Cyril (Florinsky, archimandrite)

Born at the very beginning of the XVIII century. According to Archbishop Filaret (Gumilevsky), "there was a grandson of the priest Kozma and the son of the priest Avdiy Florinsky" who served in the village of Vorozhba of Lebedyansky district ^[1] .

He graduated from the Kharkov College , then in 1729-1732 he studied abroad. Upon returning from abroad to Kharkov, he was tonsured a monk and in November 1732 he was identified as a teacher of piety in the Kharkov Collegium.

On February 22, 1733, he was ordained a hierodeacon , and on May 13, at a hieromonk .

He was also a teacher of philosophy, and from September 1, 1735, the prefect of the Kharkov College.

In 1736 he began to teach theology at the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy in Moscow; was her prefect, as well as rector of the Simonov Monastery .

In July 1741 he was appointed archimandrite of the Zaikonospassky monastery.

September 5, 1742 transferred to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery ^[2] , and in October of that year ^[3] opened the Trinity Lavra Seminary .

The tutors invited the tutors of the Slavic-Greek-Latin and Kiev academies. With his works, a seminary library was established, under which two chambers under the halls and three chambers in the city wall of the monastery were specially allocated ^[4] .

He participated in the publication of the Bible . Cyril submitted that the ancient Slavic text is closer to the ancient Alexandrian than the Vatican text and proved that in the latter there are many inserts on one side and omissions on the other; therefore, he proposed to leave the correction of the Russian text of the Bible in Vatican begun under the influence of Feofan Prokopovich and to print directly in the ancient Slavic, and his opinion was accepted.

He also wrote a number of preaching and dogmatic works.

He died on January 9, 1744. He was buried in the southern half of the western vestibule of the Assumption Cathedral, although Trinity archimandrites were usually buried near the Serapion Tent, located near the southern wall of the Trinity Cathedral. His grave was not marked with either a stove or a commemorative plaque. After dismantling the narthex in 1781, his grave was forgotten for many years. The only reminder of the place of his burial was the entry in the monastery’s inset book of 1672/1673 ^[3] .

The library of the Moscow Academy kept the written “Theology positive and polemical, taught at the Moscow Academy by Cyril Florinsky” in Latin; according to Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov), "the science of Father Cyril is far superior to the science of Lopatinsky, both in terms of systematic harmony and less scholasticism in resolving issues."

At the end of November 2009, at the direction of the Patriarchal Architectural and Restoration Center for earthworks, at the southwestern corner of the Assumption Cathedral, at the depth of about 2 m from the surface, the remains of Archimandrite Kirill were discovered. The skeleton was located in an unusually wide wooden coffin, from which preserved sub-side walls and bottom. In the course of this work, sheared and paraman crosses, lining icons and pearls were found that adorned the miter of Archimandrite Cyril ^[3] .

• Cyril (Florinsky) // Russian Biographical Dictionary : 25 t. / Under the supervision of A. A. Polovtsov. 1896-1918.