Diary of Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin)

The diary of archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin) covers almost the entire conscious life of the author. Actual records begin in 1835 and break off on January 5, 1894. The diary contains enormous material for studying the life of the clergy, the system of church education in Russia in the first half of the 19th century, but the diary is especially important for the history of the Russian church-diplomatic presence in the Orthodox In the east, in the second half of the 19th century, beginning in 1850, the Diary is currently kept at the Russian State Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences (still in the archival collection of the Holy Synod F. 834. Op. 4. D. 1118–1132).

Composition and structure of the Diary of Archimandrite Antonin

The RGIA stores 14 volumes of the Diary, from 204 to 456 sheets each. Each of the volumes contains diaries for several years.

Volume 1 (135 p., 1817–1835) embraces the initial period of Andrei Kapustin's life and his studies at the Perm Theological Seminary.

Volume 2 (304 p., 1836-1839) - time of study at the Ekaterinoslav seminary and admission to the Kiev Theological Academy.

Volume 3 (204 p., 1840–1843) - years of study at the Kiev Theological Academy.

Volume 4 (246 p., 1844–1847) - the period of teaching at the Kiev Theological Academy, including the adoption of monastic tonsure.

Volume 5 (273 p., 1848–1853) - years of teaching at the academy, moving to Greece in September 1850, and rector at the embassy church in Athens.

Volume 6 (453 p., 1854–1860) - continues the “Athenian period”, including trips from Greece to Jerusalem and Egypt in 1857 and to Mount Athos in 1859.

Volume 7 (323 p., 1861–1864) - the period of reign in the embassy church in Constantinople.

Archimandrite Antonin's Palestinian Period of Life

Volume 8 (335 p., 1865–1868).

Volume 9th (304 p., 1869–1872).

Volume 10 (337 p., 1873–1876).

Volume 11 (325 p., 1877–1879).

Volume 12 (315 p., 1880–1882).

Volume 13 (1883–1886) is absent in the archive of the Russian State Archives of the Russian Academy of Arts; the original is lost.

Volume 14th (410 p., 1887–1890).

Volume 15 (300 p., 1891–5 January 1894).

Features of the formation of the author's text and volumes of the Diary

All volumes, with the exception of the 14th, are interwoven during the life of Fr. Antonina. The ornament and the inscription “Diary” with the initials of the author “A. K. ”and the designation of the years described in this volume.

The formation of volumes was carried out sequentially. First about. Antonin made daily rough notes, and at the end of the month he copied them in a special notebook containing notes for the year. Then several notebooks intertwined in one volume. Despite the fact that the entries in the notebooks are distributed by day, sometimes there are gaps, which the author of the Diary explains by the fact that he can’t remember what happened on these days. T.O. work on the Diary was not always of a daily nature, and its final version is a consequence of the author's literary processing of the final text. The diary has preserved many references to the "descendants", therefore, we can assume that the author was counting on the publication of his work some time after his death. Diary of Fr. Antonina, as it were, was originally intended for readers of the next century.

Diary Research

They started talking about the possibility of publishing the Diary immediately after the death of Archimandrite Antonin, but this question was blocked by V.N. Khitrovo and K.P. Pobedonostsevym . V.N. Khitrovo, immediately after the death of Archimandrite Antonin in 1894, described the significance of his Diary: "Their main interest is that they make up the daily almost chronicle of the Jerusalem Patriarchate over the past 30 years. If you add to them the notes of Bishop Porphyry from 1843 to 1860, the first of which is printed, will have the honor to bring to you the other day ^6, then we would get such a historical source document for the last 50 years of life of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, which probably no one has. But it is quite clear that to print it in the infusion it is impossible and transfer into private hands, which it will sell, too, is even more uncomfortable can be private letter to Archimandrite Antonin, and together with the diaries should seal with the inscription:. to open in 50 years. " ^[1] Due to fears that the author’s overly frank statements about still living people and his critical assessments and statements about the representatives of the Russian authorities may not be appropriate, Chief Prosecutor Synod K.P. Pobedonostsev demanded that all personal papers and the Diary of Archimandrite Antonin be transferred to his department. The myth of the existence of the will of the deceased was invented, according to which Fr. Antonin deposited his Diary with the Synod with the right to publish it no earlier than 40 years after his death. ^[2]

Despite such an actual ban, the study of the diary of Archimandrite Antonin began in this period. At the initiative of V.N. Khitrovo in the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society a few years after the death of Fr. Antonina made a typewritten (partially in handwritten form) copy of all volumes of the Diary.

Typewritten copy of the Diary.

The work on copying the Diary assumed the following sequence: decryption of the manuscript by scribes (who often did not know the Greek language and therefore simply left a space in the place where the Greek phrase should have been, marked on the margins), then typewriting and editing, with which introduced Greek words into the text, and occasionally made some editorial notes, and finally compiled pointers. For unknown reasons, it was not possible to consistently carry out all the work. It can be assumed that at some stage it was decided to put an end to the copying process. Part of the diary remained in the clerical copy. Then the entire array of copied text was divided into volumes. For each such volume indexes were compiled: nominal, geographical and subject. The last two were not present in all volumes. Sometimes all three pointers were combined into one. The pointers were partially annotated and at the moment, these annotations often serve as the only reliable guide for understanding the realities of the Diary. Compilation of pointers and annotations involved several people at the same time. This work could only be done by people directly familiar with the corresponding realities of the Holy Land. Obviously, one of those was V.N. Tricky. Another friend, Fr., took part in the work. Antonina, whose name often appears on the pages of the Diary, is the bibliographer S. I. Ponomarev . The first mention of copying the diary is contained precisely in the correspondence of S.I. Ponomareva with V.N. Tricky. “How much pleasure you brought me about Fr. Antonina! Not only that, I am ready to ask you, beg you, send me Antoninovskoe every single line. And this is not enough: I myself am even ready to copy them for you completely free of charge, ”wrote S. I. Ponomarev V. N. Khitrovo in a letter dated September 9, 1895. ^{[3] The} copied Diary first went to V.N.'s personal library. Khitrovo, and after his death, as part of the book collection of the late founder of the Palestinian Society, he entered the collection of the IOPS library.

The typewritten copy of the Diary created for the IOPS was used in the scientific works by the historian IOPS A.A. Dmitrievsky and V.N. Tricky.

After the revolution in Russia, the fate of the IPPO library was deplorable. At first it was under the jurisdiction of GAIMK (in 1923), then it was transferred without an inventory in bales and bundles to the Library of the Academy of Sciences, but in fact the books were stored in the premises occupied by the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From there, a significant part of the library and the entire Palestinian collection of photographs of the IOPS came to the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism of the USSR Academy of Sciences (in 1939). After concentrating the main administrative activities of the Palestinian Society in Moscow, a small number of books were transferred to him from the part of the IPO library that remained on the balance sheet of the BAN, among which were unpublished manuscript materials (in 1952). The final act in this destructive process was the transfer of the remains of the IOPS library from the BAN to the Moscow Patriarchate (in 1982) ^[4] Together with the IOPS library, the copy of V.N. Khitrovo Diary about. Antonina. Two volumes of the Diaries for 1873 and 1879 remained and are currently stored in the manuscript department of the BAS. Four other volumes of the Diary for 1866, 1868, 1870 and 1881 were transferred to the IOPS library in Moscow when it was located at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Apparently, copies of the Diary at that time were not perceived by anyone as a whole. Most of the Diaries, even before the Great Patriotic War, were at the disposal of the Museum of History and Atheism, which was originally located in the premises of the Kazan Cathedral on Nevsky Prospect in St. Petersburg. The utility rooms in the building not suitable for the museum were sorely lacking, and some funds, including a part of the IOPS library with Denvik volumes, were stored in boxes and stacks and were almost never used. The existence of this "museum" part of the diaries of Archimandrite Antonin was completely forgotten. As long as the Museum was located in the premises of the cathedral, it was not at all possible to find them. The situation changed after the museum moved to a new building on Pochtamtskaya Street (d. 14/5), where a separate room was allocated for the library and the opportunity appeared to arrange books on shelves. Fortunately, the Diary for 1883-1886 was among the volumes preserved in the GMIR library. which does not exist in the original. In the complete set of the copy version of the Diary, only three volumes are missing for 1869, 1871 and 1872. Their whereabouts are not currently known.

In Soviet times, the description of the volumes of the Diary of Fr. Antonina and their content was first made by M.A. Salmina. ^[5] Despite the fact that over time, the Diary more and more fell into the field of view of scientists, ^[6] its huge volume remained the main obstacle to the full work with this source. The reason for this was, on the one hand, Antonin’s handwriting, which was difficult to read, and, on the other hand, the poor understanding of the topic of the Russian presence in Palestine as a whole. The situation began to change after the appearance in 2000 of a two-volume document “Russia in the Holy Land” prepared by N.N. Lisov. This work essentially laid the foundation for an independent historical direction: the study of the Russian spiritual and political presence in Palestine and presented the main directions of this work. In the second volume of the publication fragments of Antonin's diaries were published, relating to the 1866, 1868, 1870 and 1881 years of his life. The four volumes of the Diary for these years, which are still in the IPPO library in Moscow for these years, are handwritten and one typewritten copy from an original copy stored in the Russian State Archives of Religious Studies. ^[7]

A systematic study and publication of fragments of the Diary of Archimandrite Antonin has been carried out since the 1990s. in the works of N. N. Lisovoy, R. B. Butova, L. A. Gerd, K.A. Waha, Abbot Barnabas (Averyanova).

Diary Edition

Copying of the Diary, undertaken by IOPS on the initiative of V.N. Khitrovo was essentially a preparation for its future publication, which did not take place for a number of reasons.

Currently, the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society and the Indrik Scientific Publishing Center are carrying out a large-scale project for the scientific publication of the entire body of the Diary of Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin). His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia in response to a letter from the IPPO Chairman Y. N. Shchapov blessed the undertaking and agreed to become honorary chairman of a team of scientists engaged in preparing the Diary for publication.

It was decided to publish individual volumes not in chronological order, but as they become available. Publishers found it possible to publish volumes containing both one specific year and a series of years that go one after another and united by one logical segment of the author’s life. The same principle was applied when creating a copy of the Diary by V.N. Tricky.

The following volumes of this publication have been published:

• A diary. Year 1850 / Edition prepared by L.A. Gerd, K.A. Wah. - M.: “Indrik”, 2013. - 184 p., Ill. ISBN 978-5-91674-276-3
• A diary. Years 1851-1855 / Edition prepared by L.A. Gerd, K.A. Wah. - M.: “Indrik”, 2015. - 536 p., Ill. ISBN 978-5-91674-364-7
• A diary. Years 1856-1860 / Edition prepared by L.A. Gerd, K.A. Wah. - M.: “Indrik”, 2017. - 712 p., Ill. ISBN 978-5-91674-466-8
• A diary. Year 1881 / Edition prepared by N. N. Lisova, R. B. Butov; Repl. ed. member correspondent RAS Ya. N. Shchapov. - M .: "Indrik" , 2011. - 384 p., Ill. ISBN 978-5-91674-131-5