In the last several years, the discipline known as the “Digital Humanities” has come to the fore.  Digital Humanities is basically the intersection of the humanities and digital technology, for all the breadth that can mean, but often involves meta-data (data about data, if you will).  One of the sub-disciplines in the digital humanities field is digital history.

Digital history has generally meant using digital tools to help analyze historical source materials, though this can be done in different ways, from digital archives and interactive maps to text mining (assessing a text for patterns, perhaps of place-names or certain verbal structures).  By virtue of this blog and our associated Journal of American Orthodox Church History, SOCHA is certainly involved in digital history.  Furthermore, we intend to establish an online digital archive that will be searchable.  It will take time for this to occur, of course, but it is our full intention to work toward that.

That said, there are some areas of caution that one ought to have when thinking about digital history.  This recent blog post by Stanley Fish gets at one way in which text mining can be problematic:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/mind-your-ps-and-bs-the-digital-humanities-and-interpretation/

Essentially, Mr. Fish notes the problem of omitting contextual considerations.  It is too tempting for people in the digital humanities to perform their search, find some pattern of something or other and then make a bold claim.

I think he’s spot on, and even more so when applied to digital history.  It is a temptation in history generally.  It is difficult sometimes for historians not to confuse trivia with history.  Already, historians, especially new (young) historians, find a unique little snippet only to be faced with the challenge of confronting that initial excitement with the prospects of context.  That is, what is the ultimate significance of that snippet?  What does it tell us about American Orthodox Church history, for instance, or religion in American more generally in the nineteenth century, etc.?  That is, the contextual questions are there to keep the historian honest and avoid a myopic vision.  Text mining, though, as noted by Mr. Fish, is already beginning to make the temptation of mistaking trivia for history all too real.  The larger contextual and theoretical questions are sometimes pushed aside all too easily.

So, are we at SOCHA part of the problem?  I don’t think so.  I realize any singular blog post, taken on its own, could certainly seem to be analogous to the context-less argument from text mining, but I think if one realizes that the blog entry ought to be seen within the context of the blog as a whole, and really in the context of SOCHA’s work as a whole, all is well.  Matthew Namee and I have both written on early jurisdictional issues.  We also have JAOCH, which often deals with larger American-Orthodox historical concerns.  It is true that JAOCH is “narrow” in that it is concentrated on certain ecclesiastical histories, but it still requires the articles to be grounded in the larger histories of those various churches.  Also, when we do finally, some year down the road, unveil our digital, searchable archive, the intention will be to further the use of source material and not simply to encourage “pattern finding.”  There is much that digital history has to offer, but in keeping with the concerns raised by Mr. Fish, it is our hope and belief that SOCHA will be part of a creative but historically honest and grounded use of digital technology.

Click the image to order a copy of Nicholas Chapman's lecture on Philip Ludwell III.

Nicholas Chapman recently gave an hour-long talk on Philip Ludwell III, the first Orthodox convert in American history. The lecture is now available for purchase, and you’ve got two options: an MP3 download for $4.95, and a boxed CD for $9.95. The boxed CD includes a newly-discovered portrait of Ludwell as a young man, and also the Ludwell family book plate. Both options — MP3 and CD — are available through Orthodox Christian Recorded Books, which features this summary:

Recent research has brought to light the existence of an Orthodox presence in colonial Virginia more than half a century before the arrival of the Russian Orthodox missionaries in Alaska. The Virginian believers were centered on Colonel Philip Ludwell III, who was the largest landowner in British Virginia. How did he come to the Faith and what did he do to bring others to the Church? Why is his story important for us today, and what can we learn from it to inspire our own love for God and desire to serve Him? Nicholas Chapman addresses these questions and others in this presentation, using materials from his upcoming book on the subject.

To order the MP3 for $4.95, CLICK HERE.

To order the boxed CD (with the Ludwell portrait and book plate) for $9.95, CLICK HERE.

Last week, we introduced the first issue of the Journal of American Orthodox Church History (JAOCH), which is available from Prairie Parish Press (PPP). In addition to publishing JAOCH, PPP has begun producing a “Collected Works Series,” featuring the writings of important Eastern Christian figures, with a special emphasis on American authors. The first book in the series is a collection of Nicholas Bjerring’s writings (appropriately titled Nicholas Bjerring: The Collected Works). The e-book is edited by Fr. Oliver Herbel, who has spent years researching Bjerring.

Regular OrthodoxHistory.org readers are probably familiar with Bjerring, a Roman Catholic who converted to Orthodoxy in 1870, was ordained a priest in Russia, and established the first Orthodox chapel in New York City. Bjerring published an English-language Orthodox journal and acted as a sort of embassy priest until 1883, when the Russian government closed the chapel. Rather than accept a teaching position in St. Petersburg, the discouraged Bjerring converted to Presbyterianism before ultimately returning to Roman Catholicism shortly before his death.

Nicholas Bjerring: The Collected Works opens with an introduction by Fr. Oliver, who provides an 11-page biographical sketch of the man. This is followed by two letters by Bjerring in 1870 — one to Pope Pius IX in which Bjerring denounces the dogma of papal infallibility and informs the Pope that he will become Orthodox, and the other to the Russian Holy Synod in which he requests reception into the Orthodox Church. Next come four of Bjerring’s best sermons, all from his days as an Orthodox priest. My favorite, I think, is his 1873 Sermon on Unbelief and Indifference. The last two pieces were written at the end of Bjerring’s life, when he was a Roman Catholic layman, and they are essential in understanding how the once anti-papal Bjerring came to be convinced that Rome was, in fact, his true home.

All told, if you have any interest in Bjerring, 19th century Orthodoxy, or early American Orthodox converts, this book is a must-have. The introductory price is a mere $1.00, and is available until September 1. After that, the price will go up a bit, although it will remain very affordable. I hope you’ll consider buying a copy.

And in case you missed it, here’s a link.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Given the recent discussion about St. Peter the Aleut, I thought it might be worthwhile to publish some of the primary sources we have for his story. As I explained on Monday, there are four main sources:

1. The 1819 transcript from the deposition of Keglii Ivan, the only known eyewitness to St. Peter’s martyrdom.
2. The 1820 report of Russian official Simeon Yanovsky to his superiors in St. Petersburg.
3. The 1820 report of the head of the Russian-American Company to the Tsar.
4. The 1865 letter of Yanovsky to the abbot of Valaam Monastery.

We don’t yet have a copy of the 1819 deposition. The 1865 Yanovsky letter has been widely circulated, but is almost certainly the least reliable of the four sources. That leaves the two 1820 accounts, which I will reprint here. I have taken them from a paper by Jesuit priest Raymond A. Bucko.

First, the February 15, 1820 Yanovsky report:

Here is an example of the inhumanity and ignorance of the Spanish clergy: In June 1815, on the coast of California near the Mission San Pedro, they seized 15 baidarkas of Kadiak men under Tarasov, of whom two Kadiaks fled to Il’men Island (possibly a Russian name for San Nicolas Island – Ed.) where one of them died, and the other, Keglii Ivan, lived with the natives of this island until by chance the Russian-American Company brig Il’men came in March, 1819, when he appeared before the commander of the vessel, Mr. Banzeman, and was taken to Fort Ross. I enclose the original testimony of this Aleut taken by Mr. Kuskov. He has now been sent here on the brig Il’men and tells me the same thing. He is not a type who could think up things. The Spanish tortured his unfortunate comrade, who until the very end replied to his torturer that he was a Christian and wanted no other faith, and with these words he died. One must note that this victim though baptized like the others was not taught Christianity, probably did not even know the dogmas of the faith except God the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. I suggest that the Government intervene so that the Spanish do not do the same with the rest. But we have to keep in mind that the colonies cannot get along without grain from California.

Here is the report from the main administrator of the Russian-American Company, sent to Tsar Alexander I “sometime before December 20, 1820″:

A Company promyshlennick, a native of the island of Kodiak by the name of Kykhklai, who had been taken prisoner by the Spaniards in 1815 and returned to our settlement at Ross and then to the headquarters of the colony on Sitka Island in 1819, gave the following account of inhuman treatment by the Spaniards of one of the Company promyshlenniks.

In 1815 a Company servitor named (Boris) Tarasov was on Ilmen Island, which did not belong to any nation. He was the leader of a group of promyshlenniks who were there to hunt. Since they were unsuccessful there they decided to set out with fifteen dependent islanders from our Kodiak colony to go to the other islands, Santa Rosa and Ekaterina (Catalina?). During the voyage his baidarka began to leak, and he had to proceed to the coast of California. They stopped at the bay on Cabo San Pedro, where bad weather detained them until the next day. While they were there a Spanish soldier came to them from the mission of San Pedro and informed Tarasov that in exchange for some gifts, he would bring to him two of our Kodiak men who had previously run off from another such hunting party and were presently in the mission.

When the soldier left, although the weather was calmer and they could proceed on their projected route, the desire to see and to free their fellow islanders persuaded them to remain there longer. On the fourth day of their stay they were suddenly attacked by some 20 armed horsemen, who tied up all of our people and wounded many of them with their sabers. One of the Kodiak islanders named Chunagnak was wounded in the head. The attackers looted all their possessions and all the Company trade goods. The prisoners were then taken to the mission of San Pedro where they actually did find the two Kodiak islanders who had fled from the island of Clement from another party of partisans. When they reached the mission, a missionary who was head of the mission wanted them to accept the Catholic faith. The prisoners replied that they had already accepted the Greek Christian religion and did not wish to change. Some time later Tarasov and almost all the Kodiak people were taken to Santa Barbara. Only two of them, Kykhklai and the wounded Chunagnak, were thrown into prison with the Indians who were being held. They suffered for several days without food or drink.

One night the head of the mission sent the runaway Kodiak islanders with a second order for them to accept the Catholic faith, but again they remained steadfast in their own faith.

At dawn a cleric went to the prison, accompanied by Indians. When the prisoners were brought out, he ordered the Indians to encircle them. Then he ordered the Indians to cut off the fingers from both hands of the above mentioned Chunagnak, then to cut off both his hands; finally, not satisfied with this tyranny, he gave orders that Chunagnak be disemboweled.

Tortured in this manner, Chunagnak breathed his last after the final procedure. The same punishment would have awaited the other Kodiak, Kykhklai, had it not been for the fact that the cleric received a timely piece of paper. When he read it, he ordered that the man who had been killed be buried, and that Kykhklai be returned to prison; several days later they sent him to Santa Barbara. There was not one of his comrades there who had been taken prisoner with him. All of them had been sent off to Monterey. Kykhklai was assigned to the same work as other Company promyshlenniks who had been taken prisoner by the Spanish.

Wanting to escape from a life of such torture, Kykhklai and another man conceived the idea of breaking away. They stole a baidarka and went in to the bay on Cabo San Pedro, and from there to the island of Catalina, then to [Santa] Barbara [Island] and finally to Ilmen, where one of them died and where Kykhklai was taken aboard the Company brig Ilmen, which had come to the island and then went to the Ross settlement. The others who had been taken prisoner at the same time were freed on the insistence of our captains Hagemeister and Kotzebue.

This incident, just one of many, is a striking example of the inhuman way in which the Spanish treat Russian promyshlenniks. Many who had previously been in their captivity were so exhausted with labor and so abused from beatings that they will carry the results with them to the grave. The suffering inflicted on the poor Indians is impossible to conceive without shuddering. Not only do they not consider the Indians human beings, they consider them below animals. The Spanish take great pleasure in beating innocent Indians then bragging about it to other Spaniards.

Over on his blog, Fr. Oliver Herbel has decided to re-frame his presentation of the St. Peter the Aleut question. He’s taken down both of his earlier articles on the subject and replaced them with a new one, which you can read by clicking here.

This morning on his Frontier Orthodoxy blog, Fr. Oliver Herbel offered a post with the provocative title, “St. Peter the Aleut Did Not Exist.” Fr. Oliver says that he intentionally did not publish the article here at OH.org so as to spare us the inevitable debate; however, I do think it’s appropriate that we link to the post and give people a chance to read it.

Fr. Oliver’s argument boils down to six main points:

1. Unlike so many Alaskan Orthodox stories (e.g. St. Juvenaly), the St. Peter story has no supporting oral tradition.
2. Fr. Michael Oleksa, the foremost scholar on Alaskan Orthodox history, has written next to nothing about St. Peter. In Orthodox Alaska, Fr. Michael makes not a single mention of Peter’s story. (I would add that Fr. Michael mentions St. Peter only in passing in Alaskan Missionary Spirituality.)
3. No corroborating evidence exists — that is, there is no other evidence of Spanish-Russian violence in California in that era. The St. Peter incident sticks out as an anomaly.
4. On the contrary, there is an internal Roman Catholic document from the period that actually contradicts the idea that the Spanish would torture Native Alaskans.
5. There is no evidence that St. Peter and his alleged persecutors would have been able to converse in the same language, which makes the exchange between them unlikely.
6. There is only one primary account of St. Peter’s martyrdom, and it is suspect for various reasons.

I’d encourage you to read the whole article, as I’ve just barely summarized Fr. Oliver’s observations. And, for the time being, I’m going to stay out of the public debate over whether St. Peter was real (and, if he was real, whether he was really martyred). I do think it is of paramount importance that the original account of St. Peter’s martyrdom be made public and translated into English. We don’t have that account, and I don’t know of anyone who has ever seen it, although in the comments to Fr. Oliver’s post, someone says that it was due to be published in a book.

At some future point, I’ll examine the pro-Peter arguments, and generally discuss the merits of his case.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you should visit the new website of our Episcopal Assembly: www.episcopalassembly.org. Among other things, the site includes official EA news and press releases, a list of all the active canonical Orthodox bishops in North and Central America, and a directory of Orthodox parishes in America (brought over from the old SCOBA website). I understand that the site will be updated regularly, and information on the EA’s committees should be forthcoming.

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.]

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.]

Krindatch

Over the past decade, my friend, the incomparable sociologist Alexei Krindatch, has developed a reputation for his remarkable studies of Orthodox Christianity in America. The full collection of his work is housed at www.orthodoxreality.org. Today, Alexei has released the results of his latest and most ambitious project yet — a census of all Orthodox congregations in the United States. The most notable aspect of this census is the fact that Alexei didn’t just go to the administrations of each jurisdiction and ask for their reported numbers. He contacted every single parish in America, asking two key questions:

• Approximately how many individual persons in total are associated in any way with the life of your parish: counting adults and children, regular and occasional attendees, paid stewards and persons who do not contribute financially?
• Approximately how many persons — including adults and children — attend Liturgy in your parish on a typical Sunday?

Counting all “Orthodox” churches — that is, including the non-Chalcedonians as well as HOCNA (which isn’t in communion with mainstream Orthodoxy) — Alexei found that 1,043,600 people were associated with American Orthodox parishes. Of those, about 280,300 (27%) attend Liturgy on a typical Sunday.

I’m tempted to pick out some of my favorite bits of data from the census, but I really do want you to visit Alexei’s website and read what he’s presented. In the future, I’ll probably unpack the census a bit, comparing it to the old Censuses of Religious Bodies. Once again, here’s a link to the 2010 Census, and here’s a link to Alexei Krindatch’s website.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

"The Syrian Colony, Washington Street," by W. Bengough

Last week, I was alerted to a recent article in the New York Times, on the subject of New York’s long-ago Syrian enclave. The colony, which was located in downtown Manhattan (not far from what became the World Trade Center site) was home to Orthodox Christians, as well as Maronites and Melkites. It was the location of the original Syrian church of New York, founded by St. Raphael Hawaweeny. Later, St. Raphael moved the church to Brooklyn (which was full of Syrians), and I think people typically think of Brooklyn, not Manhattan, when they think of Syrians in New York.

Anyway, while the article doesn’t directly discuss Orthodoxy, it talks about the very same community into which St. Raphael came in 1895, and which included the first Antiochian parish on the continent. To read the article, click here.

Bp. Basil (Essey), Secretary of the Episcopal Assembly

It’s of particular note to those interested in history that the bishop begins his talk precisely on a historical note, putting the Assembly in the context of the long-awaited Great and Holy Synod.

Watch it here.

I’m taking a moment to publish this piece in the midst of a very busy time for my family, so I apologize for the delay between some of my posts.  What I wish to do is alert my readers to an article of mine that has now hit the press: “The Relationship of the African Orthodox Church to the Orthodox Churches and Its Importance for Appreciating the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black,” Black Theology, an International Journal 8:1 (2010): 10-31.

Those desiring to read it may find the article here:

http://www.equinoxjournals.com/BT/article/view/6861/6042

This is not the most comprehensive look at any one of the people noted here (for example, I discussed Fr. Raphael Morgan to a greater extent in my dissertation, a work I am editing with the hopes of future publication).  It is, however, the first time in academic print that Fr. Raphael Morgan has been linked to the African Orthodox Church and that church to the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black.  The former connection is historical and direct, the latter is a thematic connection.

Matthew Namee had mentioned the connection of Fr. Raphael and the AOC in a post on SOCHA’s website:

http://orthodoxhistory.org/2009/07/indirect-conversion-of-thousands-theory/

So, interested readers now have the opportunity to learn more about the connections that some of us have known about but not published about extensively.

[This article was written by Fr. Oliver Herbel and originally published on Frontier Orthodoxy.]

Well, this project has become a little lengthier than I intended, so the number of postings may be increasing.  I do sincerely apologize for this.  I simply did not want to throw together too long of a post.  In this post, I am going to provide an analysis of the main components of the prosecution’s case, minus the cross examinations of the defense witnesses.  That will be discussed in the next post, which will continue with the defense’s case.  I will note some relevant cross examination by Smitkin, the defense attorney in this post here.

As mentioned in the last post, the criminal libel charge was pressed because of an article that appeared in Svoboda.  Those interested in the original article may look here (p. 5, but half of the first column did not get copied–blame Svoboda, not me):

http://www.svoboda-news.com/arxiv/pdf/1908/Svoboda-1908-26.pdf

Likely, I’ll request microfilm for the article.  In the meantime, this online version is the best we have.  The article is translated in the trial transcript and the translations that were read were by St. (Fr.) Alexander Hotovitsky (in the transcript, it appears to be misspelled as “Holovitsky”).

What I need to make clear from the outset is that the trial I am analyzing is a criminal trial.  The defendants are Anthony Curkowskyz (the editor of Svoboda and Konstantine Kirczow (who was in charge of many of the operations).  A civil suit had also been filed by Archimandrite Arseny personally (for $25,000 in damages), with them as the defendants together with the Little Russian National Union, but that is not the trial being discussed here.  I am providing an analysis of the criminal trial that proceeded because Arseny wished to have criminal charges pressed against Curkowskyz and Kirczow personally.

Now, as I had mentioned in the last posting, the trial centered on whether Archimandrite Arseny had sexually forced himself on Mary Krinitsky, during an evening buggy ride of several miles from Simpson, PA, to St. Tikhon’s Seminary.  Also relevant is whether Arseny continued the abuse for a few months longer, before Mary obtained work elsewhere under the employ of Mr. Mendelson.

What the prosecution needed to do was prove that the accusation in Svoboda was criminally libelous.  I am not a legal historian, so I do not presently know what the New York law on libel was at the time.  I know that today, libel is extremely hard to prosecute and many states do not even have criminal libel laws on their books.

We also should note at the outset that there are two important but different issues that concern us today: the trial’s focus, which is whether Kircowz and Curkowskyz were guilty of criminal libel and whether Archbishop Arseny is worthy of canonization.  These are two separate issues, so I beg the reader’s indulgence as I try to navigate the trial with these two distinct concerns in mind.

At the very beginning of the trial, the defense attorney, one L.A. Smitkin, argued that the case ought to be delayed until after the civil case had been decided, lest the criminal court appear to be aiding the plaintiff in that suit.  Francis Patrick Garvan, the assistant DA (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Patrick_Garvan) said he had seen no such decision ever made in his eleven years prosecuting cases and the court (Judge Joseph F. Mulqueen) stated that Smitkin’s motion would be upheld only if “public peace” were being threatened by doing so.  Therefore, the trial continued.

Now, let me state from the outset that this opening sets the tone for what one would read the rest of the way through.  Smitkin makes numerous objections and takes numerous exceptions to them being overruled.  Yes, Garvan is overruled at times, too, but not nearly as many times as Smitkin.  Really, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ratio were 15:1, but I am digressing into the sort of area that might be nice for the next post concerning the “lighter side” of the case.

As is normal practice, the prosecution produces its witnesses first.  The testimonies here are significant.  The witnesses include Fr. Arseny, Mary Krinitsky, and Edward A. Delaney, Archimandrite Arseny’s lawyer from Pennsylvania.  The case, by the way, was held in NY because that’s where Svoboda’s office was.  Delaney testified that he tried to get a retraction from Svoboda but it was to no avail.  He claims not to have been told that Svoboda had printed the article based on an affidavit from Mary Krinitsky herself.  Interestingly, Delaney did claim that the reason he tried to obtain the retraction was “so the priest could go back to his parish at Mayfield” (p.35).  In other words, the allegation had been taken so seriously that Metropolitan Platon had removed Fr. Arseny from the parish.

When Archimandrite Arseny took the stand, he stated that Mary Krinitsky worked at the orphanage from May until November of 1906, at which point she went to work for Mr. Samuel Mendelson.  In both places, she worked as a “domestic,” i.e. low wage earning servant-lady.  He also stated that Mary was in Simpson during the cemetery service on July 29, 1906, where she was working for Fr. Alexi Vogolovsky.  He also said he gave her a ride from the cemetery to St. Tikhon’s monastery (estimated at about seven miles) (p.43).  He also denied having kicked Mary out of the monastery and denied having refused her the opportunity to place her child in the orphanage later the following June (June 4th of 1907).

Under cross-examination, Smitkin tried to implicate Fr. Arseny in something else that happened in Russia, but Archimandrite Arseny side steps it.  An interesting thing to note, however, is Arseny’s claim that he did not have any children while in Russia (prior to his wife’s death).   He even specifically denied having a son pp. 45-46).

The denial of any children, especially a son, is an important point to note because according to the canonization committee’s life of Archbishop Arseny, there was a son from Arseny’s area of Russia (Kharkov) who died in 1937.  Furthermore, the committee’s life refers to documentation received from Metropolitan Nikodim that claims a son was born to Fr. Arseny and his wife after the first year of marriage.  In addition to the life, one may go here:

http://www.uralteologia.ucoz.ru/news/kanadskij_zlatoust_o_zhizni_arkhiepiskopa_arsenija_vinnipegskogo/2010-03-24-126

Therefore, relative to the documentation that would support the birth of the son, Archimandrite Arseny perjured himself.  It is natural to ask why, but I presently do not know why he perjured himself.

On page 54, Archimandrite Arseny seemed to fudge on the degree to which he was aware of the status of his civil suit against the defendants.  Smitkin was also able to introduce as evidence a statement from the filing of that civil suit in which Archimandrite Arseny claimed he was forced to resign as rector of the parish in Mayfield and withdraw to St. Tikhon’s monastery.  Arseny tried to clarify that the way it had been translated to him was that if he was guilty, he was not fit to occupy any position in the Church.  Whether Archimandrite Arseny misunderstood, lied on the stand (again?), or just had bad legal counsel on this particular point is impossible to tell.

Mary Krinitsky took the stand for the prosecution and supported Archimandrite Arseny’s testimony.  In fact, she went so far as to name “Andrew Pretash” as the father of her child.  Ms. Krinitsky claimed Archimandrite Arseny did not even touch her (p.73) and that the defendants tricked her into signing an affidavit claiming Arseny was the father by offering her either ten thousand dollars from one and  marriage from the other (p.77).   A few sentences later, however, she claimed the defendants were not present when she was tricked by false offers of money and marriage (p.78).  The judge then threw out her claim that the defendants had said as much.    She then claimed she didn’t know what she was signing, only that she was told to sign something that was “the truth” (p. 81).

In general, Mary Krinitsky comes across as nervous, scared, intimidated, and/or confused.  She couldn’t even remember when her own son died, and the child did die (p.89).  He lived fourteen to sixteen months.  The birth certificate had Krinitsky as the surname, not Pretash (92).  She also was not able to remember the name of the priest whose wife she worked for in Simpson during the service at the cemetery.  Finally, we learn that one Hrycko Chaly brought her to a notary to sign the affidavit, not the defendants, and that the defendants did not make the false promises stated earlier (p.137).  As a related side-note, reading her testimony is painfully slow because translation was a serious issue.  She spoke Carpatho-Rusyn.  One juror (number nine) could speak Polish and he conversed with her as did the the Russian translator for the court.

Samuel Mendelson was also a witness for the people and he claimed (156-7) that he filed a warrant for Andrew Pretash, after talking to Mary Krinitsky (who was working for him).  Judge Mulqueen allowed this to be entered in, though he was concerned for hearsay because this statement was not made in the presence of the defendants.  Mendelson was able to state that Mary Krinitsky signed an affidavit so that he (Mendelson) could follow through on procuring a warrant for Andrew Pretash (169).  Mendelson’s description of this event is that Yatsko Adamiak, an assistant to Archimandrite Arseny, and Archimandrite Arseny himself paid Mendelson an unannounced visit.  They asked to see Mary.  Samuel Mendelson called her into the room and they confronted her with the article.  She then denied that it was true and the affidavit to that effect was drawn up.  This became the second affidavit Mary Krinitsky had signed and one that substantiated her testimony within court.

To summarize:

In Archimandrite Arseny’s favor, both he and Mary Krinitsky deny that the event ever occurred.  Assistant DA Garvan is also able to show that although Svoboda might have had an affidavit (Garvan avoids getting into this), Mary Krinitsky signed a subsequent affidavit in which she claimed one Andrew Pretash was the father of the child and had abandoned his legal responsibilities and fled the town (allegedly going to Ohio somewhere).

Relative to the documentation given to the canonization committee from Metropolitan Nikodim, Archimandrite Arseny perjured himself.  Smitkin must have known that many (not on the jury) would have believed Archimandrite Arseny had lied and likely Smitkin believed Arseny lied as well.  Because Smitkin had no document to contradict Arseny’s testimony, however, the perjury has remained unknown.  Overall, things look to be in favor of the DA office.  There are cracks in the DA’s case, of course.

Mary Krinitsky was nervous and/or confused.  It may well be that she was not the brightest woman and a Carpatho-Rusyn peasant girl could have easily found her role in the American court system intimidating.  Another reason for finding the situation intimidating will be raised by the defense’s case shortly.  She also does not help her credibility by not being able to say when her son died and not remembering whose house she was working in during the cemetery service event in Simpson.  Although it could be a translation problem or simply her being nervous or perhaps a little mentally deficient, it could also be the sign of a witness trying to remember all of the right details of a scripted testimony.  Mary claimed, however, that Mendelson never once mentioned the court case or why she was traveling to New York with him.  Do we believe her?  It is hard for me to imagine he never once mentioned the case and that Mary had no idea why she was going to New York, but that is what the testimony says.

At this point in the trial, what probably is working the most against Arseny in addition to the question of witness credibility (though again, remember, no one at the trial would have known Archimandrite Arseny almost certainly perjured himself) is the time line of events.  Mary Krinitsky leaves the monastery at what would have been just after her first trimester had passed.  Metropolitan Platon removed Archimandrite Arseny from the Mayfield parish just after the newspaper article went public and Archimandrite Arseny’s timing of his trip to Russia also looks suspicious (February to April, 1907) and when he returns, he is assigned to Canada.  None of that proves guilt and the DA’s office has two strong collaborating witnesses in Arseny and Mary but the time line might look a little suspicious to some readers.

Is this enough to demonstrate criminal libel beyond a reasonable doubt?  We shall see.  In the next posting, I will analyze the defense’s case.

Fr. Oliver Herbel, Executive Director

[This post is cross posted on http://frontierorthodoxy.wordpress.com]

Dear Readers,

This is the first of a three part series looking into a court case that relates to Archbishop Arseny (1866-1945), who is being considered for canonizatiion as an Orthodox saint by the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).

Those wanting a bit of a biography may check out the OrthodoxWiki entry for him.

Basically, in a nutshell, +Arseny had served as a married priest in Russia until his wife died.  In 1902, he came to America and served under St. Tikhon.  He was instrumental in founding St. Tikhon’s monastery and the accompanying orphanage.  Late in 1908, he was sent to Canada to administer the parishes there.  In 1910, he returned to Russia and in 1920, was in a Serbian monastery when some Canadians asked that he return to serve them.  In 1926, he was consecrated as the Bishop to Canada.  He died in 1945 and is buried at St. Tikhon’s monastery.

At the time of the court case I am about to discuss, Arseny was an Archimandrite in charge of the newly formed St. Tikhon’s Monastery.  In June of 1908, Svoboda, a Greek Catholic (Uniate) paper published an article in which the author claimed Archbishop Arseny sexually forced himself upon one Mary Krinitsky on a buggy ride in the middle of the night.  She had gone to a dedication of a cemetery near Simpson, PA, but missed her train back home.  He offered her a ride and allegedly forced himself upon her after treating her nicely.  Allegedly, this was the first occurrence, because after nearly a year later, she gave birth to a son.  On the basis of an affidavit signed by Mary Krinitsky herself, Svoboda claimed Archbishop Arseny (whose last name is rendered as Chagovtsov, Chagovets, and/or Chahovtsov in the documents) fathered the child. Archimandrite Arseny filed two libel suits against the paper–one in civil court and the other in criminal court.

These cases and their larger context deserve further exploration.  The OCA has a canonization committee established for looking into the life of Archbishop Arseny.

Fr. John Hainsworth has written a life of Archbishop Arseny on behalf of the canonization committee.  In an early online version, he provided this intriguing reference:

“Little is known of his first assignments when he arrived except that by his own recollection he worked in parishes in Troy, Mayfield, and Simpson in the Eastern United States. Curiously, his work with the returning Uniats is not mentioned in any of the memorial articles and accounts of his life, even though it was substantial enough to incur a case of libel against him by Uniats frustrated by his success.”

That version is no longer online.  His current version omits this.

The Orthodox Wiki page (which borrows directly from Fr. John’s piece) also omits this.  I was unable to find any other online or published discussion of this anywhere else.  I had originally asked a member of the committee several times over for a copy of any court transcripts and emailed another member about the case as well, but after waiting about a year, I took it upon myself to track down the criminal case.  Independently, I obtained a microfilm of the criminal court case that began in January of 1909.  I intend to digitize this transcript and place it on SOCHA’s website so that it is readily available to all without delay.

I assure forthright discussion on my end.  Although I won’t be sharing news each step of the way as I continue my research, I do want to share with you what I have gleaned from this first transcript.  I also want to inform you that I will make this court transcript available on SOCHA’s website in the near future because the interest in this case has been a collective one between those of us on the executive board of SOCHA.  You will see nothing but transparency from me, not to mention SOCHA, in this matter.  Even if you disagree with my interpretation, I hope you will at least be thankful that you had an opportunity to examine the sources and so disagree!

In the next post, I will provide a general interpretation of what I have in the transcript.  In the third post, I’ll simply provide a few mildly amusing quotes from the transcript, to lighten the mood a bit.  If I deem it appropriate, I may post a fourth piece, as an addendum, clarifying or correcting as is necessary.

Fr. Oliver Herbel, Executive Director

[This post is cross-posted on http://frontierorthodoxy.wordpress.com]

This will be a short post, but I found this well written web page distinguishing primary and secondary sources.  This distinction is absolutely vital when researching and writing history.  The point, of course, is not that secondary sources are bad or should not be used.  Rather, they should be used to substantiate claims being made through an engagement with primary sources.  I am posting this link also because it will directly relate to my next few posts, where I will discuss the importance of acquiring and analyzing primary source materials when undertaking a canonization inquiry.   So, here you are:

http://library.ucsc.edu/help/howto/distinguish-between-primary-and-secondary-sources

[Note: This piece is authored by Fr. Oliver Herbel and is cross posted at http://frontierorthodoxy.wordpress.com]

I’ve recently stumbled onto a really interesting article on the history of Chicago’s Serbian community. This paper, written by Krinka Vidaković Petrov, was published in the journal Serbian Studies in 2006. It helps shed further light on the early history of Orthodoxy in Chicago, which we’ve discussed many times on this website. I found this paragraph to be especially enlightening:

The Metropolitan of Belgrade Mihailo sent archimandrite Firmilian Dražić to Chicago in 1892. He did so in response to a letter by Krsto Gopčević, who had addressed the Metropolitan on behalf of the Greek-Russian-Serbian Orthodox parish established in Chicago in 1891. Gopčević suggested that the Metropolitan send a priest who could speak Serbian, Greek and also “a little Arabic, since there are quite a few Syrians here.” Services in this parish were conducted in a small chapel improvised in a private home since the parishioners struggled to provide enough financing from their small community. Archimandrite Dražić returned to Belgrade six months later. After his departure from America, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade was not in a position either to send a permanent priest or to provide financial support for this parish, which was unable to provide funds for its own survival. Even though the parish was extinguished, its short-lived efforts were an indication of the Chicago Serbs’ need to get organized in order to be able to fulfill their religious needs.

Of course, we’ve heard about both Mr. Gopčević (or Gopchevich) and Fr. Firmilian Dražić (Drazich) in the past. I would be very curious to know whether there was an actual Serbian parish in Chicago in 1892, as Petrov suggests, or whether Fr. Firmilian merely made an extended visit to the city.

L-R: Fr. Paul Kedrolivansky, Bp Paul Popov, and Hieromonk Feopl. (Alaska's Digital Archives)

A few weeks ago, I did a podcast on the apparent murder of Fr. Paul Kedrolivansky, dean of the San Francisco Russian cathedral. At the time, I wasn’t aware of any surviving images of Kedrolivansky. Recently, however, I discovered the above photo, in the wonderful Alaska’s Digital Archives. It was taken in 1868, prior to Kedrolivansky’s appointment as dean of the San Francisco cathedral, and a decade before his death.

Kedrolivansky is on the left, with Bp Paul Popov in the center and a hieromonk named “Fr. Feopl” on the right. I don’t know anything about Fr. Feopl, aside from the fact that he’s listed as being a “missionary to Nusagak,” that is, Nushagak, in Alaska.

Bp Paul was the last vicar bishop of Novoarkangelsk (Sitka). He served under the bishop of Irkutsk, in Siberia. In 1870, the Russian Church reorganized its North American territory, creating a new diocese especially for Alaska. Bp Paul was recalled to Russia and replaced with Bp John Mitropolsky. And while Bp John technically held the title, “Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska,” he lived in San Francisco.

From another source, I also found some more biographical information about Fr. Paul Kedrolivansky. The 1990 book Russian America: A Biographical Dictionary, by Richard A. Pierce, includes the following entry:

Kedrolivanskii, Pavel I. (1834?-1878), priest, born about 1834, the son of a deacon. The family name is said to have originated when his father, a seafarer, saw the cedars of Lebanon and said “I henceforth change my name to Kedro-Livanskii [cedars of Lebanon]”. In 1856, he graduated with honors from Riazan seminary, and then taught school in Russia. In 1858 he was ordained as a priest and assigned to Iakutsk. In 1862 he was rewarded with epigonation, and in 1863 ordered to Sitka and raised to the rank of Dean of the American churches.

I never would have guessed that his surname was a reference to the cedars of Lebanon! What this biographical entry doesn’t tell us is the rest of the story — that Kedrolivansky moved to San Francisco with the new Bp John Mitropolsky in 1870, and that he died in 1878, at the age of about 44.

Bishop Nestor Zass

On today’s episode of my American Orthodox History podcast, I talk about the tragic death of Bishop Nestor Zass, head of the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska from 1879 to 1882. One of Bp Nestor’s parishioners in San Francisco was the 19-year-old Jovan Dabovich, the future Archimandrite Sebastian. Years later, Dabovich wrote a history of San Francisco’s Orthodox community, published in the Vestnik (the diocesan magazine) on April 13 and 27, 1898. The whole article is available in the Holy Trinity Cathedral archive, and we’re reprinting the section devoted to Bp Nestor.

In 1879, once again the Lord regarded the humility of the Orthodox children of this Diocese and sent us a good shepherd in the person of the Right Reverend Nestor, who arrived in San Francisco in the spring, accompanied by the Hieromonk (and later Archimandrite) German.

As usual, the Western Churches followed closely the activities of the Eastern Churches, and in this matter the Anglican Church reported quite sympathetically on the Right Reverend Nestor’s assignment to America.

Here, for example, is what we read about this in the London Journal:

The Holy Synod of the Russian Church has appointed to the Episcopal See of the Aleutian Islands the Archimandrite Nestor. Father Nestor was in early life known as Baron Zass; he was an officer in the navy, and besides his theological attainments he is well versed in secular learning, and understands fully the English language, in which he expresses himself fluently. He is distinguished for his lofty character, his Christian convictions, and his thorough devotion to duty. Father Nestor will be quite in his proper place in America, for at the time of Admiral Lesoffsky’s visit to New York, in 1863, he made himself highly esteemed by the Americans. It is to be hoped that the Episcopate of Father Nestor may be a source of close and intimate relations between the Orthodox Russian Church and the Church of North America. A letter which came to the Holy Synod, not long since, from the American bishops gives reason to hope thus. God grant that through the cooperation of the future Bishop of the Aleutian Islands brotherly relations may be established [between] these two great Churches.

Also in 1879 Bishop Nestor visited Sitka. In 1880 he traveled to Unalaska. In 1881 he made an inspection of Kodiak. Having made Bishop Nestor’s acquaintance, Americans regarded him most highly as a man adorned with every Christian and civic merit.

In 1881 the Cathedral Church in San Francisco was moved to its present location. On June 30 of that year the purchase deed for a house was signed by Gustave Niebaum for the sum of thirty-eight thousand dollars in American gold coin. This was a duplex house at 1713 & 1715 Powell Street near the wharves in North Beach between Russian and Telegraph Hills where Powell crosses the wide commercial thoroughfare of Montgomery Ave. Before the purchase of this property Bishop Nestor and Father Herman lived in a private flat. In the new house an apartment was arranged for the bishop as well as quarters for the Ecclesiastical Administration — a school, a storage area and an archive. The church with its new and elegant principal iconostasis, its new holy table, its new vestment wardrobe, etc. was formed out of two rooms (at 1713 Powell St.). In addition the large front room of the second story was removed, so that the altar area and a part of the church had high walls — in two worlds. The church was quite proper, and under the circumstances could not have been better.

In the winter of 1881-82 His Grace frequently complained of headaches and suffered from general malaise. Yet that did not prevent him from preparing for a trip to Alaska in the spring of 1882. This time he planned to visit the furthest reaches of the mission in Alaska and spend the winter of 1882-83 on the shores of the Kwipach (Yukon River) in the village of Ikogmut. In view of all this he prepared for his needs, including even a rubber ryasa and skufya. He obtained a small but well supplied medicine chest from one Doctor Palitsky, a San Francisco resident. His Grace left San Francisco in the first part of May on the steamship St. Paul, belonging to the American Trading Company, taking along one of the school boys, Ivan Shayashnikov, an unassuming young man of 17, as his traveling companion. Several months had passed, when suddenly in the evening of 1/13 August the St. Paul returned with the sad news that his Grace Nestor was no longer with us. He had drowned in the waters of the Bering Strait. It is difficult to imagine the horror and sadness with which all were overcome.

This unfortunate incident occurred not far from shore opposite the St. Michail’s Redoubt on the return voyage. His Grace, for some reason having abandoned his intention of wintering there, was desirous of returning to San Francisco, but he drowned. All the newspapers and magazines were filled with information about the late archpastor. As a rule all were of the opinion put forward by the main newspapers, the Evening Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Morning Call of 3/15 August, 1882. They wrote:

On June 12 (n.s.) the ship left St. Michael’s Redoubt headed for San Francisco. At a few minutes before eight Captain Erskine stopped by his Grace’s cabin to wish him a good morning, after which he left to fulfill his duties. A quarter hour later another passenger, Dr. Noyes, approached the captain and asked him if he had seen his Grace. The captain replied that he had seen him recently in his cabin. The doctor announced that he had just now come from there and that the bishop was nowhere to be found. Then out of concern his friends began to investigate the reason for his disappearance. Upon examination of His Grace’s cabin, it was noticed that His Grace’s papers and other things were carefully folded. But the fact that he had left some of his clothing, his watch and valuables (most likely his engolpion and pectoral cross) in the cabin gave rise to doubt. A further inspection of the entire vessel only confirmed the suspicion that the bishop, suffering unbearable pain as a result of his neuralgia, had cast himself overboard into the sea. The ship’s direction was reversed and an inspection made of the waters already traversed, but no vestige of the missing bishop was sighted. Consequently they returned to St. Michael’s Redoubt and instructed a company agent to attempt in every way possible to recover the body of the drowning victim. Last Sunday, when the St. Paul arrived in port with the sad news of Bishop Nestor’s demise, his flock was struck with grief and sorrow.

If the members of the Holy Synod or relatives of the late bishop (who live in Saint Petersburg and Arkhangelsk) did not form any conclusion about the cause of His Grace’s death from their relationship with him, the Consul General at that time in San Francisco, A. E. Olarovsky could not do any better. Through a notary he took the deposition of every officer on the ship and several agents of the Alaskan Trading Company, inquiring as to what they knew about the bishop’s death. But as far as I know, all those documents only repeated what had been printed in the newspapers.

And thus was our Church widowed once more.