he addressed an educated society he feared was drifting toward “religious individualization”—belief arranged by private reason—and he offered America as the classic instance of what follows when that tendency runs its course without settled ecclesial anchoring. America was, for him, at once an inspiration and a warning: inspiration in its undimmed religious energy and its civic moral seriousness, warning in the restlessness of a faith seeking form.

Running beneath all of this is a conviction that binds the five works into one: that the health of a people’s religious life depends not only on the sincerity of its belief but on the soundness of the form that carries it. Lopukhin credited America with an abundance of the first and worried about the second, and he was too honest an observer to pretend the two always went together. That tension—fervent faith seeking a stable and catholic shape—is the theological thread he followed across constitution, school, revival tent, and mission field alike.

The Centenary strikes a different and warmer note. There the significance is missionary and devotional: the wonder that the light of the Gospel reached Kodiak in the same years that the coasts of America were still being charted, carried not by a trained propaganda but by “simple monks” ready to endure every hardship for the truth. It is Lopukhin’s tribute to the zeal of the young Orthodox mission on American soil—the mission whose religious environment his other four studies had labored to describe.

Reception & Influence

These writings made Lopukhin, in effect, Russia’s first informed guide to American religious life, filling a gap he himself had named. Their afterlife is twofold. In their own moment they gave an educated Russian public a rare and detailed window onto a country it knew mostly by rumor, and Roman Catholicism in America, as an academic dissertation, earned him his master’s degree and the professorial career that followed. More broadly, they belong to the formation of the scholar who would go on to edit the Explanatory Bible and the Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia — great works of accessible, popularizing scholarship whose animating conviction, that serious religious learning should be put within reach of ordinary readers, is already fully present in these early American reports. For the modern reader they carry a further, unlooked-for value: they are a thoughtful outside observer’s snapshot of Gilded-Age American religion—its revivals and lodges, its schools and Sunday schools, its constitutional settlement of church and state—seen through Orthodox eyes at the very moment the Orthodox mission on the continent was taking root.

The Text & This Edition

This edition presents a fresh modern English translation of five of Lopukhin’s Russian works on American religious life, prepared from the public-domain Russian texts as preserved in the digital library of azbyka.ru. The originals — Религия в Америке, Римский католицизм в Америке, Жизнь за океаном, Заокеанский Запад в религиозно-нравственном отношении, and Столетие православной миссии в Северной Америке — were written in the 1880s and 1890s; several first appeared as periodical essays or public lectures before being gathered into books. They are rendered here into clear, contemporary English while preserving the author’s inline emphasis, his paragraph structure, his own notes, and his scriptural references. Chapter and section numbers and scripture citations follow the house convention of Arabic numerals and a modern reference style. The translation aims throughout at faithful, readable prose that keeps the register of Lopukhin’s own nineteenth-century essayistic Russian without archaizing it.

A word on names and attribution. The author is given here as Alexander Lopukhin, a lay scholar and theologian; where his contemporaries styled him “Professor,” that title reflects his chairs at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. He is best known to posterity as the editor of the Explanatory Bible, and it is worth remembering, as one reads these youthful American studies, that they are the work of the same mind that would later undertake to comment on the whole of Scripture for a general Russian readership.

Because these are the observations of a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox visitor, the reader will meet frank judgments about the Protestant and Roman Catholic America of the 1880s—its divisions, its enthusiasms, its rapid growth. They are presented here as historical testimony, in the author’s own voice, and are best read as one perceptive contemporary’s account rather than as a settled verdict on any communion. Where his information reflects the state of knowledge of his day, that too is part of the document’s interest.

Suggestions for Reading

A reader new to Lopukhin need not take the five works in order. Life Across the Ocean is the natural doorway: its travel narrative and its scenes of American holidays, streets, and worship introduce both the country and the observer, and its later chapters on the Russian church in New York place the author himself before us. From there, Religion in America and The Transoceanic West supply the analytic frame—the diagnosis of American religious “ferment” and the questions it raised for Russia—while Roman Catholicism in America rewards those who want Lopukhin at his most rigorous and historical. The Centenary of the Orthodox Mission is best kept for last, or read on its own as a self-contained history: it turns from the wide American panorama to the single thread that mattered most to the author—the Orthodox mission carried across the Pacific by a handful of monks, whose hundred-year story gives these studies of a distant land their quiet center of gravity.

Preface

Our North American mission, as is well known, celebrates this September the centennial jubilee of a hundred years of its work on the soil of the New World. Its history is in many respects quite remarkable. If the living activity of the Church is measured, especially in the West, by the energy and extent of its missions, then the North American mission presents, particularly in the beginning of its work, striking testimony to the zeal of the holy Orthodox Church in fulfilling the last commandment of Christ: to go to all peoples and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Indeed, it is already noteworthy that the mission here went hand in hand with the discovery of lands hitherto unknown. Somewhere beyond the boundless ocean, in an inhospitable climate, lands were opened populated by peoples “knowing no law,” and thus dwelling entirely in darkness and the shadow of death, and at the first call of Church authority, into these inhospitable lands with their wild population a band of brave warriors of Christ set out, ready to bear the light of Gospel truth into the most remote wilderness, to endure all manner of hardships and trials, and even to lay down their very lives for that truth. And this is even more remarkable because the missionaries in this case were not recruited from some specialized institution, like those which the “Roman propaganda” possesses, sending forth already specially trained and fully prepared missionaries, supplying them with all the means to secure the comforts of civilized life. No, these were simple monks, who never even thought that they would have to go to the ends of the earth to preach about Christ, and
who quietly completed their life’s path in prayers and labors. Yet at the first call, they roused themselves and without the slightest hesitation set out upon that vast journey, which even now, with improved means of transportation, cannot fail to frighten the imagination of most ordinary people; and they labored devotedly for the glory of Christ’s name, and with such zeal tilled the virgin soil of the northwestern frontier of the New World that even to this day it bears good fruit, thanks to the labors of these first heralds of Orthodoxy in the newly opened land. And if we take into account also that on this same soil, somewhat later, labored also our celebrated missionary, whose fame reflects glory on the Orthodox Church far beyond its boundaries—namely, Innocent of Moscow—whose labors aroused genuine admiration even abroad—then the history of our North American mission undoubtedly takes on a vivid church-historical interest, and therefore even a brief sketch of its century of work would be far from unnecessary in the pages of our journal[1].

[1] In preparing it we made use chiefly of documents from the archive of the Holy Synod, as well as printed works, among which may be mentioned: “Works of Innocent, metropolitan of Moscow,” collected by I. V. Barsukov, books I–III, 1886–1888; I. Barsukov, Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna, Moscow, 1883; P. Tikhmenev, Historical Review of the Formation of the Russian-American Company, parts I–II, St. Petersburg, 1861–63, and other sources, which will be mentioned in their proper place.

1. The Opening of the Mission and the First Period of Its Activity

The honor of discovering the southwestern portion of North America belongs exclusively to Russian people. When the valiant Ermak presented the Russian Tsar with the vast land of Siberia, one might have supposed that the boundless spaces of this land would be entirely sufficient to occupy the colonizing energy of the Russian people for a long time, or even forever, especially since the eastern frontier of Siberia ran up against the boundless ocean, which even daunted bold imagination. It is no wonder that the northern parts of the Great Ocean remained unknown until late times even to such worldwide navigators as the English, Dutch, and Spanish, who confined their voyages to more hospitable latitudes of the earth’s surface. Yet the ancient inclination of the Russian people toward the northeast did not stop even before the Great Ocean. Private fur traders, penetrating ever further and further into the depths of Siberia, finally ceased to be satisfied with even these vast spaces. The unknown that lay hidden beyond the ocean attracted them, promising especially rich plunder, all the more so since the value of fur goods continued to rise as one moved eastward. Therefore, bold traders began in small parties to penetrate also to the nearby islands, and since the islands formed almost a continuous chain stretching across the ocean, by hopping from one to another, the traders gradually reached the very mainland of North America. When exactly and by whom this mainland was first discovered is not known precisely. Judging by obscure accounts, the Russian traders knew of the North American mainland already in the sixteenth century; during the seventeenth century, when the attention of Russian people was entirely absorbed by their own internal state affairs, the distant east, it seems, was left without attention altogether, and only toward the beginning of the last century did the wave of commercial enterprise rush forth to the distant east with such energy that precise exploration of these lands became even a matter of state interest. Everywhere rumors arose of the immense wealth exported by fur traders from the shores and islands of the Great Ocean, and Peter the Great himself ordered a naval expedition to determine precisely the relationship of the coasts of Asia and America (1725–30). The actual honor of the official discovery of the American coast (which had, of course, been discovered earlier by unknown Russian traders) belongs to the commander of one of the ships of the 1732 expedition, Captain Pavlutsky, and the pilot Fedorov[1]. Following this, a second naval expedition, outfitted by order of Empress Anna Ivanovna and under the command of Captain Bering, definitively established the relationship of the coasts of Asia and America and thus officially completed the work begun and accomplished by unknown Russian traders.

With the adoption of these distant lands under the protection of the Russian state, bold Russian traders began to roam even more widely, setting out in various directions in small parties, more thoroughly exploring and discovering many hitherto unknown islands[2] in the chain of the Aleutian and Kuril archipelagos, extending to the very mainland of America. One of the most active traders of this kind was Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov, a citizen of Ryhlsk—a remarkable Russian man who showed himself not only a bold trader but a valiant patriot and devoted son of the Church. While engaged in the fur trade in Siberia, he recognized with his penetrating mind all the advantage of consolidating Russian dominion over the islands of the Great Ocean and the adjacent American mainland, traveled personally to investigate the state of affairs on the Aleutian and Kuril Islands, and came to the conviction that in the existing conditions commerce could not develop with great success, since small parties of traders, acting without plan and in disarray, often harmed trade through their rivalry and tactless, often inhuman treatment of the natives, aroused enmity against themselves, and frequently perished at their hands. Therefore he resolved to establish a solid trading company that would conduct affairs with proper order and under the protection of the Russian state. The company was founded by him together with his partner, the Kursk merchant Ivan Larionovich Golikov[3], and the expedition of the new company, consisting of three ships bearing significant names—“Three Hierarchs,” “Archangel Michael,” “Simeon the God-Receiver and the Prophetess Anna”—departed on August 16, 1788, from Okhotsk “to the Alaskan land, called American, to known and unknown islands for carrying on the fur trade, and all manner of exploration, and establishing voluntary commerce with the natives.”[4] The voyage was not auspicious. One of the ships, namely the “Archangel Michael,” nearly perished without a trace; but at last, after almost a year of wandering, the fleet arrived at the harbor of Kodiak Island, named in honor of the ship on which Shelikhov himself was sailing with his wife, the Three-Hierarchs. The island was large and seemed to promise rich plunder; but unfortunately, it was inhabited by wild and fierce tribes who, having already successfully driven off and destroyed small traders, were extremely hostile to all foreigners. All attempts by Shelikhov to incline the natives to friendly relations proved futile: they took a completely hostile stance toward the newcomers, so that to establish the company on the island, recourse had to be made to armed force, and only after a fierce battle did the natives scatter, and the expedition took possession of the island. The wild nature of the natives was fully demonstrated in that they, having suffered a severe blow from the newcomer, began to regard him with superstitious fear and became more amenable to peaceful influence.

Kodiak Island, lying near the shores of the American mainland and separated from it at its widest point by a strait of 70 versts, was rich in fur-bearing animals and at the same time could serve as a base for commercial activity both throughout the archipelago and on the American mainland itself. Therefore, Shelikhov decided to establish his company’s main depot precisely there. He remained with his company there for two years, and during that time succeeded in drawing considerably closer to the natives. He saw that without friendly relations with them, no success of the company was possible, because it needed obedient and industrious workers who could only be the natives themselves. Therefore, he sought to win the natives to himself through kindness and gifts, and succeeded in this to such an extent that the latter, seeing in the Russians various comforts of life hitherto unknown to them, began to imitate them, and thus were subject to the cultural influence of those whom they had previously hated as newcomers. Everything surrounding the Russians in their domestic life stimulated the natives’ curiosity, and the skill and cleverness with which their new neighbors erected buildings and arranged all necessities for themselves awakened in the savages a desire to imitate them and even to take part in their work. Furthermore, Shelikhov’s constant readiness to help the islanders in their needs as far as possible and his constant attention to everything concerning them involuntarily disposed them toward him in a short time to such an extent that not only did they not shun the Russians, but of their own accord came to them and brought their children with a desire that the Russians take them as hostages or amanats, and Shelikhov, often having little need of these hostages, always received them kindly and rewarded their parents with various gifts[5]. Such relations gave Shelikhov the opportunity to gradually convince the savages that he had come to them not for ruin but to live with them in friendship and to help them, and in this he would tell the amazed savages that far from them there lived a great Russian Empress whose dominions were so vast that the sun never set in them, who ruled over many peoples flourishing under her scepter, and in the number of these peoples she was willing to receive the Kodiak people as well. The savages listened and were moved. But Shelikhov’s penetrating eye did not escape the fact that if the savages had become more friendly to the Russians, it was in large measure owing to their fear of the might of the newcomers. Deep in their souls the old enmity continued to lurk, which could manifest itself at any convenient opportunity and lead to bloody consequences (and as it turned out, this did happen in some places later). It was necessary to uproot this deeply hidden enmity, and this could be accomplished only by transforming the very nature of the savages, who, living in eternal struggle for existence, did not really know what true friendship and love in their best sense were. And the nature could be transformed only through the implanting of Christianity among them. Indeed, from the very beginning of his residence among the savages, Shelikhov began to gradually instill in them the principles of Christian faith. Gathering around him both children and adults, he explained to them in simple and comprehensible language the essence of the Christian faith; he told them that the life of the savages was miserable and hopeless, and this was because they had no all-mighty Helper to deliver them from enemies and give them help in time of need. But the Russians had such a Helper and Savior, namely Jesus Christ, who expressly came down from heaven to earth to deliver people from hardship, suffered for them, then himself overcame his enemies, and now, sitting again in heaven, helps all who turn to Him in prayer. This Savior would also help the Kodiak people if they believed in Him and accepted baptism. Such speeches, or similar ones, could not fail to influence the imagination of the savages, and it is remarkable that soon several savages expressed a desire to accept the faith of the Russians, and Shelikhov, having no priest at hand, baptized them himself, using the right granted to every Orthodox Christian to baptize in case of necessity. The rite of baptism, performed with due solemnity, worked a miraculous effect on the savages. They seemed to be completely reborn and, considering themselves formally Russian, began to take pride in this and even looked down upon their former kinsmen. After this, it was no longer difficult for Shelikhov to persuade the newly baptized and also of the need for civilization, of the necessity to observe certain civil and church regulations. Before leaving the island, Shelikhov baptized in this way forty people, and was the first to lay the foundation of the Church of Christ in this distant land, which had hitherto dwelt in darkness and the shadow of death. Justice, however, demands the remark that although Shelikhov was indeed the first to sow the seeds of faith in Christ on Kodiak, other Russian traders, who had been on the Aleutian Islands even before him, also did not forget that it is the duty of every Christian to share the light of knowledge of true faith with those who dwell in darkness. Thus, for example, the enterprising Cossack Andrean Tolstykh, who first discovered in 1743 the group of islands named after him the Andreanoff Islands, began to baptize the natives of those islands. Then the townsman Ivan Glotov, who discovered the islands known as the Fox Islands, baptized in 1759 the son of one of the local Aleut chiefs (toions) and took him to Kamchatka, where this first fruit of the Aleut Church lived for several years and, having learned Russian literacy, returned to his native land as a herald of true faith and a good bearer of Russian culture[6]. Shelikhov, therefore, only continued this gradual course of spreading Christian faith to the remotest known parts of the world at that time; but his activity in this regard is remarkable in that he was the first to conceive the idea of consolidating this casual sowing of Christian seeds through a properly organized mission. This idea he did not delay in putting into effect at the first opportunity.

Satisfied with the success of his expedition, Shelikhov returned to Okhotsk, which he reached in 1787, and from there, enduring terrible hardships from the harsh climate and bad roads, made his way to Irkutsk, where he reported to the local governor-general Yakobi the results of his expedition, with a request that he bring them to the attention of Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Catherine II. The Empress received Shelikhov’s labors most graciously and even wished to see him personally should he ever visit St. Petersburg, and the governor-general Yakobi was ordered to make a detailed report to Her Majesty on the best ways to consolidate Russian dominion over the islands of the Great Ocean and on the shores of America, on the organization of administration of the native peoples, and on the improvement of their condition. In this report due credit was given to Shelikhov’s labors as showing “far more concern for the benefit of the fatherland than for personal advantage,” and the Empress generously rewarded the self-sacrificing Russian men Shelikhov and Golikov[7], confirmed to their company important privileges over all other similar companies, entrusting them even with governmental authority over the newly discovered lands. Encouraged by such gracious imperial attention, Shelikhov, now with full awareness of his state significance, proceeded to further development of his commercial activity, and as the head of an officially recognized company, established proper relations between Siberia and Kodiak Island, as the main base of all his operations. Being unable to be personally present on Kodiak Island, he entrusted its command to his energetic manager Baranov, with the instruction to treat the natives in the spirit of his own Christian meekness.

The young Kodiak church, meanwhile, continued in a state of inertia. The Kodiak people baptized by Shelikhov, or so-called konyagi, remained faithful to the Russian faith they had accepted and formed the main support for the Russian traders among the mass of savages on whom it was difficult to rely in all matters. But their position was very uncertain. Having been brought to the new faith, they remained without sufficient instruction in it, since the theological knowledge of the traders did not go beyond the first principles of Christianity. Besides, both the traders themselves and the newly baptized savages were deprived of all consolation from religion and of the means to satisfy their religious needs. They had neither a spiritual father nor a church. It is true that the traders, out of necessity, even organized certain church services, performed hours and vespers on feast days, which the newly baptized savages attended with proper devotion, but this was far from sufficient to satisfy their religious needs. Since, at the same time, the traders were increasingly confirmed by experience in the conviction that the local wild population could only be firmly attached to the Russians if it were transformed by the influence of Christian religion, Shelikhov conceived the happy idea of establishing a proper mission in this distant region. And so he, together with Golikov, appealed to the Holy Synod with a petition dated May 4, 1793, in which, briefly setting forth the state of affairs on the island he had discovered, requested that the Holy Synod permit them to build a portable church and, for the performance of divine services, and for the teaching of the savages the truths of Christian law, send suitable missionaries, with the obligation to maintain both the church and the missionaries at the company’s expense. The Holy Synod took this petition seriously to heart, and, zealous for the spread of the light of Orthodox faith among peoples knowing no law, resolved to outfit a mission, supplying it with all necessary for the successful accomplishment of this holy work. By the report of the Procurator of the Holy Synod, A. I. Musin-Pushkin, this determination received the Empress’s approval[8], and thus officially was the foundation of the North American Mission of the Russian Orthodox Church laid. To carry this determination into effect was entrusted to His Grace Gabriel, metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg[9].

[1] Hydrographic Notes, part 9, cited in Tikhmenev, part 1, p. 1, note.

[2] From 1743 it is known that more than forty such parties were active on the islands of the Great Ocean.

[3] The company was established with a capital of 70,000 rubles divided into 120 shares.

[4] As stated in the agreement concluded between the company’s participants.

[5] Tikhmenev, I, p. 11.

[6] Works of Innocent, book II, p. 2 and 3.

[7] Both were presented with swords and gold medals to be worn about the neck with the portraits of the Empress and with the appropriate inscriptions.

[8] By decree of June 30, 1893.

[9] See in the archive of the Holy Synod, case no. 45 from 1793 of the Irkutsk diocese.

1. The Opening of the Mission and the First Period of Its Activity (Cont.)

When His Grace the Metropolitan took up the execution of this important task entrusted to him, he fortunately understood at once what sort of people were needed for this and where to find them. It was necessary to find men who possessed sufficient self-denial to abandon all the comforts of civilized life and travel tens of thousands of versts through the impassable wilds of Siberia and across the turbulent waves of the boundless ocean to a distant edge of the world, to savages knowing no law, rebellious and bloodthirsty. For such self-renunciation, it was difficult to find anyone but monks, who had already renounced the world for the glory of God’s name. But not even all monks were capable for this work. The Metropolitan had a large choice among the brothers of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, but he saw at once that for a distant mission men of a different caliber were needed than the brothers of a wealthy first-class monastery, intended to meet the church and religious needs of the capital, and which had received the particular imprint of the capital. For the difficult work of missionary service at the edge of the world among the wilds of savage peoples, men were needed who were accustomed to fierce struggle with stern nature, capable of enduring all hardships and trials, and equally well acquainted with the work of spreading the light of Orthodox faith among little enlightened aliens. Such men could be supplied precisely by the celebrated Valaam Monastery. This celebrated monastery, situated on one of the islands of Lake Ladoga, had for whole centuries served as an impregnable bulwark of Orthodoxy on the border between the Russian people and their northwestern neighbors, hostile to them both ethnically and in their faith. This monastery, as a fortress of brave warriors of Christ, had endured many terrible devastations from fanatical enemies of Orthodoxy, but it held its position unwaveringly, and not only did not fall before the attacks of the northwestern foes, but itself went on the offensive and spread Orthodoxy among the Finnish natives surrounding it. If during the terrible disorders of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Orthodoxy was preserved in northwestern Russia, it owes this to the Valaam Monastery. Moreover, this monastery had long become renowned for its remarkable culture. With incredible efforts and wonderful persistence, it cultivated the hitherto inhospitable islands, overcame stern nature, and from the dark lairs of bears made a kind of earthly paradise, insofar as such a name applies to a monastery that had created its well-being by the hands of its own monks, who had labored in the sweat of their brow. Therefore, if any monastery could provide the most suitable missionaries for the newly discovered lands of North America, it was indeed Valaam, and His Grace Metropolitan Gabriel turned there precisely for the men needed for the newly forming mission. And the then abbot of the monastery, the celebrated restorer of the monastery, Father Nazarius, indeed provided reliable men. Among his monks was the hieromonk Iosaf Bolotov, who was indicated to His Grace the Metropolitan as especially suited for the mission. He was a well-educated man for his time. The son of a priest of Tver province, Kashin district, the village of Strashkov, Ilya Bolotov (born 1761), Ivan Bolotov (his secular name) early displayed talents, energy, and love of learning. Receiving his initial education at the Kashin theological school, he studied philosophical and theological sciences successively in two seminaries—the Tver and Yaroslavl—in the latter of which he completed his course among the best students. For some time he served as a teacher at the Uglich theological school. But then, feeling in himself a greater calling to serve God in direct proximity to Him, far from the world, he took monastic vows in 1786 with the name Iosaf and went to Valaam, where he intended to end his life in labors and prayers, when divine providence called him to the great and difficult work of enlightening pagans on the islands of the boundless ocean. When this position was offered to him, he accepted it as a humble obedience, and was appointed the head of the North American mission, composed of monks from Valaam itself, who did not hesitate to part with their native monastery to serve the cause of Christ. These monks were: the hieromonks Juvenal, Makarius, and Athanasius; the hierodeacons Stephen and Nectarius; and the monks Herman and Iosaf. When His Grace the Metropolitan made a report of the selection he had made, the Holy Synod approved it, and Iosaf in his capacity as head of the mission was elevated to the rank of archimandrite with the bestowal upon him of a “mitre and cross”—to enhance the dignity of spiritual authority, and the mission, blessed with the best wishes and blessings, set out on its distant journey[1].

Since the matter at hand was very important, and the honor of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was embarking upon the work of enlightening with the light of Christ’s truth the peoples of the New World, where already in other parts of it other faiths held sway and were establishing their beliefs, depended much on its success, the Holy Synod found it necessary to provide the mission with a special instruction, and this instruction is very interesting in terms of characterizing the views of the Holy Synod of that time on the tasks of Christian missionary work, and so it is not inappropriate to cite here some points from it.

“To you is entrusted (reads the first point) the apostolic duty. You and those entrusted to you, preserving this, shall receive a reward in heaven, such as the holy apostles were glorified. This reward of yours in heaven shall be composed of your turning those ignorant of God’s law to the truth of the Gospel. Therefore, in all your labors look upon the heavenly recompense and strengthen yourselves in the virtues of Christian life.” (§ 1). “When Jesus Christ grants you to see those knowing not God’s law, let your first care be to recommend yourselves through the example of virtue, so that they, observing your life, may be captivated by it.” (§ 6). “Strive, as far as possible, to increase this through assistance in their needs and in certain of their comforts, such as supplying them with things they desire, and making just decisions in their disputes, mollifying, so far as you can, their craving for satisfaction in their wrongs.” (§ 7). Then the method or approach itself is prescribed, which one must observe in inculcating to the savages religious and moral concepts, and it is remarkable for its applicability to the low level of the natives’ understanding. A Socratic, inductive method is recommended, whereby the savages are asked questions concerning elementary truths of religion in such a form or manner that their own thought naturally and almost imperceptibly is led to the recognition of the being of God as the highest Benefactor and righteous Judge, as well as the Savior, Jesus Christ, who came to earth from heaven to deliver people from their misery (§§8–15). For such instruction and exhortations, the time is recommended after morning and evening prayers, when the soul is most disposed to spiritual instruction, and thus in those “non-liturgical conversations,” the appropriateness of which was clearly well understood even then, although they received special development only now. This special instruction to the head of the North American mission was supplemented by a general instruction also given to missionaries in general, sent by various bishops for the conversion of unbelievers to the Christian faith, and from it may be noted an admonition bearing witness to what evangelical spirit penetrated the holy Orthodox Church. Making an exhortation regarding the scope of the content of faith in which it should be taught to the converted, this instruction reads: “You must teach the doctrine from the Gospel alone, Acts, and the Epistles of the Apostles, not burdening the mind of the converted, as if it were in infancy, with traditions, except those most necessary and serving as the foundation of the faith.” How truly apostolic simplicity sounds in this rule, and what striking contrast does it present to, for example, the activity of Roman missionaries, who first and foremost seek to instill in the newly converted the idea of the Pope as the head of the Church, with all the consequences arising from it!

Supplied in sufficient quantity with all necessary for church and religious service, both by Shelikhov himself and by other generous donors, particularly in Moscow, the mission set out on its distant journey in 1793. It traveled through Moscow along the great Siberian highway. Given the methods of travel available then, the journey was difficult and exhausting, as it required both riding on horseback and traveling thousands of versts in boats. But the missionaries bore these hardships with good cheer and even expressed satisfaction. Thus, the monk Herman, in his letter to the abbot of his native monastery, Father Nazarius, described with almost rapture how the brothers made their way through the Siberian wilds. “From Irkutsk,” he wrote, we traveled more than two thousand versts down the Lena River in complete comfort and ease. From Yakutsk to Okhotsk we traveled more than a thousand versts on horseback with the brothers, and all our belongings were carried by a hundred horses; though the river journey was pleasant, the horseback journey was even better: in forests, mountains, buerekas, we saw everything. Rich pastures everywhere and lovely weather—May, June, July; but only bears graze there, and we saw plenty of them; although they are docile, they are adept at bothering horses[2]. On June 13, the missionaries arrived at Okhotsk, where the boundless ocean opened before them, and where they awaited the company ship “Three Hierarchs.” The Valaam monks were familiar with this element as well, since in their boats they had become accustomed to boldly struggle with the furious waves of their native Lake Ladoga; but even that great lake was only a drop of water compared to the Great Ocean, and the missionaries experienced and saw much that was unusual. “What I had little heard of,” wrote the same Herman, “God granted me to see: whales
in the sea, orcas, beavers; and whales swimming and playing right near our ship on the surface of the water we saw quite a lot of. Small creatures—about fifteen fathoms long, and the head about five fathoms,” noted the author of the letter with humor. Advancing further among the chain of Aleutian and Kuril Islands, the missionaries had occasion here and there to stop and baptize natives (for example, on Unalaska Island), and finally, after enduring a very dangerous storm, on August 13, 1794, nine months after their departure from St. Petersburg, they arrived at last at the place of their spiritual labor, at Kodiak Island. Both the Russian traders and the newly baptized natives received their spiritual fathers with great joy. Shelikhov himself was delighted at the fulfillment of his idea. “I congratulate you on your guests,” he wrote to the company’s manager Baranov, “These guests are the sacred-archimandrite Iosaf with his brothers, chosen by the will of the Empress to preach God’s word in America. I am confident that you will feel no less pleasure than I do that that land, where I once labored and you now labor for the glory of our fatherland, will now see in these guests a reliable support for its future well-being. May God grant that this good is indeed accomplished and not later, while we have the good fortune to be in a position to accomplish some of the higher intentions of our wise Empress[3].”

[1] The following curious incident is related of Joasaph, testifying to his boundless readiness to help others and his resourcefulness in extreme circumstances. Before departing for America he felt it his duty to visit his elderly father and other close relations, and therefore spent several days in the village of Strazkhovo and the city of Kashin. His poor sister lived in the latter, who died in 1831. Walking to his sister’s past a bog situated beneath a hill near Kashin’s Vvedensky Church, he saw a peasant who, being in a state of intoxication, had fallen into this marsh and could not extricate himself from it, although solid ground was no more than two yards away. The wretched condition of the unfortunate man awakened compassion in Joasaph’s good heart, but he had with him neither a staff nor anything else by which he could help him. Then, without deliberating long, he removed his sole silk cassock and, folding it, threw it to him as a rope, so that the drowning man could seize it. The poor fellow indeed seized it and was pulled out of the bog, where he was threatened with certain death. This was a striking symbol of the spiritual bog in which thousands of unfortunates in distant America were sunk, and from which the archimandrite Joasaph was now preparing to deliver them. See “Strannik” [The Wanderer], 1862, II, p. 280.

[2] Valaam Monastery and Its Ascetics, St. Petersburg, 2nd ed., 1889, p. 126.

[3] Tikhmenev, I, pp. 43, 44.

1. The Opening of the Mission and the First Period of Its Activity (Cont.) (2)

It is not hard to imagine the feelings with which the missionaries themselves approached the place of their work. There they were already at the goal of their nearly year-long wandering. As they approached Kodiak, they saw outlines of land somewhat resembling the outlines of the shores of their native monastery, but the thick “sea vapor” (fog) showed them that they were now in a completely different land, at the very edge of the world. No wonder they had spent almost a full year in travel. And here they were in the land of pagans, whom they were to call to the light of Christian faith. This land had only recently been discovered by Russians and secured to the Russian scepter, as evidenced by a copper plate displayed prominently bearing the inscription: “Land of Russian possession.” Kodiak Island is about 160 versts long and from 20 to 130 versts wide in different places[1]. It bears all the marks of volcanic origin, or at least of volcanic upheavals, as its surface is broken up as if by the titanic work of a volcano. Russian traders had already established themselves there and obtained some European comforts of life. They lived in a fortress (in the harbor of St. Paul), and there they had barracks for workers, a hotel, a hospital, and a portable church. The Russian population consisted of 225 men, who were mostly scattered about on trading activities, and this handful of Russians lived among a mass of native population numbering up to 8,000 people. The natives stood at a very low level of development[2]. They lived in yurts, usually situated along the shores of rivers and bays, and their main occupation was fishing. The nature of their island was poor and unsuitable for agriculture or livestock raising, but the sea provided them abundant catch—so abundant that at times fish could be caught in the bays and river mouths without any equipment, simply with bare hands. It is true that at times they suffered greatly and starved severely, but when favorable times came, they rejoiced and ate their fill, having roasted and steamed the caught fish on a heap of heated stones, which served them both as a cooking place and as a bath. By their origin, the konyagi probably formed a branch of the great Asiatic people gradually spreading from Asia through the chain of islands of the Great Ocean to the very mainland of America; but in their customs there were already many more peculiarities proper to American natives, with whom they were in frequent contact, than to Asiatics. They were warlike, like all American Indians, dressed in cloaks sewn from bird skins, and were almost never parted from their spear and bow (their only weapons), being constantly ready to conduct military attacks—either from tribal revenge and injury, or simply from a desire for plunder. Before the arrival of the Russians, nearly continuous and bloody wars raged among them, and the chiefs, or so-called toions, had masses of captives, who ordinarily made up their main wealth and inalienable property, which they could dispose of at will, give, exchange, or even kill. Wars were maintained also by the fact that complete lawlessness prevailed in the land, there were no laws or institutions for punishing crimes, and thus each person was left to himself to avenge any wrong or injury done to him. The same disorder prevailed in family relations. Marriage had not developed into any definite form, and while polygamy was predominant, there were also not infrequent cases of polyandry, when one strong woman had several husbands. On the whole, however, woman was in an oppressed and wretched condition, and the most insulting insult, necessarily requiring revenge with weapons in hand, for a konyagi was to be called a “woman.” In strange contradiction to this was the fact that the konyagi greatly loved their children, never punished them, and taught them various trades, and if they sometimes gave them as hostages to the Russians, they always carefully inquired about their fate. Despite all the savagery of their condition, they were not without already more or less developed religious ideas. They believed in an afterlife, as evidenced by their care for the dead, who were buried with certain symbolic rites. Since in the konyagi’s view the afterlife was a continuation of this life, tools necessary for fishing were placed in the earth with the dead, and sometimes a favorite slave (kaig) was killed and buried with the deceased, so that he might serve his master there as well. The idea of retribution in the afterlife was represented in the form that good people would always have success in their fishing, while evil people would constantly suffer misfortune and hunger. Religious understanding was in its most undeveloped state. They had the concept that over everything rules Agayon, a good Spirit, without whose help people could not exist on earth, as it was He who taught people to make yurts, to build baidakas (boats necessary for fishing), to catch animals, and so on. But His being, as well as His activity, they conceived of as something necessary, so that as a result they rendered the good Spirit no honors and no gratitude. On the contrary, since alongside Agayon there existed also “Iak”—an evil spirit, who constantly tried to harm people—to appease him, the konyagi offered him various propitiatory sacrifices, danced in his honor in special strange garments, and generally did all that in their understanding could soften the evil nature of the treacherous iak. In general, this was a completely wild people, truly “knowing no law,” except the natural law, and even that was greatly distorted and obscured by barbarism. To lead this people out of the darkness and shadow of death surrounding them to the light of Christ’s truth was the task that faced the arrived missionaries.

Having looked around somewhat in unfamiliar surroundings and familiarized themselves with the chief conditions of their activity, the missionaries zealously set about their work. First of all, they naturally sought to strengthen in faith those already baptized, and through their teachings and also through the solemn performance of divine service brought them great comfort, attaching them ever more firmly to Russian faith, and through them influencing other natives as well. The general impression they formed was that the natives presented a fertile and already prepared soil for sowing God’s word, and they began to prepare for missionary journeys. With particular zeal did two hieromonks, Makarius and Juvenal, take up the work, and between them there even arose a curious dispute about which regions each should take under his care, as each of them wanted to take as much as possible. When Father Juvenal insisted that it was he who should be entrusted with enlightening Alaska, Makarius, “covered with sadness and assuming a sorrowful expression, spoke movingly: No, father, do not force me out; you yourself know that the chain of Aleutian Islands is joined with Alaska, so it must necessarily fall to my portion, and from there the entire northern coast; you, if you will, can be content with the whole southern part of America for your entire life.” This dispute concerned that part of America which was later reddened by the martyred blood of one of them, and thus the dispute was about who would be granted this martyrdom crown in Christ’s name! “I, on hearing such a debate,” notes Herman, “was filled with such joy that I was transported with delight!”[3] Having divided their preaching territories among themselves, both missionaries in the autumn of that same year traveled throughout Kodiak Island and baptized the majority of its inhabitants[4]. Encouraged by this success, the missionaries in the following year expanded their activity and set out to neighboring islands to carry on their “fishing for men.” Of them, the hieromonk Makarius set out to the nearby Aleutian Islands, where he labored from May 25, 1795 to June 24, 1796. The results of his labors were very comforting: in this short time, through his kindness and good treatment of the savages and especially their children, he succeeded in winning them over to the faith and baptizing 2,472 people and celebrating 536 marriages, among which were 36 couples of Russian men with Aleut women—a sign of the newcomers’ close intermingling with the natives. For his part, the hieromonk Juvenal in 1795 moved to the American mainland, to the land of the Chugach, and baptized about 700 of them. Emboldened by success, he penetrated into Kenai Bay, in the land of a very fierce and hostile to Russians people, the Kenai. Animated by zeal for spreading the light of Christian faith in this realm of darkness and barbarism, he feared no dangers and had such influence on the savages that they were persuaded by his arguments and were baptized. From there he moved further to Alaska, to Lake Iliamna or Shelikhov, and there too began his holy work. His preaching was so successful that not only did the savages accept the Russian faith, but they gave the preacher their children so that he might teach them the truths of the new faith. One thing alone did not please the savages—that the Russian preacher rebuked them for polygamy and required those baptized to have only one wife, leaving others. Since polygamy was a deep-rooted custom and the whole structure of family and social relations of the savages was based on it, it was difficult for them to abandon this structure, and they could easily become suspicious that this strange newcomer had come to them to abolish polygamy and thus weaken their people and make them an easy prey for their many surrounding enemies. In any case, a feeling of hostility toward him was born among the savages, and it grew quickly when Father Juvenal left them, taking with him the children entrusted to his instruction. When the dormant suspicion grew into a feeling of fear, the savages immediately resolved to send a pursuit after him, to recover the children, and to put an end to the missionary, which they indeed did. It is unknown how and under what circumstances this attack took place, as no official information was gathered about it. But the accounts heard later by the missionary, the priest John Veniaminov (who later became Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow), paint a portrait of the brave missionary in the best light. “Father Juvenal, according to these accounts, at the attack of the savages, did not think at all of resisting or fleeing, which he could have done successfully, especially as he had firearms with him; but he surrendered himself to them without any resistance and only asked mercy for his companions, which was granted. Long afterward the Americans themselves related that Father Juvenal, even after being killed, rose and walked after his killers, saying something to them. The savages, thinking him alive, attacked him again and beat him; but as soon as they withdrew from him, he again rose and followed them, and this was repeated several times; finally, to be completely rid of him, the savages tore him to pieces. Only then did the zealous preacher, and, one might say, the martyr of God’s word, fall silent, but the power of his word did not fall silent: at the place where the preacher’s remains were, a smoking column then appeared, stretching toward heaven, according to accounts.”[5] This account of the savages, in any case, shows what a strong impression Father Juvenal made upon them, and how much conscience spoke in their crude, barbarous hearts even after his murder.

The other missionaries, remaining at the center of their position on Kodiak Island, labored no less zealously to establish the fruits already acquired. They performed divine service, to which gathered both Russians free from their work and newly baptized natives, some of whom were being trained to participate in the service and to sing to Christ whom they had come to know. Thus, both to adults and especially to children, the beginnings of Christian doctrine were taught, and for the latter, gradually a special school was established, where instruction in Russian literacy and writing was carried out. The young generation proved capable of learning, although much patience was needed to overcome the laziness and carelessness of their wild, barbarous nature, which instinctively resisted such an unfamiliar occupation. Soon there arose even the idea of establishing another school in which natives capable of serving in church offices could be prepared—something like a basic seminary, since sending them to Irkutsk seminary was found to be very inconvenient and difficult. At the same time, the Valaam monks, faithful to the stern school of their native monastery, eagerly engaged in their leisure hours in gardening, horticulture, and agriculture, and the savages, becoming accustomed to these cultural pursuits under their guidance, came to respect their spiritual fathers even more[6].

[1] This information is taken from the “Topographic, Statistical, and Other Description of the Island of Kodiak,” compiled by Archimandrite Joasaph and presented by him to the Holy Synod. A copy of it can be found in the Holy Synod archive in case no. 45. It was printed in its time in “Friend of Enlightenment” for 1805.

[2] The actual inhabitants of Kodiak Island were called Koniags, while on neighboring islands and along the coasts of America lived tribes bearing the names Kihkhtaks, Afognaks, Kenaitses, Chugaches, Agmokhlaks, and Kolosh—partly of Finnish and partly of Mongol stock.

[3] Valaam Monastery, p. 121. This same communicative monk, sharing his impressions with Father Nazarius, wrote to him, among other things, about his life on Kodiak: “We always have news and conversation, and if there had not been wrong done to the Americans by the company, it would have been very merry… In our harbor, it is just as if some European town. They have now cast a bell of about five poods weight and ring it for every service, and at morning and evening they beat the bells on a drum and play the flute; service is performed for our dead, and a small wooden church is begun but not yet finished. On holidays the voyagers and the men who came with them attend service, also the manager, the clerks and the captains; there are officers too. We grow turnips, potatoes and all garden vegetables, but cucumbers are not tried, nor grain; but one voyager sowed barley one year a pound and got a pound and a half in return, but the next year he sowed it—nothing came. Sea fogs, and nothing grew.” See “Valaam Monastery,” p. 125.

[4] The interpreters who accompanied them, Osip Pryanishnikov, a Tobol merchant, rendered important help to the missionaries in their dealings with the savages. Being familiar with local languages, he was officially recognized by the Holy Synod with the rank of collegiate translator and a salary of 225 rubles per year.

[5] Works of Innocent, book II, pp. 5 and 6. Father Juvenaly was from among the officers, and thus he laid down his life not on the field of battle with enemies of the fatherland, but died at the hands of enemies of the name of Christ—for His holy cross. According to another account, Father Juvenaly ceased to rebuke his fierce murderers only when they handed him over to be devoured by their neighbors, which those neighbors certainly did with the barbarism natural to them.

[6] Sharing his first impressions of his life on Kodiak with Father Nazarius, Archimandrite Joasaph wrote to him on May 19, 1795: “On Kodiak in winter we baptized more than 6,000, and they embraced baptism so eagerly that they broke and burned all their shamanic regalia. You did indeed threaten them with nakedness, but thank God they have a sense of modesty; though not richly dressed, they are not naked, and they keep themselves even cleaner than Russians: they wear clothing, though not elaborate, made from bird skins, but long, to the feet and without sleeves, sewn in the manner of a sticharon—only one opening for the head. Father Herman is in my bread house with Father Joseph, formerly Kozma Alekseyevich; Father Macarius Koneysky, contrary to my expectations, is very well suited to this place here. I thought he would not even arrive, but he has ridden over nearly half the island, baptizing and performing marriages, and on this transport he departed for the island of Unalaska and other nearby islands to baptize them. Athanasius is learning the services here, and spends more time in the gardens digging the soil. Father Nectarius and also the good hieromonk Juvenaly are quite diligent, and his brother, promoted to the rank of hierodiacon, Father Stephen, though a young man, is so good, humble-spirited, helpful and intelligent that if you were to pick from the whole Valaam brotherhood, you would search day and night for someone so suited to this place. Through your holy prayers God has given me a good and loving brotherhood… All the fathers of Valaam, beloved brotherhood, I ask not to abandon us, the savages, in your prayers, while we are always in turmoil and in the midst of the world.”

1. The Opening of the Mission and the First Period of Its Activity (Cont.) (3)

The missionaries owed their successes chiefly to the fact that, faithfully fulfilling the instruction given them, which well corresponded to their own deeply Christian disposition, they treated the savages with unusual kindness and truly fatherly love, which more than anything else could soften the stubborn hearts of these sons of nature. And this especially amazed the savages because they had not always seen such treatment before—on the contrary, they had often suffered wrongs from greedy traders; but the spiritual fathers, preaching to them of Christ’s love, themselves appeared as the living embodiment of that love. Especially remarkable in this respect was the humble monk Herman, who left the best memory among the natives and represents an example of that self-denial with which a Russian Orthodox man can dedicate himself entirely to serving the welfare of his spiritual children. Having settled on Spruce Island, Herman devoted himself entirely to enlightening the natives, whom he gathered around him and, as a father with children, conversed with them, teaching them not so much by words as by the very example of his life. With his own funds, he established something like a shelter, in which several Aleut orphan boys and girls lived, and he maintained this institution in such exemplary order that it received special attention from the company’s former head, Baron Wrangel. Thus, in apostolic labors and prayers, he lived on this isolated island, renamed by him “New Valaam,” until his death in 1837. Among the natives, who bitterly mourned the loss of their pious spiritual father, there later circulated accounts of his clairvoyance, as well as accounts that at the moment of his death his cell was filled with fragrance, and his face shone with unusual brilliance. These accounts are a tribute paid by grateful hearts of the spiritual children to the memory of their spiritual pastor!

Meanwhile, the activity of the mission was growing stronger, and the mission itself was becoming better organized. In 1796, the first wooden church was built and consecrated on Kodiak Island, and its bells brought joy to both Russians and natives alike. “In the new church they serve and ring the bells,” wrote the company’s chief manager, Baranov, with delight, and even earlier, sharing this same joy with Shelikhov, he wrote to him: “Rejoicing from my soul at the preaching here of the Gospel of holy faith, in my zeal I have given for the benefit of the church and the clergy 1,500 rubles for myself and 500 for various servants.” The archimandrite Iosaf himself made several journeys to the islands, was even on the American mainland, strengthening the faith, and at times acted as a peacemaker among quarreling and competing traders. On the mainland itself two portable churches were set up, and when a general survey of the results of missionary labors was made, those baptized amounted to about 12,000 of both sexes. Of course, this was only a handful among the masses still remaining in paganism; but in any case, a beginning had been made, and the future promised a rich harvest. At the sight of these good fruits of the mission, more than anyone else rejoiced the chief author of the whole endeavor, the merchant Shelikhov, who at that time was in Irkutsk, managing all the affairs of the company. But he was not satisfied even with these fruits and was burning with desire that the light of the Gospel would shine even brighter in the land he had discovered and illuminate all peoples living in it, whose numbers reached 50,000 souls. To give special energy and authority to the mission, he conceived the idea of establishing there a special diocese, under whose authority would fall all Russian possessions in America. He did not hesitate to appeal to the Holy Synod with a petition for the establishment of an episcopal see on Kodiak Island, promising it complete support at the company’s expense. His idea found approval from the Holy Synod, although, unfortunately, he did not live to see this happy moment, having died on July 20, 1795 in Irkutsk, where he was buried in the Novodevichy Monastery, leaving behind him a glorious name as one of the most remarkable Russian men, who showed himself not only a bold trader but a faithful servant of the state and a devoted son of the Orthodox Church.

The imperial confirmation of the determination to establish an episcopal see on Kodiak Island took place on July 19, 1796. The first and natural candidate for this see was, of course, archimandrite Iosaf, and he was to be elevated to the rank of “bishop of Kodiak and the other islands of America belonging to it, vicar of the Irkutsk diocese.” In view of his special position, he was assigned a comparatively large salary, unprecedented among other vicars—4,030 rubles and 85 kopecks per year, and for initial outfitting, 2,000 rubles. But difficulties arose in carrying out this determination. Who was to perform the consecration of the newly appointed bishop? If he were called to Russia, it would mean forcing the archimandrite to endure again the terribly difficult journey of almost 15,000 versts—partly by sea and partly by land through the impassable wilds of Siberia; even less reasonable would have been the idea of summoning archbishops from Russia or western Siberia somewhere to the shores of the Great Ocean to perform the consecration of Iosaf there. In view of such difficulties, it was decided to entrust the performance of the consecration to the Irkutsk Archbishop Veniamin alone. It is true that according to canonical rule, consecration should be performed by three or at least two archbishops; but this rule, according to the interpretation of the Holy Synod, applies more to the election than to the actual act of consecration itself; and since the election of Iosaf as bishop was performed by several hierarchs (members of the Holy Synod), the actual consecration could be entrusted to a single hierarch. But when one difficulty was removed, another appeared. Communication between Kodiak Island and Okhotsk according to the company’s rules took place only once every three years, and since the regular voyage of the scheduled ship already took place in 1796, it was necessary to wait for the next voyage, which was to occur only in 1799. Thus, the newly appointed bishop had to wait three years for his consecration. It is true that Shelikhov’s widow, Natalia Alexeevna, a worthy helpmate in all the undertakings and plans of her late husband, made efforts for this exceptional circumstance to send a ship ahead of schedule, a year earlier, in 1798; but even so, only after two years was the archimandrite Iosaf able to leave his remote island and arrived in Irkutsk with his necessary retinue. There, with due solemnity, Archbishop Veniamin performed the consecration of Iosaf (April 10, 1799—on Palm Sunday), and this unprecedented church ceremony in Irkutsk attracted not only the city’s inhabitants but masses of people from distant surroundings. All looked with unusual curiosity at the young bishop whose name was already known to everyone as that of a glorious enlightener of the savages in the newly discovered lands, and when His Grace Iosaf set out on his return journey with his retinue, he was seen off with sincere good wishes.

Without delay, Bishop Joasaph, upon his arrival in Okhotsk, boarded with his retinue a company ship named the “Phoenix,” and on May 10 the ship, its sails raised, moved across the waves of the unstable element. It is worth noting that given the insufficient exploration of ocean waters and the inadequate preparation of sailors, who relied more on their courage than on familiarity with maritime techniques, ocean voyages were fraught with very grave dangers. In the history of the early operations of the company of Russian traders, accounts of shipwrecks appear constantly—some of which were cast upon rocky shores and destroyed, others were carried by waves into unknown and desolate lands where they perished from savages or their own damages, still others were lost outright in the bottomless abyss of the ocean, seized by fierce storms and so forth. Here, among other things, are the trials that seafarers had to endure. The merchant Kiselev’s vessel, the “Saints Zosimas and Savvatius,” driven by unfavorable winds, was carried to such lands of which neither captain nor sailors had any notion. “From the time we left the Kurils,” Kozhin himself recounts in his description of this journey, sailing across the sea, we saw no land, and in the course of the voyage we came to such a place that one could not travel in one’s clothes, and at night stepping on deck the air was so heavy from the heat that the rigging melted, and around the vessel we saw many worms and water as if heated by fire, and the vessel leaked so badly that the pumps were never idle for a moment, but we took turns at them in shifts bailing out water and the labor exhausted the strength of the workers; but God was our helper, unwilling to destroy His creation, so all we could do was keep bailing water, but from the heat of the air there was no protection anywhere—neither in the cabin nor in the hold; everywhere the heat was unbearable. And the people despaired, and seeing themselves in a desperate situation, because fresh water was only one barrel, they chose another pilot and committed themselves to the power of all-wise God and began to serve an akathist to the Mother of God, and also to the saints Nicholas the Wonderworker and Zosimas and Savvatius, the Solovets miracle-workers. After the service, they brought the Mother of God out on deck, and also the saints, and they venerated them in place of confession and prayed with tears, and wherever God sends us weather, that is where we shall go, for we know not whether we traveled north or south, we found land nowhere, and in a short time favorable weather came from the south, we unfurled our sails and sailed with the wind, and we sailed one course for 1,800 versts, sustaining ourselves on rain water, and unexpectedly came to land, which turned out to be the island of Shuyakh[1]. But if a lucky star brought this ship unexpectedly to an island, the fate of other ships was much worse. Thus, Larionov’s ship, “Saints Peter and Paul and the Wonderworker Nicholas,” which departed from Okhotsk in the autumn of 1797, was tossed about for a long time on turbulent waves, and the people suffered terribly from want of water. When this ship was dashed upon coastal rocks, nine men died from exhaustion and from drinking water upon arriving at shore. The crews of many vessels driven to islands inhabited by savages perished at their hands, sometimes becoming victims of their cannibalism. Our missionaries were familiar with these dangers, but strengthened by firm trust in God and inspired by zeal to serve the glory of His name, they did not think of them, burning only with the desire to reach as soon as possible their native Kadiak, so that with fresh graces they might continue their apostolic ministry. The missionaries who remained on the island, along with their spiritual children, waited in longing expectation for these precious guests. They had already grown weary enough in their orphanhood during their leader’s absence and, moreover, had suffered not a little from representatives of the company, who at first received the spiritual fathers with great sympathy, but then seemed to begin to harbor a kind of envy when they saw how the fathers, with their paternal kindness, wholly bound the natives to themselves, who in turn began to feel the difference in how they were treated by those on the one hand and the others on the other. And these spiritual orphans gazed with ever-increasing impatience into the misty expanse of the ocean, wondering if the white sails of the familiar “Phoenix” might appear somewhere. But she did not come and did not come. Already the ordinary time for crossing the ocean had passed, yet the Phoenix still did not appear, and amid the gnawing anguish of waiting, finally the traders brought terrible news that they had found wreckage of the “Phoenix” cast by violent waves upon the shores of Kadiak. By the inscrutable judgments of God’s Providence, Bishop Joasaph was not destined to set foot as bishop upon the soil of the island illuminated by his apostolic labors and bless his flock. The “Phoenix,” plainly, became the victim of one of the fierce ocean storms and perished with all its passengers and cargo…[2]

This deeply tragic event darkened the whole subsequent history of the Valaam mission. The orphaned brothers seemed to fall into despondency, especially since from among them were lost forever the most active members who had constituted the very heart of all the apostolic work. Herman withdrew to his “New Valaam,” and there devoted himself entirely to missionary asceticism, while the other members somehow managed current affairs. It is true that soon they received reinforcement—in the form of several new mission members, among whom was particularly prominent the hieromonk Gedeon of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, a young, educated monk who had previously been a teacher at the Belgorod theological seminary and knew, among other things, French[3]; but this reinforcement did not lift the mission’s spirits, and Gedeon was forced only to witness the sad relations that were increasingly unfavorably developing between the company director Baranov and the missionaries. Even before this the missionaries had occasion to be somewhat dissatisfied with Baranov, this capable but proud and harsh man[4]; but later he became ever more crude and willful, so that the missionaries were finally forced to lodge a collective complaint against him with the Holy Synod[5], and hieromonk Gedeon later confirmed the substance of it in a special report to his Grace Ambrose, metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg. When the company learned of this, it submitted an explanation of its own, in which, pointing to its constant concern for the spread of Christianity among the savages and the construction of churches, it attempted to cast aspersions upon the missionaries themselves and expressed the opinion that under the existing conditions it would be better if the government were to send missionaries from the white clergy, as those pastors who, by their very condition standing nearer to life and its cares, could serve as a visible example of family virtues to the newly converted. This last opinion found approval, and in 1811 a resolution of the Holy Synod was issued for a fundamental change in the position of the North American mission. In accordance with it the American episcopal see was closed, and it was decreed that persons of the white clergy should be sent to carry out missionary work there, with the islands and coasts of America being attached to the Irkutsk diocese.

Thus ended the first period of the mission of the Orthodox Russian Church on the islands and mainland of North America. The period was not long, but highly fruitful, for it was during this time that the firm foundation of this holy work was laid, which remained only to be continued and developed by later workers. And all this glory of apostleship and enlightenment in a land of spiritual darkness belongs wholly to the Valaam Monastery, whose monks’ exploits, crowned with the martyr’s wreath and Christian endurance amid all adversities, forever formed a glorious page in its remarkable history.

A. Pavlovich

* * *

[1] Tikhmenev, pp. 68, 69.

[2] Among those in the suite of Bishop Joasaph were, among others, the hieromonk Macarius, the valiant enlightener of the Aleuts, and the hierodiacon Stephen (formerly of the officers), who were also buried in the bottomless depths of the ocean.

[3] He left behind, among other things, an interesting diary of his journey to America and his stay there. This diary, as we understand it, is being published by Valaam Monastery for the jubilee occasion.

[4] This had been hinted at earlier by the monk Herman, indeed in his letter to Father Nazarius of May 22, 1795. See “Valaam Monastery,” p. 125. But Father Macarius, finding no other way to bring the government’s attention to the wrongs suffered by the natives, himself deliberately traveled to St. Petersburg in the company of a party of Aleuts (in 1798).

[5] See case in the archive of the Holy Synod no. 564 for 1802.

Colophon

The Centenary of the Orthodox Mission in North America
by Professor Alexander Lopukhin.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
Sitka Bay, Alaska
by Theodore J. Richardson (American, 1855–1914), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Introduction
- Preface

- 1. The Opening of the Mission and the First Period of Its Activity

- 1. The Opening of the Mission and the First Period of Its Activity (Cont.)

- 1. The Opening of the Mission and the First Period of Its Activity (Cont.) (2)

- 1. The Opening of the Mission and the First Period of Its Activity (Cont.) (3)

- Colophon