Theophanes (Adamenko)

Young years

Born in 1885 at the Poputnaya station near Armavir in the family of a poor Kuban Cossack . From an early age, Vasily was distinguished by religiosity. In youth there was a period of vigorous search for the meaning of life ^[2] .

Back in 1908, he set about trying to translate the Orthodox service into Russian, even wrote about this to John of Kronstadt , but received no answer.

In 1909, on the recommendation of Nikolai Polyansky, a priest of the temple of his native village, he went to Odessa , where he enrolled in anti-sectarian missionaries, while working as a book writer (merchant of church literature) at the diocese and living on the Odessa compound of the Athos Andreevsky monastery ^[2] .

From March 30, 1910, he served as a psalmist in the Church of John the Merciful Village of Olshanka, Elizavetgrad District . He was a missionary in Ananyev , then in Odessa ^[1] .

Service in Yekaterinodar

March 13, 1916 was ordained a deacon , served in Yekaterinodar . Exactly one year later he was ordained a priest , and served in Odessa. ^[3] .

At the end of July 1917, he applied to the Kuban bishop for his transfer from Odessa to his homeland ^[3] .

In September, Priest Vasily was appointed diocesan missionary preacher with a residence in Yekaterinodar ^[1] . During his missionary trips to the villages with the temple carriage, he enjoyed great success, sometimes preaching in the open air, in front of a huge crowd. He had at his disposal a missionary carriage with a camp church. He quickly gained fame as a good preacher; he tried to reconcile Cossacks with “nonresident” (residents of the Kuban who did not have Cossack status) ^[2] .

During the civil war, he was in a conflict with both the “white” power, which he strongly denounced for the persecution and neglect of the poor, and the “red" ^[2] .

In 1918-1919 he asked for blessings from Patriarch Tikhon to work on a Russian translation of worship, but he said: “I can’t allow it, do it at your own peril and risk.”

Arrests and links

In 1919, as a priest of the Elias Church of the city of Yekaterinodar, he was arrested and sent to Nizhny Novgorod in a correctional house.

After his release, he worked for some time in Sormovo , issued and issued passes for train tickets.

The first debates spontaneously arose in Sormovo. Soon, Priest Vasily was invited to speak at official disputes. His performances were famous. Participated in disputes in Moscow. Once there was a dispute: the speaker was Lunacharsky , the opponent was Vvedensky ^[2] .

On December 11, 1920, he was again arrested in Yekaterinodar , where after the retreat of the “whites,” he continued to serve and conduct missionary activities, and by decision of KubcherCHK he was sent to Rostov-on-Don. The townspeople repeatedly sent a request to the Krechervkom committee, asking for the release of the priest under their guarantee. On April 22, 1921, the All-Russian High Commission in the Caucasus condemned him to 3 years of deportation. Sent to the Central Governorates of Russia, the city of Circus (Circus?) ^[3]

In the renovation schism

The desire to conduct divine services in Russian contributed to his evasion of Renovationist cancer in 1922 ^[2] . Since that time, he served in the Ilyinsky church in Nizhny Novgorod ^[1] . His wife, unable to withstand the ascetic lifestyle of her husband, left, taking the children, and there were six of them (the children also broke up with their father) ^[3] .

The following innovations were made in the Ilyinsky church, where he served: divine services in Russian, general confession (for those often confessing), frequent communion, and unification of each post. The service was daily, morning and evening, frequent night service. The whole liturgy was served in open doors, he said all the priestly prayers aloud. There was no choir, general singing was practiced. The priest encouraged frequent communion , attracted many young people to the church who made up the church community ^[2] .

In the book of Hegumen Damaskin (Orlovsky), “ Martyrs, Confessors, and Ascetics of the Piety of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century ” (T. 1. Tver, 1992), the following characteristic of his activity is given:

In the temple at about. Vasily everything was subordinated to strict piety, all conversations were forbidden in the altar, all mirrors were removed from the altar and sacristy, which he not only kept in the church, but also in the house. He was very non-possessive and did not take money for the demands. His spiritual children strictly fasted in the days established by the church charter, and often he blessed some of the youth to preach in the temple.

At the temple, activities were launched to translate liturgical tests into Russian. The transfers were made by Vasily himself, members of the community and persons not belonging to the community. Correspondence, reprint, editorial and publishing work was carried out by community members. Printed in a prison printing house. Community members conducted corrective work and sometimes participated in typing. In Nizhny Novgorod, “The Servant in Russian” ( 1924 ) was published, containing, in particular, the order of the three liturgies, “The Order of Vespers in Russian” ( 1925 ), Trebnik, “A collection of church services, songs of major holidays and private prayers of the Orthodox Churches in Russian ”( 1926 ; reprinted in Paris by the publishing house IMKA-Press , 1989 ). In addition, a significant part of the texts remained in the manuscripts: translations of a large number of services (the Service Minea was almost completely translated from April to June), akathists, and followings of the bishop's service. The location of these transfers is unknown. A feature of the translations of Vasily Adamenko was that he knew and actively used the experience of his predecessors. His translation activity, which was approved by the specialist in liturgics, Professor Mikhail Skaballanovich , was perhaps the only one in the renovation camp that really deserves attention translation experience.

The biographers of Hieromonk Feofan emphasize that his belonging to the renovation movement was formal and, as far as possible, he distanced himself from the renovation leaders. The documents show that this is not so: Hieromonk Feofan took part in official renovation events. At the same time, the community of Vasily Adamenko was not satisfied with the results of the renovation pre-conciliar meeting, therefore, formally belonging to the renovation synod, he sends a delegate to the congress of the Church Revival Union, which had previously separated from the renovation synod. At this congress, the appeal of the Nizhny Novgorod community, addressed to Patriarch Tikhon, Metropolitan Evdokim (Meshchersky) and Bishop Antonin (Granovsky), is read, which says: “Give us in our native tongue public and private prayer and worship, rationality and meaningfulness in singing and reading, so that we can be alone with our lips and one heart we glorified and sang the omnipotent and magnificent name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — God ” ^[4] . In October 1925, he took an active part in the discussion of language in the work of the second renovation “Local Council”, he spoke in defense of church life reforms and, in particular, on introducing the Russian language into the practice of worship, as the most useful measure for returning to the fold of the church Orthodox apostates, sectarians and unbelievers ^[3] .

Since April 16, 1926 he was a member of the central missionary council at the All-Russian Renovationist Synod ^[1] .

In February 1927, he participated in the first All-Union Missionary Meeting in Moscow, where he was elected a member of the Central Missionary Council ^[1] . He delivered the speech “Sectarianism and the Fight against It”, which was published in the Bulletin of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Russian Church, N 7-8, 1927 ^[3] .

He was elected a member of the Nizhny Novgorod renovation diocesan administration. On June 12, 1930 he was elected a member and secretary of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Metropolitan Church Administration. December 10, 1930 was awarded the club ^[1] .

Vasily Adamenko’s work was enthusiastically met by update leaders. The renovationist Archbishop Mikhail (Popov), in a review of 1924 Adamenko, sharply criticizes the author for his translations ^[4] . Metropolitan Alexander Vvedensky , having arrived in Nizhny Novgorod, in every possible way flattered Priest Vasily, but, returning to Moscow, declared: “Enough of this endekovschina and Adamism” to us. (Priest Alexander Endeka served in a church on Lubyanka Square and belonged to the few “ideological” Renovationists) and the leader of the Renovationists tried to achieve the liquidation of the community.

Return to the Patriarchal Church

In 1931 he repented and was accepted by the Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan of Nizhny Novgorod Sergius (Stragorodsky) to the Patriarchal Church ^[5] . Apparently, it was then that he accepted monasticism with the name Theophanes.

On January 26, 1935, a certificate was signed by the Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) ^[6]

The present is given to you. Adamenko (now Hieromonk Feofan) that, on the basis of the definition of the Patriarchate dated April 10, 1930, No. 39, I was given the blessing to worship in Russian by the Ilyinsky community of N-Novgorod (formerly in the leadership of Fr. Adamenko), “But with the indispensable condition that the text of the liturgy used in them is only a translation of the liturgical Slavic text accepted by our Orthodox Church without any arbitrary insertions or changes” (resolution of January 24, 1932, paragraph 2).

Moreover, a blessing has been given for some of the features of worship that have become familiar to them, such as the opening of the royal gates, reading the Holy Scriptures facing the people (as in the Greek church) and, “as an exception, reading secret prayers publicly” ( Section H).

Guided by the example of the late His Holiness Patriarch, I find no obstacle for the Bishops of the Diocesan Church, if they find it useful, to allow Hieromonk Theophanes (or others) to do the same and each in his diocese.

This decision of Metropolitan Sergius was made in accordance with the decisions of the Local Council of 1917-1918 that “a statement by a parish about the desire to listen to worship in the Russian or Little Russian language to the extent possible is subject to satisfaction upon approval of the transfer by the church authorities” ^[7] . This precedent is used by supporters of the translation of the service into Russian as an argument in favor of the fundamental possibility of the Russification of the liturgy and other liturgical texts.

Arrests, camps, death

December 9, 1931 he was arrested and until 1934, was imprisoned in the Krasnoye Vishera camps. In connection with the arrest of Archpriest Vasily at the Church of St. the prophet Elijah in Nizhny Novgorod, where he was rector, there were disturbances. On January 23, the renovationist Nizhny Novgorod Central Executive Committee reported unrest in the community of the Nizhny Novgorod Elias Church in connection with the arrest of Archpriest Adamenko, "who revealed completely unhealthy, in the spirit of autocephalism and even direct sectarianism, biases of the executive body of the Ilya community, under the influence mainly of V. I. Abaimov." In this regard, the Renovationist Metropolitan of Nizhny Novgorod, John (Mirtov), ​​proposed that the parish council of the church be excluded from the renewal orientation, and V. Abaimov should be excluded from the diocesan administration and the Novgorod metropolitan church administration. On March 28, 1932, the Nizhny Novgorod Renovationist Diocesan Administration reported to the Renovationist Synod, “that the Ilyinsky Church in Nizhny Novgorod on February 28, p. the city was transferred to the renovation group of the same Elijah Community and with a petition to approve the named temple by the cathedral and to allow the services to be performed in Russian, according to the desire of the renovation group that took the Elias temple ” ^[5] .

In the same year, the renovation synod, having examined the request of the Pyatigorsk diocesan administration for permission to use the Russian language for worship, stated: “The Synod must state that, unfortunately, there is still no satisfactory translation of the Service, especially the liturgy, into Russian. The commonly used translations (Antonin Granovsky, V. Adamenko, Zhukov) suffer from many significant shortcomings, of which the most important is the fact that they are not a translation, but an arrangement of the canonized text of the Divine Liturgy. In particular, the translation of V. Adamenko contains many arbitrary additions that do not even agree with the spirit of the Orthodox Renovationism (litany of the catechumens, which is better to completely omit than to offer in the translation of V. Adamenko and others) ” ^[5] .

The priest Vasily Aboimov and deacon John Frolov, who served along with Hieromonk Theophanes, were sent to the village of Pokhotny Usad , where they served in Russian with the blessing of Metropolitan Sergius. Soon about. Vasily Aboimov was arrested.

On July 2, 1934, he was released ahead of schedule ^[1] . received a residence permit in Vladimir , but lived in Nizhny Novgorod. In the spring of 1935 he was again arrested, serving a new term in the Karaganda camps, where he participated in secret services. According to the testimony of V. M. Voinova, after the arrest of Vasily Adamenko, Metropolitan Sergius tried to inquire about his fate ^[4] .

He was arrested for the last time in the camp and sentenced to death on November 14, 1937 in the same case with Archbishop Sergiy (Zverev) . November 20 was shot.

On October 27, 1943, shortly before this, the Sergius (Stragorodsky) , elected by the Patriarch of All Russia, sent to the Council for Orthodox Church Affairs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR a petition for amnesty for a number of imprisoned clergymen whom he "wished to involve in church work." The list attached to the application included the names of 25 bishops and priest Feofan (Adamenko). By that time, only Bishop Nikolai (Mogilevsky) was alive from the entire list, while the rest were already shot or died in the camps ^[8] .

After the death of Patriarch Sergius, the Moscow Patriarchate was quite tolerant of translations of the priest. Vasily Adamenko. According to the testimony of E. A. Karmanov , in the 1950s, the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate had a significant number of published translations of Adamenko. These translations did not go on sale, but were distributed among employees ^[4] .

In the 1990s, they recalled the translations of Hieromonk Feofan (Adamenko), part of which was reprinted. The personality of Hieromonk Feofan (Adamenko) was also of interest, the question was raised of his canonization, which did not happen, but, nevertheless, in a number of publications he is called a holy martyr .

In July 2008, pilgrims from Moscow visited the Arable Usad and met two old women who remembered the priest Vasily Adamenko. Thanks to the locals, the rural temple survived during the years of Soviet rule, but later burned down due to electricity problems.

In 2010, in Moscow, the Society of Church History Lovers reprinted The Trebnik, translated by Fr. Vasily Adamenko.

• Serviceman in Russian. (Transfer). Nizhny Novgorod. 1924
• The order of the all-night service in Russian. (Transfer). Nizhny Novgorod. 1925
• A collection of church services, chants of major holidays and private prayers of the Orthodox Church in Russian. (Transfer). Nizhny Novgorod. 1926
• “What to do?” (On urgent reforms in the liturgical practice of the Russian Orthodox Church). Samara: Church Life. 1927
• Trebnik: a prayer book for the sacraments of the Orthodox Church in Russian / priest. Vasily Adamenko. - N.-Novgorod: [b. and.], 1927. - [1], 308 p.
• On the availability of church services // Bulletin of the Russian Orthodox Church. — 1988.- № 154. — С.5-12.
• Сборник суточных церковных служб, песнопений главнейших праздников и частных молитвословий православной церкви: на русском языке / сост., пер. свящ. В. Адаменко. — Paris : YMCA-PRESS, 1989. — 461 с.
• Дело № 1879. Адаменко Василий Иванович [Ксерокопия] : архивные материалы / Управление КГБ при Совете министров СССР по Горьковской области. — Н. Новгород : [б. и.], 1931—1989.
• Требник: молитвослов для совершения священнодействий православной церкви. На русском языке / В переводе свящ. Василия Адаменко. — М. : [б. и.], 2010. — 358 с. Предисл. свящ. Ильи Соловьева

• hierom. Damaskin (Oryol) Martyrs, confessors and ascetics of the piety of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th century: Biographies and materials for them. Tver, 1992. Book 1. S.203-207.
• Kravetsky A.G. The problem of the service language at the Council of 1917-1918 and in subsequent decades // ZhMP. 1994. N 2. S.80-82.
• Soloviev Ilya, priest. Foreword // In the book “Trebnik. Prayer for the performance of the priesthood of the Orthodox Church. " Translated by the priest Vasily Adamenko. M. 2010.S. 3 - 8.