Seminary

Training the Orthodox Clergy in the Republic of Estonia, 1918-1940

On 21 March 1919, the First Plenary Assembly of the Estonian Orthodox Diocese decided to establish the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church (EAOC), which was realised on 10 May 1920 when Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow granted the new church autonomy. On 7 July 1923, Patriarch Meletios V of Constantinople extended this autonomy still further. The new church had much greater rights and opportunities than before to organise church life according to the needs of the local population. Among the many issues to be resolved, the preparation of a sufficient number of clergy to ensure the Church’s viability was a major one. Meeting the religious needs of thousands of people and organising church-state relations fell mainly on the shoulders of the Orthodox clergy, whose scarcity was a permanent problem for the Church.

From the Riga Seminary to a Chair at the University of Tartu

The Orthodox congregations of Estland and Livland provinces were initially served mainly by Russian clergymen educated in Russian seminaries. The number of clergy of Estonian nationality began to increase in the mid-nineteenth century during the extensive conversion of Estonians to the Orthodox Church in the 1840s and 1880s. The initial conversion wave prompted the church authorities to introduce Estonian and Latvian language teaching at the Pskov seminary in 1843 and to open a five-class church school in Riga in 1847 [1]. Based on the latter, the Riga ecclesiastical seminary, opening in 1851, was the main educational institution preparing Estonian-speaking clergy until the establishment of the Republic of Estonia – up to 1918, at least 931 students with some connection to Estonia and 663 of Estonian nationality studied in Riga’s Orthodox schools. Significantly fewer Estonians were educated in Moscow, St Petersburg, or Pskov, and there are no precise statistics for them.

With the change of the political map in 1918, all these educational institutions were outside Estonian borders. By that time, the Church’s territorial boundaries had also changed. On 13 January 1918, the Estonian Pavel Kulbusch was consecrated as bishop with the name of Platon, thus completing the ‘restoration’ of the suffragan diocese of Tallinn, which had been on the agenda since 1887. In these new ecclesiastical and political circumstances, the bishop had to find a way to provide theological education in Estonian.

Bishop Platon decided to carry out the plan on the agenda at the meeting of the Estonian clergy in Tartu on 25-26 May 1917. Widely supported was the idea of closing down the Riga seminary altogether, since it taught an outdated curriculum: in its place would be an Estonian-language Orthodox faculty at the University of Tartu. In the spring of 1918, the bishop appealed to the university with a request to this effect; in May, the Council of Professors approved the suggestion in principle. Due to difficult political circumstances, however, Platon’s plan did not come to fruition before his death on 14 January 1919.

On 5 September 1919, Archpriest Nikolai Päts, chairman of the Council of the Diocese of Estonia, submitted a request to the university’s government to open an Orthodox dogmatics chair. The university government agreed on 7 September, but initially left open whether the chair would be created in the Faculty of History and Philosophy or the Faculty of Theology. The question was not finally settled until 1925. The decision meant the restoration of continuity after the interruption of war and political reforms, since Orthodox theology had been taught to Orthodox students at the University of Tartu since 1834. Orthodox religious teachers at the university from 1834 to 1850 included fathers Petr Karzov and Fedor Berezkii, while the Orthodox theology professors were fathers Pavel Alekseev (1850-84), Pavel Obraztsov (1885-92), and Arsenii Tsarevskii (1892-1917) [2]. In 1865, the Orthodox chair of theology was included in the official list of university chairs, but its purpose at that time was to provide religious education for students taking other disciplines, not to prepare qualified theologians. The number of students was small and the professorial load was light. The creation of the new chair was also innovative, since the plan was that the new chair should train Orthodox clergy, offering its students a full religious education: traditionally, the education of an Orthodox priest is considered to be vocational or secondary education in a clerical seminary. Few seminary graduates go on to higher education - clerical academies or universities. Thus, the system introduced in Estonia in 1919 departed from the traditions of the Orthodox Church in providing clerical education [3].

The Orthodox chair at the University of Tartu

On the proposal of the Council of the Diocese of Estonia, Archpriest Karp Tiisik was confirmed as the first professor of Orthodox Dogmatics [4]. From the very beginning, there were doubts as to whether the chair would justify itself. The main potential problem, pointed out both by Tiisik himself and by Juhan Kartau, the Minister of Education who had approved the decision to open the chair, was the lack of potential students. Indeed, for the first few years, the chair operated without an audience; it was not until the second half of 1921 that two students from the Faculty of Mathematics began to attend Tiisik’s lectures. The Church was also concerned about the lack of attendees, puzzling given there were over 200 Orthodox students present at the university. Initially, the number of participants may have been influenced by the non-faculty status of the Orthodox chair of dogmatics, which made it possible to take its courses only as side subjects. The chair could not independently admit students or award degrees.

After Tiisik’s death on 30 June 1922, the Synod submitted the candidature of Archpriest Vasilii Martinson, who had returned to Estonia from Russia only on 12 June [5]. Although Martinson was the only suitable candidate for the post of professor, there was a problem with his appointment because the University of Tartu could not decide what degree should be awarded for Martinson’s programme. Nor could Martinson’s backlog of research in Petrograd be examined. So in October 1922, he was elected professor, but did not become a full professor until 21 May 1931.

Under Martinson, the chair’s faculty affiliation was finally resolved. Negotiations between the Church, the university government, the Faculty of Theology, and the Ministry of Education, which started in autumn 1922, resulted in the decision of the Council of the Faculty of Theology on 18 October 1923 to open the chair of Orthodox Dogmatics. The actual incorporation of the chair into the faculty was delayed for over a year due to the finalisation of the details of the curriculum, and was completed in January 1925.

Students who were admitted to the chair were obliged to follow the religious studies curriculum and pass the examinations prescribed therein on the same basis as other students. As an exception, they were required to take the history of dogmatics, systematic dogmatics, and liturgics. Two subjects were replaced for Orthodox students - instead of the doctrine of church governance, they studied the canons and Orthodox ecclesiastical history in the East and the Baltic. As Professor Martinson’s competence now included reading other subjects in addition to dogmatics courses, the chair began its activities in the faculty under a slightly changed name - the chair of Apostolic Orthodox Science.

The implementation of a full curriculum and the attachment of a chair to the Faculty of Theology were expected to lead to a significant increase in the number of students, but it remained low. Between 1925 and 1940, 29 students attended full-time lectures, of whom only five graduated: Vladimir Karinskii, Rostislav Lozinskii (1934), Aleksandr Osipov, Edvald Õunapuu (1935), and Aleksander Jürisson (1938). Osipov and Õunapuu graduated with master’s degrees. Lozinskii, Osipov, and Jürisson became priests. Four other students - Theodor Bleive, Nikolai Hindov, Vitali Täht, and Artemi Pops, who were the first permanent students admitted to the chair in the autumn of 1925 - were elected priests before taking examinations and so were forced to interrupt their studies in order to work [6]. Considering that there were more than 150 Orthodox parishes in Estonia in the 1930s, the chair’s output was certainly not sufficient for the needs of the Church. In 1931, the Synod estimated that it would need at least five priest candidates from the university each year.

Why did the plan to train university-educated priests fail? The archival material points to a discrepancy between the cost of a university education and the social background of potential priest candidates as the main reason. Most of the students admitted to the chair came from families unable to finance their children’s university education. The Church tried to resolve the situation by introducing scholarships. It was hoped that larger congregations would also support students. In 1924, the Pärnu and Valga congregations, along with the Tallinn St Nicholas and St Alexander parishes, expressed their willingness to allocate between 36,000 and 42,000 Estonian marks per year each to support students. In 1926, however, the congregations were no longer willing or able to pay the promised amount. Collections did not produce the desired results either, because in many parishes, especially in small rural localities, people did not have any money to spare.

Thus, in the autumn of 1926, the Synod decided to start paying scholarships from its own funds. Formal statutes made the payment of the scholarship conditional on the student’s conduct and academic performance. According to the conditions, only students who had already completed one semester of study and passed at least one examination were qualified for the scholarship. Thus, these stipends did not help those who had no means to move to Tartu and rent a place to live. In addition, due to the Church’s economic weakness, the number of these scholarships began to decrease: while the plan provided for five of at least 36,000 marks, four scholarships of 36,000 marks were paid out in the academic year 1926/1927 and three of 25,000 marks in the academic year 1927/1928 [7]. From then on, both the size and number of scholarships varied and were paid out each year according to the financial capacity of the Church, which was further affected by the global economic crisis in the early 1930s.

 Officially registered in November 1929 and launched in January 1930, the Church’s Study Capital Society, which aimed to raise additional funds to support Orthodox students, did not go beyond raising basic capital. Its membership was smaller than expected, which also meant that it had less income: the number of members did not exceed 31, even though there were over 150 Orthodox parishes in Estonia, in addition to parishes, congregations, and other ecclesiastical associations [8]. Thus, the Finnish Orthodox Church’s 1931 subsidy of 5,000 Finnish marks per year to Estonian Orthodox students was a great help. In addition, the Church of Finland supported visits of Estonian students to Finnish monasteries and clerical institutions of learning: for example, in the summer of 1931, the student Andrei Auväärt was able to study at the Valaam monastery with the support of the Finns. Despite the help of the Finns, there was not enough money to support everyone who wished to do so. Due to the Church’s generally weak economic situation, students of theology had no hope of earning a decent salary as priests - most Orthodox clergy, especially in rural areas, worked as clerks, school teachers, beekeepers, or farmers to support themselves and their families. Thus, young men could not hope that the sums invested in a university education would ever pay off.

 Even those who managed to get support for their studies from one or more sources found it difficult to make ends meet. Aleksandr Osipov, one of the most prominent alumni of the Orthodox chair, received support from his mother, the Synod, the St Nicholas church in Tallinn, and the Society for the Relief of the Poor; he also served as a reader in the Tartu Dormition of the Mother of God cathedral, which helped him with accommodation. However, any reduction or withdrawal of support threatened his studies [9].

 Although the chair’s lack of popularity disappointed the Church, it was not ready to give up. When, on 19 October 1932, Karl Einbund’s government decided to change the Orthodox professorship to the post of teacher of special subjects from 1 January the following year, the Synod came out strongly against the change. In an appeal to the Minister of Education, it was stressed that only a full professor could ensure the preparation of sufficiently qualified ecclesiastical students. In an official letter sent to the Faculty of Theology, it was admitted that although the increase in the number of students had been slow, it was steady and proved the success and need for the chair. With the intervention of the Synod and the dean of the Faculty of Theology, the new government under Konstantin Päts decided on 7 December 1932 to maintain the professorship. In reality, the retention of the chair was by then probably more a matter of prestige than necessity for the Church. The chair’s abolition would have left higher religious education in Estonia in the hands of the Lutheran Church alone: equally, the existence of the chair enhanced the reputation of the Estonian Orthodox Church in the region.

 The Orthodox chair at the University of Tartu was closed down by the Soviet authorities. On 13 August 1940, a law on the abolition of religious education in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic was issued. In accordance with this law, the Faculty of Theology was closed on 31 August, together with its chair of Orthodox studies; Professor Martinson was granted emeritus status. Although the Orthodox chair was re-established when the Faculty of Theology was reopened by the German occupation authorities on 1 August 1941, it no longer provided any real teaching and was dissolved again on 1 July 1943, when Professor Martinson finally retired.

Clerical Courses

Alongside the Church’s official plan to start preparing clergy at universities, ideas were also put forward to provide lower-level clerical training. Already in 1918, Professor Aleksander Kaelas presented a plan to organise summer courses for clergy; in 1919, Archpriest Joann Paavel came up with the idea of founding an Orthodox secondary school. Smaller congregations repeatedly drew the Synod’s attention to the fact that only large urban parishes needed priests with higher education, so those with vocational or secondary education would be perfectly fine as priests. The Synod again returned to these earlier ideas in 1925 when preparations began for opening both clerical courses and a private Orthodox secondary school. The main coordinator of these study programmes was the priest and school teacher Karp Eberling. In February 1926, a proposal was submitted to the Ministry of Education to establish an Estonian Humanities Lyceum, which would provide in-depth religious education at the expense of handicrafts and home economics. In July 1926, the Ministry agreed to open a school named the Estonian Orthodox Synod Humanitarian Lyceum. However, probably for financial reasons, the school did not open in the autumn.

The plan to hold two-year evening courses for adults with the aim of training priests and choirmasters did not materialise until 1932. The first of these ran from 31 October to 12 November 1932 in the main hall of the Transfiguration of the Lord church in Tallinn. 31 priests with no special clerical training and 23 lay people were invited. Conducted by Archpriest Nikolai Leisman, the total duration of the courses was 72 hours [10]. The programme included general, dogmatic, moral, and comparative theology, exegesis, liturgics, church history, the Estonian language, and church singing. Lectures were given by Metropolitan Aleksander (Paulus) of Tallinn and the archpriests Joann Paavel, Nikolai Päts, Mihhail Uusna, Christofor Vink, and Joann Ümarik. In addition, the participants had to write a short essay on topics like “What made me choose the vocation of pastor?” Completion of the course qualified the candidate to take priest examinations. In total, 34 people finised the courses, 12 clergy and 22 laymen. During the course, Jakob Sarv and Nikolai Rand were ordained priests, while the priest exams were passed by Artemi Pops, Mihhail Tapp, Johannes Ervart, Feliks Remberg, and Paul Hirv.

In September 1937, on the initiative of Archpriest Ioann Bogoiavlenskii and Father Aleksandr Osipov, evening clerical courses in Russian were opened in Tallinn, with 20 participants per month. The three-year courses consisted of lectures held two days a week during the academic year. Lectures were also given by Father Georgii Alekseev and the school teacher Iuliia Kallin. The curriculum included the Old Testament, the New Testament, church history, and Old Church Slavonic. The most notable graduate was Mikhail Ridiger, future priest of the Kazan church in Tallinn and father of Patriarch Aleksii II of Moscow [11].

A Seminary in Petseri

A permanent clerical educational institution was established in Estonia in 1933. Its opening in the Petseri monastery was delayed by the lack of funds and the political squabbles that had broken out around the monastery. It was only after the so-called ‘monastery war’ had been resolved and Bishop Ioann (Bulin) relieved of his post as abbot that preparations for the opening of the educational institution began in earnest. The study period was two years. The monastery allocated premises for the seminary, which included a classroom, two dormitories, a washroom with a cloakroom, and a staff lounge. The Ministry of Education registered the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Seminary on 11 July 1933; on the proposal of the Synod, Archbishop Nikolai (Leisman) of Petseri was named as its head. On 1 August of the same year, Archpriest Joann Paavel from Tallinn was appointed assistant director and Father Peeter Pähkel as third lecturer. In January 1938, they were joined by Archpriest Joann Envere, who took over the duties of assistant director on 5 November 1939. The seminary was inaugurated on 3 September 1933, with the participation of Metropolitan Aleksander: Archbishop Herman (Aav) of Finland, who was invited to the opening, and Konstantin Konik, Minister of Education and Social Affairs, sent their greetings by telegram. Teaching at the seminar started on 5 September.

The seminary’s curriculum was designed to provide comprehensive theoretical and practical training over two years. The theoretical subjects included moral theology, exegesis, dogmatics, philosophy, church history, and comparative religion, while the practical subjects included church singing, homiletics, Estonian, Russian, household management, horticulture, and first aid. While the ecclesiastical subjects and languages were initially divided among three clerical lecturers, the courses in household management, horticulture, and first aid were taught by lay specialists. In the spring of 1934, the Synod proposed that the seminary should also teach didactics, which would enable its graduates to obtain a qualification as teachers of religious education. The Board of Studies gave its full support to the proposal and decided to include religious education methodology in the programme, in addition to didactics. Archbishop Nikolai himself began to teach both subjects.

However, passing the professional teaching examination was a problem, as the seminary did not have the right to administer it. The Ministry of Education and Social Affairs recommended that the vocational examination be taken at Tallinn Pedagogical College, but the latter considered this impossible due to the incompatibility of the two schools’ curricula. Thus, seminarians who still wished to obtain the profession of religious teacher were obliged to complete an additional two-year course at the Tallinn or Tartu pedagogical colleges. From the autumn of 1935, the state made allowances for seminary graduates in this respect by permitting them to enter pedagogical colleges without entrance examinations and by paying them an allowance of 20 crowns per semester to continue their studies.

The seminary functioned more efficiently than the Orthodox chair, and interest in studying there was much greater. This was ensured by simplified admission conditions, lower costs, and a better system of grants. The basic courses at the seminary, which were to train priests, admitted men under 40 with a secondary education. On graduation, they received a diploma entitling them to apply for the post of parish priest. Men with primary educations were also admitted to the seminary as free students; on successful completion of the courses, they received a certificate which opened the way to pastoral ministries. At least ten seminarians were guaranteed free tuition and maintenance by the monastery, while their only obligation was to pay a one-time admission fee of 10 crowns. The others also received accommodation from the monastery, but had to pay 15 crowns a month. Thus, in comparison with the University of Tartu, the seminary was in many ways more suitable for the students - there was no separate tuition fee, accommodation was guaranteed for a relatively low monthly fee, and the study period was shorter; with good skills and knowledge, it was possible to live and study in Petseri completely free of charge. The seminary was also beneficial to the Church because, unlike the university chair, it received permanent support from three sources - the Petseri monastery’s own income, the Synod, and, from the academic year of 1934/1935, the Ministry of Education. The donations of private individuals should not be forgotten; for example, the opening of the seminary was greatly assisted by the commitment of Anton Karu from Tallinn in 1929 to donate a stipend of 250 crowns a year for the preparation of clergymen.

The seminary’s popularity is proven by the fact that in its first year, 50 young men applied to study there, of whom the best 20 were accepted according to the results of the entrance exams (mother tongue, singing, religious education). Of these, 19 seminarians and free students graduated on 7 June 1935; only one had to remain to take an exam in philosophy. Of these, six had been ordained priests by the summer of 1936, two had become deacons, and ten had decided to continue their studies in pedagogy. The number of students and graduates decreased after the first year, but remained high compared to the university - eleven seminarians and five students graduated in 1937, three seminarians and four students in 1939, and five seminarians and two students in 1940. Several graduates of the Petseri seminary went on to become church administrators – Nikolai Bezhanitskii was dean of Pärnu from 1950 to 1989, Sergei Hints was dean of Võru from 1948 to 1974, and Mihhail Raud was dean of Tallinn from 1956 to 1959. Some of the alumni continued their studies in higher education: Konstantin Shakhovskoi went to study at the University of Warsaw in 1936, where he graduated in June 1939 with a master’s degree in religious studies. His studies in Warsaw were supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education through the Estonian Orthodox Church.

The Petseri seminary was closed down by the Soviet authorities. In July 1940, the Red Army occupied most of the seminary’s premises, using them to house Red Army soldiers. Due to the lack of rooms and the loss of state support, teaching was no longer possible. On 6 August 1940, Acting President Maksim Unt signed a decree on the closure of all private educational institutions on the territory of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Petseri seminary was officially closed. Following the closure of the Faculty of Theology of the Tartu University later that month, Orthodox clerical education in Estonia was discontinued for more than 60 years.

Notes

[1] Although Emperor Nicholas’ decision to establish the Riga school dates from February 1846, the actual teaching began on 1 September 1847.

[2] Although the emperor’s decision to appoint a religious teacher to the university dates from 31 October 1833, Karzov began work in 1834.

[3] This discrepancy was particularly striking in comparison with the system of the Russian Orthodox Church, where, after the first and unsuccessful attempt in 1755 to introduce Orthodox theology as a basic subject at Moscow University, the provision of clerical education was completely and definitively separated from the secular education system.

[4] Archpriest Karp Tiisik (1843-1922) was educated at the Moscow ecclesiastical academy, taught at the Riga seminary (1870-82) and served for many years as a priest in Tallinn’s Orthodox cathedrals (1879-1918). He was a prominent figure in the national movement and social life: he was one of the authors of the idea of founding the Tallinn diocese and the independence of the Estonian Church.

[5] Archpriest Vasilii Martinson (1874-1955) had a degree from the St Petersburg ecclesiastical academy and served as inspector (1902-10) and rector (1910-18) of the St Petersburg seminary. He was the author of several theological works and teaching materials. After the seminary closed, he worked in Russia as a railway official and book-keeper. In 1944, he emigrated to Germany and from there to the United States of America in 1952.

[6] By way of comparison, the total number of graduates of the Faculty of Theology between 1920 and 1940 was 257, of whom 31 graduated with a master’s degree and 19 with a bachelor’s degree.

[7] One of the main reasons for this financial weakness was the poverty of a large number of Orthodox parishes, which prevented them from fulfilling their financial obligations to support the church government.

[8] By autumn 1940, the society had managed to collect only 3,345.25 crowns as basic capital. The annual sums transferred to the Synod did not exceed 100 crowns.

[9] The Church tried to compensate Osipov, a particularly promising student, for lost income, such as the loss of home support due to his mother's illness.

[10] Archpriest Nikolai Leisman (1862-1947) had a master’s degree in theology from the St Petersburg ecclesiastical academy. He served for many years as a priest in the Haapsalu parish (1888-96) and in the St Peter and Paul church in Riga (1896-1914). He was a member of the Riga consistory (1899-1915). He returned to Estonia from Latvia in 1921. In 1922-26 he was a member of the Estonian Orthodox Church Synod. In 1932, he was elected archbishop of Petseri. He retired in 1940, only to temporarily assist the metropolitan of Tallinn in1943-44.

[11] Mikhail Ridiger was ordained priest of the Kazan church in 1940 after completing his courses.

Author

Toomas Schvak (edited and abridged by James M. White)

Source

Originally published as Toomas Schvak, ‘Õigeusu Vaimulikkonna Ettevalmistamisest Eesti Vabariigis 1918–1940’, Usuteaduslik Ajakiri, no. 1 (2011), pp. 70-86. Please consult this version to see all citations and references to archival material.