The Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas
Archive for October, 2010
Irvine transferred to St. Raphael’s jurisdiction
1 year ago
This signature may belong to St. Alexander Hotovitzky.
The following letter was found in Ingram N.W. Irvine’s file in the OCA Archives in Syosset, New York. The letter is undated (the pre-printed date line “190_” does not have a specific year) and appears under the letterhead of the North American Ecclesiastical Consistory, 15 East 97th Street, New York, N.Y. It is handwritten and appears to be a draft of a letter that was sent to Irvine notifying him of his transfer from the Archbishop Platon to Bishop (now Saint) Raphael. This letter was probably written by Fr. Alexander Hotovitsky. The signature is not very legible, but the first initial is clearly an “A.” The first four letters of the last name are almost certainly “Hoto” or “Hato” or “Hito.”
Dear Sir:
This is to inform you that by the order of His Grace Archbishop Platon of North America you are […] now transferred to the Orthodox Syrian Mission in Brooklyn, N.Y. to be under […] jurisdiction of Rt. Rev. Bishop Raphael and perform such missionary work […] as His Eminence Bishop Raphael would desire for you within his diocese with understanding that all your service in N.Y. St. Nicholas Cathedral since now shall be discontinued and your connection with […] Cathedral cease, your name having been taken away from the list of clergy of the Russian Cathedral.
Therefore you have to remove your mailing box, etc. to any other address you wish and to make all necessary changes in your cards, letterhead, […], etc. without fail.
As to details in connection with this order please apply to the Bishop Raphael […] has a copy of this […]
[signed] A. Hoto[vitsky?]
Irvine is listed among the Syrian Orthodox clergy in the (Episcopalian) American Church Almanac & Year Book for 1912. Thus, the letter can have been written no later than 1911, when the book was published. In addition, the OCA archives have a letter from Irvine to the North American Ecclesiastical Consistory dated May 25, 1909 in which he talks about the Holy Synod blessing him to establish an English-speaking chapel in New York. More importantly, the archives also include a letter dated just one day earlier (May 24) from the Coudert Brothers law firm to Archbishop Platon regarding a lawsuit against St. Nicholas (Russian) Cathedral. The dispute involved a transaction between Irvine and a printing company. The Cathedral had won, but the printers were appealing, In a postscript, there is the following: “We understood from Dr. Hotovitsky that he had gone over this matter fully with you and that you were fully advised of the situation.”
I don’t think the printing company dispute related above would have been sufficient to precipitate Irvine’s transfer out of the Russian jurisdiction, but it was probably one of several factors. (Notice how strongly the letter’s author emphasizes that Irvine’s connection with the Russian cathedral has “ceased.”)
Irvine was a forward-thinking visionary, and that fit in well when St. Tikhon was in charge. But St. Tikhon was replaced by Abp Platon in 1907, and… well, let’s just say that Platon was no Tikhon. Abp Platon was probably far less encouraging of Irvine’s English work, and far less patient with Irvine’s idiosyncracies. On the other hand, St. Raphael was much more in like with St. Tikhon’s mindset, and would have welcomed a talented priest like Irvine. (In fact, even before he joined the Syrian diocese, Irvine had been writing articles for St. Raphael’s Al Kalimat journal.)
UPDATE: Since this article was published, we have verified that the above letter was, in fact, written by St. Alexander Hotovitzky.
[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]
Clergy salaries in 1916
1 year ago
by Matthew Namee
in Statistics
Fr. Demetrios Petrides of Atlanta was one of the leading Greek priests active in 1916.
Before I get started, I wanted to let you all know that I do plan to finish my series on St. Raphael and the Syrian controversies of 1905. However, I’ve got several other irons in the fire, so I’m going to take a little time off of that project to present some other research. But don’t worry; we’ll get back to it.
Anyway, recently, I took another look at the 1916 Census of Religious Bodies, conducted by the US Census Bureau. The census includes data on numerous aspects of American Orthodox church life in the mid-teens, including clergy salaries. Of the seven Orthodox groups reported in the census, six — all but the Syrians — provided data on clergy pay. Of those six bodies, three — the Albanians, Bulgarians, and Romanians — provided salary information on just two priests apiece:
- Albanian priests averaged $780/year, or $15,187 in 2009 currency.
- Bulgarian priests averaged $850/$16,549.
- Romanian priests averaged $570/$11,098.
Obviously, the sample sizes are small, but it’s clear that none of these priests were making much money. Here is the data for the larger groups:
- 93 Greek priests reported an average of $913/year, or $17,776 in 2009 currency.
- 149 Russian priests reported $762/$14,836.
- 11 Serbian priests reported $1050/$20,443.
The average salary for all American Orthodox priests in 1916 was $828, equivalent to just $16,117 in modern terms. (Inflation data courtesy of www.westegg.com/inflation.) I should emphasize that these numbers are based only on the clergy who reported their salaries to the Census Bureau; other priests did not report, including, as I said, all of the Syrian clergy.
Obviously, the 1916 salaries are startlingly low. Even the Serbs — the highest-paid group — were scraping by by modern standards. However, things were quite a bit different in 1916 than they are today. Many parishes had rectories or parsonages, so a lot of these priests didn’t have to pay for their housing. Some of our biggest expenses — health care, transportation, various forms of insurance — would have been minimal 94 years ago. And while I don’t have any hard data to support this, it’s my impression that a higher proportion of clergy were unmarried in 1916 than in 2010.
In addition to all those facts, there is a high probability that the reported salaries don’t include honoraria for weddings, baptisms, funerals, house blessings, and the like. In other words, simply taking the 1916 base salaries, plugging them into a calculator, and figuring out their modern equivalent, is not really an accurate way to determine how well American Orthodox clergy were actually compensated in 1916.
Beyond the seemingly low numbers overall, I was struck by the fact that the Russian clergy reported significantly lower salaries than their Greek and Serbian counterparts. The Russian Church in America was substantially subsidized by the Russian government in 1916, whereas the Greek and Serbian parishes primarily relied on local funding. Nevertheless, the Russian clergy were among the lowest-paid in America.
[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]
A Greek priest in Arizona in the 17th century (??)
1 year ago
While looking for something else, I happened upon an incredible anecdote in a book called Arizona: A State Guide, by Thomas J. Tormey (Hastings House, 1940). From page 389:
TACNA, 79.6 m. (340 alt., 7 pop.), began as a stage station called Antelope Hill. In the seventeenth century, a Greek priest named Tachnapolis came to this region from California and spent his last days with the Indians, who called him Tacna, the name later given to the station.
Think about that — the 17th century! That’s a century before the Russians discovered Alaska, and two centuries before Lewis and Clark made their trek to the Pacific Ocean. It is literally inconceivable that a Greek priest could have been in California in the 17th century. Or the 18th, for that matter. The first Greek priest in America, as far as I am aware, was Fr. Stephen Andreades in New Orleans in about 1867. The first Greek priest in California was probably Fr. Kallinikos Kanellas in the early 1890s. And the first Orthodox priest of any kind to visit Arizona seems to have been Fr. Sebastian Dabovich, also in the 1890s.
Obviously, this called for an investigation. An Internet search immediately turned up a more recent book, American Trails Revisited: Following in the Footsteps of the Western Pioneers by Lyn Wilkerson (2003). This publication simply repeats the above reference verbatim. Even more recently, the 2010 book Desert Duty: On the Line with the U.S. Border Patrol mentions Tacna as the former site of a Border Patrol station:
At times the Border Patrol station has been located in the small farming town of Tacna. The owner of a roadside gas station and soda stand on the highway from Yuma to Phoenix or Tucson contrived to call it Tachnopolis, after an imaginary Greek priest, but the actual town never was very big and the signpost has moved several times.
Obviously, the authors of Desert Duty didn’t buy into the Greek priest story, and neither do I. The website triptrivia.com seems to settle the matter:
Tacna started off as Antelope Hill, a stage station. With the coming of the railroad, and a post office, the name Tacna was given to it, but it did not last. In the early 1920s Max B. Noah had arrived from Texas and set up business under a tree, with a barrel of gasoline and a hand pump.
Noah was noted for his tall stories, and it was apparently he who started a story about the Greek priest named Tachnapolis who had come from California to Arizona in the seventeenth century, and spent his last days with the Indians, who shortened his name to Tachna, or Tacna. H had picked up the name from the old railroad siding, and used the name when he applied for the post office. When Noah’s little community began to fade, the Tacna post office was moved four miles further east and given the name Ralph’s Mill-Tacna, the Ralph being for Joe Ralph, who ran a small cafe for travelers. The origin of the name Tacna remains a mystery.
Triptrivia.com doesn’t give any clue as to where they got their information, but the Yuma Sun (3/3/2007) confirms the role of Noah in naming Tacna: “There are differing stories about the origin of the name Tacna, but it likely was adopted from an old railroad siding sign by Max B. Noah, who arrived in the early 1920s and set up business under a tree with a barrel of gasoline and a hand pump. Where the railroad came up with the name is unclear.” According to the Sun, the railroad had succeeded the above-mentioned Antelope Peak Stage Station on the Butterfield Overland Trail. All of which date to no earlier than the 1850s.
It all certainly sounds pretty straightforward. The railroad adopted some long-forgotten name, ”Tacna,” which perhaps came from a local tribal language (although Fr. Oliver Herbel humorously notes that “tacna” is a reasonable transliteration of the Serbian word for “saucer” — that is, a dish for a teacup). Decades later, along came Max Noah, a big-talking Texan, who used the old railroad’s sign and fabricated an outlandish story about a Greek priest. Noah was pretty well-traveled — he’s described as a Texan, but he was born in Colorado and was living in Virginia in the 1920 Census – and it’s likely that he ran into some Greeks in the course of his travels. The whole story, then, appears to be a clever hoax, born of the creative mind of Max B. Noah.
[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]
A Doctoral Dissertation on the History and Theological Influence of SVS
1 year ago
Dr. Peter Bouteneff, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Vladimir’s Seminary (SVS), has interviewed Romanian doctoral candidate Fr. Ilie Toader, pursuing his doctorate through the Bucharest Faculty of Theology. This is definitely something to be noted and anticipated. I have not seen the Bucharest institution, though I did briefly visit the seminary in Cluj back in 2000. Please note Fr. Ilie’s comments concerning frequent participation in the Eucharist, the connection between history and doctrine, and the unitive function of chapel at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. Of interest are the names mentioned by him: Fr. Georges Florovsky, Fr. John Meyendorff, and Fr. Alexander Schmemann. Florovsky served as dean from 1949-1955. Schmemann was dean from 1962 until his death in 1983. Meyendorff served as dean from 1984 until he retired in 1992. All three men also taught at SVS and their writings remain influential to this day.
The interview may be found here:
http://www.svots.edu/headlines/romanian-scholar-writes-doctoral-thesis-about-st-vladimirs-seminary
By way of disclosure, perhaps I should add that as a student I took courses from Dr. Bouteneff and he will be speaking at our second annual St. Nicholas Retreat (held the first Saturday of each December).
[This article was written by Fr. Oliver Herbel.]
The most influential people in American Orthodox history
1 year ago
by Matthew Namee
in Uncategorized
St. Tikhon, flanked by his two vicars, Bishop Innocent and St. Raphael
For a while now, I’ve had this idea of creating a list of the most influential people in American Orthodox history. Obviously, any such list would be pretty arbitrary, and would undoubtedly leave out many important people about whom I just don’t know much. But then it occurred to me that if we all put our heads together, we could probably come up with a pretty decent list. It also might be a fun sort of group project, and a way to give you, our readers, a chance to teach all of us from your own knowledge of history.
A few ground rules, to get things started:
- Let’s limit the nominees to people who have been dead for at least 20 years (1990 or earlier). So, Metropolitan Philip Saliba isn’t eligible. Nor is Archbishop Iakovos Koukouzis, who died in 2005. While both men are certainly among the 100 most influential people in our history, it’s just too early to evaluate them as historical figures. We need a little time.
- The nominees must actually be “American” in some sense. You could reasonably argue that Vladimir Lenin had a major influence on American Orthodox history, but he obviously wasn’t an “American Orthodox” historical figure. And it’s arguable whether Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis counts as an “American” figure, since he was only in this country for a three-year visit. (And I don’t even want to hear any arguments about whether he was “Orthodox.” Don’t go there, please.) No need for the individuals to be US citizens, of course, but they also can’t just have been passing through.
- I’ve gone back and forth on this, but I think we should allow nominations of non-Orthodox figures. So, Isabel Hapgood (Episcopalian) is eligible, as is the scourge of Alaskan Orthodoxy, Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson.
Certain people will obviously be on the list — St. Tikhon, Archbishop Athenagoras Spyrou, Metropolitan Antony Bashir, etc. While it’s certainly worth hearing the arguments for why these people should be considered among the most influential, I’m especially interested in the lesser-known names. For instance, awhile back we introduced a Greek layman named George Anastassiou, the “Apostle of Organ Music.” There must be other people like him — probably dozens or hundreds. Who were these influential laymen? Who are the most influential women in our history? And while major figures from the biggest jurisdictions are reasonably well-known, what about smaller groups like the Romanians and Bulgarians and Albanians?
Please send in your nominations, with a brief explanation of why they’re so influential. You can comment below, or drop me an email at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com. I look forward to reading the nominations, and, if the response is good, I’ll publish updates on this little project over the coming months. Thanks!
[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]
