Fr. John Kochurov at Holy Trinity Cathedral (Chicago Daily News, Library of Congress)

This photo, dated 1905, shows Fr. John Kochurov preaching from the pulpit in the newly-constructed Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Chicago. It’s one of several great shots of Holy Trinity to be found in the Chicago Daily News photo collection, available online via the Library of Congress website. We’ll post more of these Chicago photos in the future.

Photo of the week: St. John Kochurov preaching in Chicago is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

This photo shows the Holy Trinity bell tower still under construction.

Here, it's obviously winter, and the bell tower is complete. It looks like a young boy is enjoying the snow.

In this interior shot, a priest -- probably St. John Kochurov -- is preaching from the pulpit. A choir is at right.

A man kneels before an icon of St. Nicholas, and a cluster of ladies in black hats look on. Who is the man standing next to the banner? A Russian official of some sort?

Fr. Sebastian Dabovich, head of the newly-created Serbian Mission, stands inside Holy Trinity Cathedral.

– Matthew Namee

1905 photos from Holy Trinity Cathedral in Chicago is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Few Orthodox Christians in the Western American Diocese know that eight Russian Orthodox sailors who died in 1863 and 1905, are buried on Mare Island (near Valejo, California). Here is a brief account of these men, who are part of Orthodox America’s historical heritage.

1863

In October 1863, at the invitation of the US Federal Government, the Russian Imperial Pacific Fleet was invited to winter in San Francisco at Mare Island. This allowed the Russian Fleet to undergo repairs, and provided an opportunity for the Federal Government of the United States to offset British and French Naval fleets also harbored in San Francisco — fleets whose governments may have been inclined to support the Confederacy.

Within just days of the arrival of the Russian Fleet, and before sailing to Mare Island, on the morning of Friday, October 23, 1863, a fire broke out in what is now the Financial District of San Francisco.

An article written by Albert P. Wheelan in November 1863, notes:

The [city] firemen say they were losing the battle, and that unless they conquered the fire the city would be doomed. The firemen began to succumb through the hard work they were forced to do with the hand engines and the great heat. They dropped from their places one by one and several engines went out of commission.

Suddenly the spectators began to cheer, and to cheer again and again. A thousand throats took up the cheering. The firemen were electrified when they observed boat load after boat load of Russian sailors and their officers landing with buckets and other fire fighting instruments. . . They took the places of the tired and exhausted firemen and worked hard and long at the pumps and finally conquered the fire.

On October 25, 1863, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors officially recognized Russian Admiral A. A. Popov, Captain Tachelisacov, and Lieutenants Skryaggin, Echren and Machov, as well as the Russian sailors injured while fighting the fire.

While no documentary evidence has yet been located to establish it as fact, it has long been believed that the six Russian sailors buried at Mare Island in 1863, and whose graves remain there to this day, were sailors who were either killed in or died as a result of injuries sustained while fighting the October 23rd fire.

Besides three tombs marked “Unknown Russian Sailor” are the tombs of Russian Sailors Artemy Trapeznekov, Yakov Butorin, and Karl Kort. The original grave stones of all six sailors have long since been damaged and disappeared.

1904-1905

On September 11, 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Captain A. Berlinsky steered the Cruiser Lena of the Imperial Russian Navy into San Francisco seeking repairs.

He had sailed from Vladivostok to raid Japanese fishing fleets in the Sea of Okhotsk, and ended up getting cut off from his base by Japanese cruisers.

Because President Theodore Roosevelt had proclaimed American neutrality in the Russo-Japanese War, Captain Berlinsky, the Lena and her crew, had to depart within forty-eight hours or be detained in America for the remainder of that war.

Captain Berlinsky claimed his boilers were in bad shape, and major repairs were needed before the Lena could return to the open seas. A US Navy inspection of the Lena confirmed Captain Berlinsky’s claim, and the Lena was escorted to Mare Island at Vallejo, California, where she remained until the end of the war. The Lena and her crew were disarmed, her guns dismantled, and ammunition removed. Lena’s officers signed agreements not to leave the area without the permission of President Roosevelt. Each crew member was given a similar parole.

Local newspaper accounts of that period reflect that the Lena, as well as her officers and crew, were often the subject of considerable interest during their stay at Mare Island.

Tombstone of a Russian sailor on Mare Island, near Vallejo, CA

A Russian Sailor Dies on the Lena

On November 1,1904, Russian Sailor John Peskov fell to his death while performing duties on the Lena.

The Vallejo Evening Chronicle of November 2, 1904, gives this account of the Orthodox funeral service given Peskov at the Mare Island Naval Cemetery: “The hearse was followed by a file of shipmates of the deceased, the officers in full uniform, and Captain Berlinsky in the carriage of [US Navy] Admiral McCalla. Sailors carrying immense wreaths preceded the ship’s chaplain who was arrayed in the flowing robes of Orthodox Clergy, a long tunic of black velvet, trimmed in broad silver braid, with black stole, and black head gear. The priest carried a large crucifix of dull gold. Following him came the Lena’s crew, while another company of US Marines formed the rear of the procession.”

Another article of the event described John Peskov (or Peskoff) as “first sergeant of the marines” on the Lena.

Over the days, weeks, and months that followed, US Navy and Russian sailors from the Lena entertained the public and themselves with rowboat races, official functions, and even the occasional newspaper account of misdeeds, their own victimization at the hands of locals in Vallejo, and other events including the breaking of parole by several of Lena’s officers and crew — some of whom had to be returned from Russia.

Some of the officers even arranged for their wives and families to join them in California, and rented apartments in Vallejo where they lived until it was time for their return to Russia after the Russo-Japanese War.

Another Sailor Dies

Sometime during 1905, Lena crewman Peter Loboda died and was buried near his shipmate John Peskov. While the cause and date of his death have not yet been determined, there is little doubt that he too was given an Orthodox funeral by the Lena’s Orthodox Chaplain.

Lena Refitted and Repaired

In May 1905, Captain Berlinsky returned to Russia and was replaced by Commander A. Ginther of His Imperial Majesty’s Navy. Earlier in April, permission had been given the Russian government to have the Lena repaired near San Francisco at the Union Iron Works.

On August 9, 1905, the Lena, under the command of Commander Ginther, left the San Francisco Navy Yard on a trial trip after her extensive repairs at the Union Iron Works. She was escorted by US Navy torpedo boat Fox. She then returned to Mare Island for reloading of crew, the families who came to live in Vallejo, and other goods prior to her departure from California and the United States.

The San Francisco Call of Saturday, October 28, 1905, noted that, “For the first time since she ran away from the Japanese and sought refuge in this harbor, the Russian cruiser Lena looks like a smart warship… . Newly painted and with her brasswork and guns brightly polished, she floats proudly…”

The Lena was scheduled to sail for Russia on Sunday, October 29, 1905.

A Sad and Unexpected End

“Father Vasill [Basil] Osipov, Chaplain of the Russian cruiser Lena, died on board the war vessel at 4 о ‘clock yesterday morning. ” So noted the Sunday, October 29, 1905 issue of the San Francisco Call.

The departure of the Lena was delayed until Wednesday, November 1, 1905 — one year to the day after the death of Lena’s crewman John Peskov — to enable Father Basil to receive the same Orthodox funeral service he provided Lena crewmen Peskov and Loboda.

The funeral service was held at the Russian Orthodox Church (at that time on Powell Street) in San Francisco. Fr. Basil’s grave is in the Serbian Orthodox Cemetery south of San Francisco. Fr. Basil never returned home to Russia, he never left America.

Memory Eternal!

For the past several years, on a Saturday between October 23rd and November 20th , Orthodox Christian clergy, choirs, laity and dignitaries from the Russian Consulate, Russian Veterans Society, the Vallejo Naval and Historical Society, and other guests, gather at the Mare Island Cemetery to conduct a Memorial Service (Panikhida) for all the departed Russian sailors.

The dates of October 23rd and November 20th encompass the date of the 1863 San Francisco fire when some of the Russian sailors were injured, the date of death of Artemy Trapeznikov and Yakov Burtorin (October 27th, 1863), the date of Fr. Basil’s death (October 28th, 1095), the date of John Peskov’s death (November 1st), Veterans Day, and the known date of the death of another of the 1863 sailors (November 20th) Karl Kort.

A sad irony connecting the 1863 and 1904/05 visits of the Russian Navy, is that the famous Russian Admiral Makarov who was killed during the Russo-Japanese War, in which Lena took part, was a midshipman on one of the ships at Mare Island during the 1863 visit.

[This article was written by Fr. Silas Ruark.]

Russian Sailors Buried on Mare Island (near Vallejo, CA) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

St. Alexander Hotovitzky

On November 4, 1905, a religious and literary journal entitled The Friend published a letter by St. Alexander Hotovitzky, dean of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York. Hotovitzky wrote in response to an article in The Friend which claimed, “In this Russian service, of course, no one understood what was said, not even the Russians themselves, as the whole of it was in the ancient ecclesiastical Slavonic tongue. As the Romish Church addresses the Lord in Latin, so do the Greeks use this Slavonic language.” Here is Hotovitzky’s reply:

This is not true.

1. Our ecclesiastical Slavonic tongue is the original of modern Russian, Servian, Slavonian, and of other branches of the Slavic world.

2. Every Russian, even children (of school age) understands well the real text and meaning of all prayers in Slavonic, excluding, perhaps, not many expressions which are lost for living use and are not fitting for ordinary practice.

3. Easy to be understood, this Slavonic language has, besides, immense dignity of words, and is sanctified as proper church language by long ecclesiastical usage.

4. To compare the use of the Latin tongue in the Roman Church and of Slavonic in the Russian is, then, far from consistency and knowledge of true conditions of things, because the chief rule of the Eastern Church (which combines Russia, Greece, Jerusalem, Antiochia, etc.) is to say the divine services in the language of the people for whom the services are intended; in Japan we celebrate and preach in Japanese, in China in Chinese, in Alaska in the native tongue of the Aleutians, and in some churches of America in English, always according to the needs and understanding of the congregation.

5. Russians do not understand Greek, and Greeks do not understand the Russian; so in a Greek church you never hear one word of the Slavonic tongue, and vice versa; yet both are of the same Eastern Catholic confession.

A. Hotovitzky, Dean of the Russian St. Nicholas Cathedral.

New York, Ninth Month 24, 1905.

I’m particularly interested in St. Alexander’s point about the use of English in some American Orthodox parishes. This was 1905; the very next year, Isabel Hapgood published her landmark English translation of the Service Book, facilitating the wider use of English. But Slavonic would remain the dominant language of the Russian Archdiocese for years to come. The 1916 Census of Religious Bodies reports that 166 of the 169 Russian Orthodox congregations in America worshipped exclusively in Slavonic.

In fact, among American Orthodox groups, only St. Raphael’s Syrians (Antiochians) really embraced English in the early years of the 20th century. Although they liturgized exclusively in Arabic in 1906, by 1916, over half of the Syrian parishes had completely switched to English, and numerous others had incorporated English to one degree or another. In fact, in 1916, no more than four of the 25 Syrian congregations continued to worship in Arabic alone. It was a remarkable, dramatic shift that probably had several contributing causes, including the vision of St. Raphael, the influence of Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, and the translation work of Isabel Hapgood. For more, check out my article from August 21 of last year.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

St. Alexander Hotovitzky on language in the Church is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

An early 20th century pearl-handled Smith & Wesson revolver, similiar to the gun St. Raphael was accused of using

In my last article, I wrote about the “Battle of Pacific Street” — the gunfight between Syrian Orthodox and Maronites in Brooklyn on the night of September 18, 1905. As I said before, St. Raphael Hawaweeny fled the scene and was chased (and then arrested) by a policeman, Officer Mallon. According to Mallon, St. Raphael pulled out a revolver and tried to shoot the officer. According to St. Raphael, he did no such thing, and, for that matter, had never even handled a gun in his entire life.  

The next day’s newspapers weren’t in agreement about what had supposedly happened. On one end of the spectrum was the Times, which didn’t even mention a gun. At the other extreme was the World, which not only reported that St. Raphael had a revolver, but that he ”snapped” it at Officer Mallon. Accounts began to crystallize on August 20. In that day’s issue of the Sun, we find this:  

[Officer] Nallin says he saw two men break away. He gave chase. One of them was the Bishop, who was hot-footing it toward home. Nallin grabbed the episcopal coat tails. It was then, Nallin avers, that the Bishop turned around and shoved a pearl handled pistol in his face. He snapped it twice, but it didn’t go off.  

The Tribune (9/20), also citing Officer Mallon’s sworn testimony, reported that St. Raphael had snapped the revolver three times, rather than twice. The Sun also reported Officer Mallon’s accusation that St. Raphael had actually fired the revolver in the battle, before turning it on the policeman. And here’s the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (9/19): 

[Officer] Nallin declares, and swore to his declaration in a complaint made against the bishop, that the prelate held the pistol at him and snapped it more than on ce. It did not go off, for maybe there were rim firing cartridges in a center firing gun; but this the police cannot know, for they have not found the bishop’s revolver, if he had one. Hawaweeny, the policeman says, then took to his heels in a most undignified way and ran away. Nallin was after him like a shot, for there were other policemen by this time attending to the other men in the shooting party, and he caught the bishop, as has been explained, hiding behind a wagon in the express company’s stable. 

What about St. Raphael’s own version of the incident? Here is what he told the World (9/19): “As soon as the firing began I fled and took refuge in a carriage shop. I did not have a revolver at any time during the excitement and this policeman who says I did knows that he is telling a deliberate falsehood. He admits that he did not find any weapon in my possession when he made me a prisoner.” According to St. Raphael’s followers, his arrest part of a pre-arranged plot, which allegedly included the police. The Tribune (9/20) offered this report: 

The friends of Bishop Raphael assert that his arrest was the result of a plot. Men were especially brought from Asbury Park and Fishkill, it was said, by his enemies to assault his followers. N. Maloof, one of the faction opposed to the bishop, was arrested Monday for assaulting one of the latter’s friends. He threatened, it is alleged, that Bishop Raphael would be arrested before midnight, and he was. The bishop’s friends say that he carried no revolver, but that one was supplied for the occasion by his enemies. He ran away when the detectives arrived because he believed he was being pursued by the men who threatened his life. 

We are left with three possibilities: 

1. Officer Mallon was mistaken,
2. Officer Mallon was lying, or
3. St. Raphael was lying.

Now, let me say something up front, as we begin our analysis of the available evidence: I am a huge admirer of St. Raphael. He is, without question, my favorite American Orthodox historical figure. My own son’s middle name is Raphael, in his honor. It is impossible for me to be completely objective about this case, because I am admittedly biased in favor of St. Raphael. At the same time, I cannot simply ignore inconvenient evidence, or refuse to pursue possibilities that might leave St. Raphael looking less than clean. To be an honest historian, I have to look at everything. And so I will. 

Anyway, let’s consider what we can. Is it possible that Officer Mallon was mistaken? Of course. The incident happened after 11 PM, and this was 1905, so we can be certain that it was very dark. Accounts indicate that Officer Mallon chased after two men — St. Raphael, and someone else. It is entirely plausible that the other man pointed a gun at the officer. Also, the newspapers indicate that many people came out into the streets to see what had happened. According to the Tribune, by the time Officer Mallon arrived at the scene, the mob “numbered nearly two hundred persons.” The two dozen or so combatants were scattering in all directions, trying to avoid being either shot or arrested. So there were plenty of people in the street at the time. 

Even Police Inspector Cross, who took charge of the case, was skeptical of St. Raphael’s guilt. Inspector Cross received a letter from a Russian official, attesting to the bishop’s good character, and Cross responded, “I am investigating the matter, and I am satisfied that the Bishop is innocent of all the charges and accusations that have been made against him, and I shall be pleased to have you communicate this information to the Consul-General of Russia” (Sun, 9/22). The inspector questioned Officer Mallon, who, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (9/22) reported, said “that he could not be mistaken about it and that the bishop had pulled a revolver on him and snapped the trigger, just as he had sworn in court.” 

It’s also worth noting that most low-level policemen, like Mallon, weren’t trained in police academies like our officers today. Mallon may have been a police officer, but his value as a witness isn’t necessarily any better than your average man on the street. 

This leads us to our second possibility — that Officer Mallon was lying. See, besides being uneducated, many of New York’s policemen in 1905 were, to one degree or another, corrupt. Just a few months before all this chaos, another Officer Mallon was convicted of murder. I haven’t been able to track down our Officer Mallon’s first name, much less his biography, and it doesn’t help that literally each newspaper uses a different spelling of his name. But regardless of the spelling you use, there is a very, very distinct possibility that Officer Mallon was Irish. And if he was Irish, he was probably a Roman Catholic. Given that the Syrian war was between two religious factions, and one of those factions was itself Roman Catholic, it’s certainly possible that Officer Mallon lied to benefit his co-religionists. I don’t have any evidence for this, but it’s something that must be considered as we try to determine the truth. 

Finally, there is the remote possibility that St. Raphael himself was lying. Let us, for a moment, try to set aside the fact that we’re dealing with a canonized saint, and try to approach this with as open a mind as we can. St. Raphael Hawaweeny was an Orthodox bishop. He had good reason to believe that his life was in imminent danger. He left his house late at night to visit a parishioner who had been beaten earlier that day. Bishop Raphael brought with him a bodyguard of parishioners, at least some of whom were armed. Stop for a moment — might he have been armed himself? He might have been, but I think not. His best option would have been to run for the hills if anyone attacked, and that is precisely what he did. He probably was not armed. But what if one of those parishioner-bodyguards had thrust a revolver into his hand at the last moment? Is it possible that he took it — not intended to use it, mind you, but simply took it into his hand? I think we must admit that this is possible, albeit remotely so. Bishop Raphael may have had a revolver on his person when he ran from the gunfight. 

He ran, and was chased by someone. We now know that someone to be Officer Mallon, but did the bishop know this? Almost certainly not. As we’ve seen, it was very dark, and Bishop Raphael was running from a veritable riot. Surely he thought — I would have thought — that his pursuer was one of those Maronite enemies, coming to get him. In that situation, would it have been reasonable for him to pull out that revolver and point it at the pursuer? I think so. I probably would have done the same thing. I don’t think he would have intended to actually fire the gun, but he probably thought that his life was in imminent danger. Pointing a gun at your apparent attacker is a pretty normal reaction. Once he learned that his pursuer was not an attacker but a policeman, would he have thrown the gun away? Almost certainly. 

But – continuing just a little longer with the unlikely theory that Bishop Raphael was guilty – why would he compound the problem by lying about it afterwards? Why not just admit the mistake? It’s very possible that the bishop considered his position, and his flock, and the likely consequences (not just to himself, but to his ministry) of admitting to assaulting a police officer. He may well have felt that a sin — lying — would be better than the destruction of his ministry. And it’s hard to blame him if he did think along those lines. 

Okay, let’s stop this speculation now. Is the theory I just laid out possible? I think it is. Is it plausible? Is it likely? No, it is not. Given what we know of St. Raphael, given the realities of New York policemen in 1905, given that the alleged revolver was never found, given the specific circumstances of the case (nighttime, a crowded street, the probable assumption by the officer that all those at the gunfight were participants) — given all that we know, I feel pretty confident that St. Raphael never wavered in telling the truth. I do not believe that he tried to shoot a police officer. 

In this article, we have focused almost entirely on the single question of whether St. Raphael tried to shoot a policeman. But he was accused of numerous other crimes, and the whole story of his tribulations in late 1905 is not nearly over. There will be another riot, and another arrest, and many appearances in court. Over the coming weeks, we will continue to unpack, examine, and discuss the sad but compelling crisis that dominated New York’s Syrian community — and the life of St. Raphael — in 1905 and 1906. 

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

Did St. Raphael try to shoot a police officer? is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

As we’ve seen

The first acts of violence took place on Friday, August 15, when about a score of Syrian men scuffled in the colony’s business center. By Monday, tensions had reached a breaking point. That afternoon, three Syrians had a dust-up and were arrested. Then, at 7 o’clock that night, an Orthodox merchant named Nicolo Abousamra boarded a ferry boat. Two men attacked him with a stick, leaving a nasty lump on his head. Abousamra thought that they had a dagger, but he was able to escape to a more crowded part of the boat.

Abousamra made it home, where he told his business partner Sakir Nassar about the attack. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (9/19/1905), “they decided that it might be as well to have the bishop call on them last night and talk the thing over. For they felt sure that there were assassins lurking about to kill the bishop and they wanted to warn him and plan some form of protection.” Though it was by now the dead of night, Nassar hurried off to find St. Raphael. As it turned out, the bishop already had a bodyguard with him: “for the bishop has been worrying about the shadows that lurk about him when he goes abroad, and it is his habit to take some of his parishioners along with him when he goes out at night” (Eagle). St. Raphael went at once to visit Abousamra, and at least some of his accompanying parishioners were armed.

St. Raphael and his entourage never made it to Abousamra’s. St. Raphael lived at 320 Pacific Street. Abousamra was at 114 Pacific. On the way, the St. Raphael’s party had to pass by 137 Pacific — the home of none other than Naoum Mokarzel. For his part, Mokarzel had conveniently invited a dozen friends over, and at least some of these friends were packing heat. (None of the sources say so, but I strongly suspect that Mokarzel’s friends were the other members of the Champagne Glass Club.)

Why did St. Raphael go to the home of his arch-enemy in the middle of the night? The New York Sun (9/19) reported that Raphael got the rather wild idea that, if only he could sit down with Mokarzel and talk face-to-face, they could make peace and end all the violence. Alternatively, the Orthodox parishioners may have taken the initiative to go to Mokarzel’s house, and St. Raphael may have joined them in an effort to prevent a fight. Another very plausible explanation is offered by St. Raphael himself, and appeared in the New York World (9/19):

I have enemies who are seeking to kill me. I have been warned time and again that I will be assassinated and for many weeks I have not dared to leave my home unaccompanied at night. Whenever I go out I get several of my parishioners to go with me and this was the case last night when I went out to visit a sick friend.

Neither I nor those with me had any part in the riot, nor did we make an attack upon the home of Mr. Makarzoe [sic]. We were passing peaceably through Pacific street when the shooting began. I am convinced that it was a feigned pistol duel, with the purpose of murdering me by hitting me with what would appear to be a stray bullet.

One reason it’s hard to get a handle on what happened is the fact that the newspapers don’t agree with each other. The Sun reports that St. Raphael and several parishioners went into Mokarzel’s house and spent about an hour there in a relatively peaceful meeting. Things eventually turned violent, the meeting broke up, and a shootout began. At least, that’s the Sun‘s story.

The New York Times‘ version of events basically follows St. Raphael’s story. According to the Times, “The minute the Hawaweeny party entered [Mokarzel's house] the fight began. It was rough and tumble in the parlor for a few minutes, and then the combatants went to the street and fought there.” No hour-long meeting in this version. Honestly, I think the Times, rather than the Sun, has it right. Consider the facts:

• It was nearly midnight.
• The Orthodox were on their way to visit an assault victim, Abousamra.
• St. Raphael and his followers believed that assassins were after him.
• There were a dozen Orthodox men, some of whom were armed.
• There were a dozen Maronite men, some of whom were armed.
• The two groups hated each other’s guts.

I say there’s no way in the world, under those circumstances, that a dozen Orthodox men could have approached Mokarzel’s house — full of armed Maronites — and not had an immediate fight. St. Raphael’s story sounds reasonable, and I’m inclined to believe him.

In any event, a moment or an hour after the Orthodox group passed by Mokarzel’s house, a gunfight broke out. Here is how the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (9/19) describes the scene:

It was clearly a pitched battle, for the combatants were dancing about, here and there, taking refuge when they could and again take pot shots at each other. There were others on the street in addition to the combatants, some of hte men from the nearby house of the fire patrol, and Captain Cashman, the head of the fire patrol company. The men of the patrol were gingerly trying to stop the shooting, and when the uniformed policeman appeared ran in with him and put the shooters to flight.

The police officer — a fellow named Mallon – had heard the shots, and bravely rushed into the battle. Police reinforcements soon arrived, and the Battle of Pacific Street finally ended. About twenty shots had been fired, but fortunately, no one died and only two men were injured.

Officer Mallon (whose name has as many spellings as New York had newspapers) saw one of the Syrians “running for all he was worth” (Times) away from the fight, and he chased after the man. As it turns out, this was none other than St. Raphael himself.

Soon enough, Officer Mallon caught up to the bishop and arrested him. According to the officer, St. Raphael brandished a revolver and even tried to pull the trigger. St. Raphael vehemently denied this, and said that he had never even handled a gun in his life, and would never do such a thing. This issue — whether St. Raphael assaulted a policeman with a gun and whether he lied about it afterwards — is so serious and significant that I want to explore it in great detail in another article.

Most of the Syrian fighters escaped, but several were arrested and locked in jail. Some women tried to bail out St. Raphael, but the magistrate said that, for the time being, the bishop was safer behind bars than out in public. The physical battle was over, but St. Raphael’s fight for his reputation, and his freedom, had just begun.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

St. Raphael and the Battle of Pacific Street is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

This photo appeared with the original article.

Editor’s note: The following article appeared in multiple newspapers (including the New York Sun and the Washington Post) on July 30, 1905 — just a couple of weeks before New York’s Syrian community became embroiled in a very public, very messy war between Orthodox and Maronites. In light of that controversy, this article’s statement, “They are preeminently law abiding” is rather ironic.

“What an enchanting vase!” said a buyer in an uptown bric-a-brac shop, as she paused before an enameled copper jar of simple, artistic shape.

“Syrian: fifteen dollars,” explained the accommodating salesman.

“Come away,” murmured the friend. “I will show you where you can buy the same thing for half the price; and rugs and embroideries and brasses and —”

The initiated one led the would-be buyer to a most inartistic and unromantic quarter in the lower part of the city — no section of New York could seem less likely to reveal mysteries of the Orient; yet, under the guidance of one who knows, it yields treasures. Enter a dismal little room perhaps 10 by 12 feet, and you see only rows of shelves filled with folded cloth. Ask to see embroideries, and the gorgeousness of the East is unrolled before you.

Sometimes you may name your own price, sometimes not. The Syrian is canny, and it is up to the buyer to be his own judge of values; but in every case an American merchant would charge more for the same thing.

Much has been published regarding the Syrians in New York which they resent as inaccurate and unjust. They say that they have often been misunderstood, or, worse yet, wilfully misrepresented, in order to make a picturesque or sensational story.

“The Syrians who have come to America to live have one chief object — to become good American citizens.”

This is, in effect, the declaration of every Syrian, high or low, rich or poor, who is questioned as to his life in America. There are about 70,000 Syrians in the United States and Canada and 6,000 in and around New York.

The pioneer Syrians were regarded by Americans with deep distrust, and some of that feeling remains to this day. Poverty forced the humbler ones who wished to live in New York into an undesirable quarter of the city — Washington, Carlisle, Rector streets, West Broadway and vicinity and the poorer parts of Brooklyn and Jersey City. Even now, when there are many Syrians here who can well afford good apartments and houses, the prejudice is so strong that landlords in the better districts refuse to accept them as tenants.

The Syrians are the product of tyranny in their own country, and it has developed at least an outward patience and gentleness. It has also developed a passionate appreciation of the freedom of America, but, unlike many races who thirst for freedom, the Syrians do not abuse it. They are preeminently law abiding.

It is true they are shrewd and subtle. They put up a barrier of reserve which is not to be crossed. They seem always cautious and on guard. This, also, is the result of the tyranny, injustice and suspicion which have been accorded them. It is easy to realize that they might be capable of driving a better bargain than an Anglo-Saxon.

“It is the way we have been governed in our own country that makes us smart,” said one — a university man, master of seven languages, editor of Meraat-el-Gharb, one of the Syrian newspapers published in New York. “We must learn everything we can, especially languages, for a Syrian never knows where he may have to make his home. He must be wise and guard each word he speaks, for he never knows to whose ears it may go or what use may be made of it against him.”

They sell their goods at reasonable, often amazingly low, prices, and invariably for less than an American importer would charge for the same article. The New Yorker who has learned what treasures may be found in the Syrian quarter never fails to betake herself thither before the Christmas holidays. There, in a dingy little room that would not serve an American merchant for a waste paper closet, are piled Oriental fabrics, embroideries, rugs, brasses, coppers, laces and carved wood. The bazaar method of arranging his wares stands the Syrian merchant in good stead in the close quarters to which he has thus far been condemned in New York.

Religiously, the Syrians are of many minds. The greater number in this country belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. There are Maronites, some Roman Catholics, a sprinkling of Presbyterians and about one Mohammedan in two hundred. The Presbyterians and the Roman Catholics are the product of missionary work in Syria. The Greek Orthodox Syrian regards the missionaries with amused disdain.

“Why should you send missionaries to us, who live in the land where Jesus walked and who were Christians before America was dreamed of?”

The principal church of the Greek Orthodox Syrians is in Brooklyn, and at their head is Bishop Raphael Hawaweeny, who is a native of Damascus and is now a most zealous worker for his people. He was the first Syrian member of the Orthodox Russian clergy to receive full episcopal honors in this country. Nine years ago he came to the United States as an emissary of the Greek Church to carry on religious work among the Syrians of New York. He was then an Archimandrite. From the outset he was successful in his efforts, and in recognition of his effective missionary work here he received the higher Church honors nearly two years ago at the hands of the synod and Czar Nicholas.

It is a habit of the Bishop’s flock, especially the men, to call on him Sunday afternoon. Then he adds to the patient, fatherly care of his people the kindnesses of an extremely clever host.

In his home the Bishop wears a robe of heavy, lustrous black satin and is never without a string of agate beads in his hands.

“Is it a rosary?”

“No.”

“Has it any similar religious significance?”

“No; it is for ornament only. I like to handle it. I am not content without it.”

Then comes the shining brass tray, bearing Syrian brandy, insidious fig paste (of which one never eats too much), pistache nuts, never to be forgotten Turkish coffee and the Bishop’s own cigarettes, stamped in gold Syrian letters with the text, “This is the day the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

“They were given me by a member of my church the day I was ordained,” the Bishop explains.

Across the street from the Bishop’s house is the Syrian church. This belonged originally to a Protestant denomination, and has not the distinctive, mosquelike construction of Russian churches. The interior is of the plainest, except that the altar approaches and furnishings gleam with the brilliant, barbaric colorings and gildings which are characteristic of the Syrians and which give a rich Oriental effect to the otherwise bare house of worship.

A high, carved screen extends across one end of the church, before the altar. In the middle of this screen is the Holy Gate, a doorway to the altar. This cannot be entered except by the Czar, as the head of the Greek Church, or by the regularly ordained priests or higher prelates.

A partition rises on either side of this gate, which is called an ikonostas, in which there are side entrances, where deacons and lower officials may enter. Standing in the Holy Gate, in his gorgeous satin robes, Bishop Raphael is an impressive figure.

The home life of the Syrians is extremely simple, whether they be rich or poor, and its chief characteristic is hospitality. There seems a childlike absence of sytem, and but one domestic rule — to offer the newly arrived guest refreshment. It may be only a whiff at a narghile, a cigarette, or a cup of coffee; but it is given with an abandon of generosity and a touching eagerness to please. Indeed, it is difficult to prevent a Syrian from showering you with gifts. You have the feeling that if he be not restrained he will give you the rugs from his floors and the bric-a-brac from his shelves.

The Syrians in America, both men and women, dress in strictly American fashion. We would rather they did not, and we rejoice in the sight of an occasional fez or twisted scarf, worn especially at home, and gladdening our eyes with its Oriental grace.

If you have a fad for lunching or dining in odd corners of New York you may some time drift into a Syrian restaurant. There, if your tastes be not strictly Oriental, you are advised to confine yourself to the black coffee. Around a little table a group of Syrians, each with a long, flexible tube attached to a water bottle of a narghile, become extremely convivial, and you may be reasonably certain they are discussing politics. You also observe that they are not at their best. They cast off the sleepy eyed reserve which they usually extend to strangers and which so well becomes them, and show a tendency to be vociferous. It is, however, so genial and spontaneous that you yearn to put aside your cold Anglo-Saxon restraint and join in it.

The Syrians, as a rule, send their children to the public schools and are enthusiastic over the educational opportunities they can have in America. The Presbyterian Syrians, however, prefer private schools, where their children receive instruction in the Presbyterian faith. There the big eye babies divide their solemn allegiance between Jesus Christ and George Washington and chant faithful little prayers in soft, minor strains.

“New York’s 6,000 Syrians & Their Colony” is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

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

Last week, we left the two New York Syrian camps — Orthodox and Maronite — on the brink of war. Each side’s partisan newspaper attacked the other, and the Maronites took particular aim at St. Raphael, the Orthodox bishop of Brooklyn, accusing him of all sorts of outlandish offenses. Various parties received anonymous threats, and things came to a head in late August, when a Maronite group known as the Champagne Glass Club (CGC) told the police that St. Raphael had called on his followers to use violence against their Maronite enemies.

For the next few weeks, the Syrian community was balanced on the edge of a knife. The war of words continued in the papers, to the point that many Syrian men tried to forbid their wives from reading them. (Whether the wives followed this command is an open question.) The police seemed to think that this was all rather harmless, and even amusing.

That is, until September 15. That afternoon, about 20 Syrian men, representing both the Orthodox and Maronite parties, came to blows in the business center of the Syrian enclave. They were armed with guns and knives, but, thankfully, only one shot was fired, and it missed its target. A policeman bravely rushed into the fracas, breaking up the fight and arresting three men. One of the arrested Syrians, Haiss Nahas, had a slight head wound — the day’s only injury, caused when he was knocked to the ground by Navis Harris. Harris, for his part, claimed that Nahas has fired a shot at him.

Nahas, Harris, and another man were hauled into police court. Harris appears to have been Orthodox, and he was represented by the prominent attorney Charles Le Barbier. Just as the case came up before the magistrate, the other party — Nahas, he of the head wound — was brought in. Le Barbier’s jaw dropped when he realized that he had represented Nahas in a previous case, and thus had an unavoidable conflict of interest. Both prisoners were locked up, with bail set at $500 apiece. When another Syrian tried to bail out Harris, the police recognized him as one of the men involved in the fight. He was arrested, but was soon set free by the merciful magistrate.

The street fight took place in broad daylight on Friday afternoon, August 15, in the heart of the Syrian colony. But this incident was more of a skirmish than an actual battle. The combatants apparently took the weekend off, although St. Raphael reportedly accused Naoum Mokarzel, editor of Al Hoda and leader of the Maronite Champagne Glass Club (CGC), of attacking him in print (New York Times, 9/19/1905). This would hardly have been the first time Al Hoda had gone after Raphael, and the Times reference isn’t terribly clear, but it’s possible (probable, even) that St. Raphael addressed the controversy in his Sunday homily.

Anyway, come Monday, the Syrian colony was a powder keg. In my next article in this series, I’ll discuss full-blown outbreak of war that took place on August 18. Before I do that, though, I want to point out a few other facts that I haven’t yet mentioned, which contributed to the hostility in the Syrian colony.

One of the richest Syrian merchants in New York was a man named John Abdulnour (in fact, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of August 19 describes him as “the wealthiest Syrian in America” and “the leader of the Syrians”). Abdulnour was apparently a Maronite, but his wife was Orthodox, and she would occasionally travel from their “palatial” home in Staten Island to attend St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral in Brooklyn. Late in the summer of 1905, Mrs. Abdulnour filed for a divorce — with the apparent encouragement of St. Raphael (Tribune, 9/20).

Another issue, which I’ve briefly touched on already, is the fact that St. Raphael did not simply remain silent in the face of slander. No, he didn’t call for vengeance like the CGC claimed, but he also didn’t just take the attacks lying down. According to the Eagle, Raphael sued a Maronite editor named Maloof for libel. The amount? $23,000 — that is, over half a million dollars today. Now, I wouldn’t be too harsh on St. Raphael, as libel suits were exceedingly popular at the turn of the last century. In any event, St. Raphael agreed to accept an apology and drop the case, but that did nothing to quell the ever-increasing resentment that each side felt for the other.

Finally, there is the issue of Lebanese nationalism. Of course, back in 1905, there was no state called “Lebanon” — today’s Lebanon and Syria were, at that time, still a part of the Ottoman Empire. But Naoum Mokarzel aimed to change all that. He was as passionate a Lebanese nationalist as there ever has been, and according to an article in Arab Studies Quarterly, he was directly instrumental in the eventual establishment of the Lebanese state. But Lebanese nationalism was far more of a Maronite sentiment than an Orthodox one, and Mokarzel no doubt felt that St. Raphael’s relative tolerance of the Ottomans and out-and-out loyalty to the Russians was a betrayal of his heritage. To Mokarzel and his ilk, all things were subordinate to the ideal of Lebanon; to St. Raphael, fidelity to one’s faith always trumped the idea of national identity.

As I said, in my next article on this subject, I’ll finally get to the big event — what one newspaper called the “Battle of Pacific Street” — and the resulting arrest of one of the greatest saints in American Orthodox history.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

The Eve of the Battle of Pacific Street is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

St. Raphael Hawaweeny

Way back in January, I began what I intended to be a series on the 1905 arrest and trial of St. Raphael Hawaweeny. I wrote only one article on the subject, though, and even that article was more of a collection of quotations from contemporary newspapers than an actual piece of historical work. I confess to getting sidetracked, and also to not really knowing how to best present the material. You see, New York had numerous newspapers in 1905, and all of them seem to have found the whole affair to be really fascinating. The result is a great volume of fascinating, lively newspaper articles, all of which I wanted to share with my readers. I just couldn’t figure out what to cut, and when to paraphrase. So rather than deal with the problem, I just moved on to other things.

Today, though, I’m going to begin anew my admittedly meager attempt to summarize the crisis that afflicted Brooklyn’s Syrian community and its great Orthodox bishop. I’m going to go all the way back to the beginning, re-presenting material that I originally published on January 5. This time, though, I’m going to restrict myself to relatively brief quotations from the original sources. I will try, as best I can, to sift through the primary sources and give you the basic story, as best I can understand it.

New York’s Syrians were divided into two main camps — Orthodox and Maronite (often called “Greek Catholic”). Each group had a corresponding newspaper — Miraat Ul Gharb (The Mirror of the West) for the Orthodox, and Al Hoda for the Maronites. Miraat Ul Gharb was clearly the weaker of the two publications, appearing only once a week and having a smaller circulation than the daily Al Hoda. The papers were engaged in a war of words, and slanderous articles appeared in both. Finally, St. Raphael could stand no more of it, and he called for the editors to stop publishing such trash. The Al Hoda crowd, which called itself the “Champagne Glass Club,” told him to shut up — that “his place was in the church” (New York Sun, 8/27/1905). In speaking up, St. Raphael made himself a target, and Al Hoda‘s editor, Naoum Mokarzel, took direct aim at the bishop. He accused St. Raphael of numerous offenses, including trying to incite the Orthodox to violence against the Maronites. Miraat Ul Gharb responded, and the back-and-forth attacks continued. Rather than stopping the battle, St. Raphael’s intervention unwittingly made things worse.

In late August, the leaders of the Champagne Glass Club (we’ll call them the CGC from here on out) went to the police with a remarkable story. According to the CGC, on August 15, St. Raphael assembled his congregation and told them that they needed to defend his name with their lives — that, if one or two of them might have to die in defense of his honor, then so be it. On August 20 — again, according to the CGC — Raphael claimed that he was “as great as Grand Duke Sergius of Russia,” and needed to be defended accordingly (the Grand Duke had been assassinated earlier that year). I am convinced that both of these claims are utter fabrications, but if you’re in doubt, just listen to the next allegation of the CGC. From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (8/28/1905):

Another speech was made on Wednesday, August 23, in which the bishop made a statement to the effect that he was wounded by the attack of certain Syrian papers which attempted to stain his morality, and that if such a fact be established and he were proved to be immoral, every marriage that he had performed during the last twelve years among the Syrians in New York and elsewhere would be annulled. Thereupon he called the younger element of his congregation to rise in his defense and several of them who were present provided with arms took such arms and deposited them on a table in the church, in accordance with an established Oriental custom, saying they would defend him with the last drop of their blood.

This is just plain absurd; the CGC overreached. It is unimaginable that St. Raphael, an extremely well-educated Orthodox theologian, would claim that sacraments administered by an immoral clergyman are invalid. We covered that ground back in the early third century, when the Church recognized Donatism to be heretical. No doubt the CGC would respond by saying that, even if Raphael didn’t believe it, he would have made such a claim to incite his flock to violence. But that’s even more absurd — the two Syrian camps already hated each other, and the Orthodox didn’t exactly need any encouragement to fight their Maronite counterparts. Even a hypothetically wicked bishop would have gained nothing for his cause with public pronouncements and actions like the ones Raphael was accused of.

Anyway, of course St. Raphael did nothing of the sort. Here is his version of what happened, as he told it to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

We held a meeting in the basement of the church so that I could calm and restrain my people. I wanted the members of my church to ignore the men who are abusing me. I wanted to advise them to keep their tempers and do nothing to any enemy of mine. I told them that I had forgiven Maluf and Markozel and that they must forgive them. I begged them to keep peace and to have nothing but brotherly love in their hearts.

Forgiving Mokarzel — shoot, even feigning forgiveness — would have been extremely difficult for most people. Listen to this lovely quote from the Al Hoda editor in the New York Times (8/28/1905):

He [Raphael] asserts that his morality has been attacked. I say nothing about his private life — his wine, his card playing. I have not put it in my paper. I respect his church and wish my church to be respected. I am a Roman Catholic. I have heard that the Bishop has said he would crush me, do me bodily and moral injury. He has called together his congregation and appointed a committee of six desperate men to take vengeance upon me and others. Well, I am willing to die for the truth.

Isn’t that great? I think it’s what they call “talking out of both sides of your mouth.” If Mokarzel is telling the truth, he’s doing a pretty lousy job of it. And apparently, in Al Hoda, he was much more slanderous than in the above quote, and his opposite number in Miraat Ul Gharb wasn’t exactly holding back, either. According to the New York Tribune (8/28/1905), it had gotten so bad that the Syrian men forbade their wives from reading the papers.

The police seem to have been more amused than anything else by all this intra-Arab bickering. From the Sun: “The big seargent behind the desk of the Church street police station last night smiled at the idea of bloodshed, and said that no extra police had been placed in the Syrian quarter, though the men on post had been told to exercise vigilance.” Unfortunately, the big seargent was wrong. Within three weeks, words gave way to violent actions, and the whole Syrian quarter was thrown into turmoil.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

Trouble in Syrian New York is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

While more than a thousand persons were in front of the Holy Trinity Hellenic Orthodox Church, in Seventy-second Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues, early this morning, it being the Easter of that church, a man shot off six blank cartridges with a revolver. A policeman arrested the man and started for the station house. Hundreds followed, and at Seventy-first Street they tore away the prisoner, who made his escape. The reserves of the East Sixty-seventh Street Station were then sent for and remained on guard until the crowd dispersed.

At the time of the shooting the steps of the church were crowded, and in the block between Lexington and Third Avenue there were about 2,000 persons. Every man and woman carried a lighted candle. P0liceman O’Connor of the East Sixty-Seventh Street Station was sent to keep order, and remained outside the gathering. Shortly before 12:30 o’clock he heard six shots fired in rapid succession. Men and women pushed right and left at first and remained quiet when it was seen that the cartriges were blanks. The policeman saw the smoke and arrested a man he thought had fired the revolver.

O’Connor started through the crowd. When he reached Lexington Avenue with his prisoner there were more than 500 men and women behind him. The prisoner was a Greek, and all those following were talking in excited voices.

When Seventy-first Street was reached the crowd made a rush, and, throwing O’Connor to the ground, released his hold on the prisoner. The man was seized by friends and hurried into the crowd. O’Connor made several efforts to get the man, but the crowd surged about him and he was unsuccessful.

The policeman then went to the nearest police telephone box and summoned the reserves. Search for the man was made in vain by twenty policemen. The reserves then remained on guard outside the crowd while services were conducted. There was no further trouble.

This is hardly the most violent guns-on-Pascha story I’ve heard, but it’s nonetheless startling. Can you imagine being that policeman, followed for six blocks by a mob of Greeks, before being accosted and thrown to the ground? It’s a wonder he wasn’t beaten, but apparently the Greeks were peaceable enough, interested solely in freeing their comrade.

The incident really makes you appreciate modern technology. Today, a policeman in the same situation would have immediately radioed for backup, but Officer O’Connor had to track down a “police telephone box” to bring in the reserves.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

Today in history: Guns on Pascha, 1905 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

The Philadelphia Inquirer (12/24/1905) commented on the East-West calendar difference, and then pointed out another distinction:

In the [Western denominations] both the time immediately preceding and the period following Christmas Day are times of feasting. In the Greek Church, on the contrary, the forty days preceding Christmas are set aside as a time of fasting, just as Lent precedes Easter. In the local church the communicants are not required to strictly observe this rule. All that is asked is that they observe the week preceding Christmas as a time of fasting.

I suspect that this laxness in fasting was pretty common in American Orthodox parishes. But people didn’t just universally ignore the fast. The Washington Times (1/7/1912) notes, “Since December Greeks abstained from eating meat.” With the arrival of Christmas, the DC Greeks began to feast, going from house to house. “The most humble peanut vendor is privileged by this custom to enter the home of the wealthiest man in the city and cannot be turned away.”

Children, of course, have always been prominent in Christmas celebrations. On Christmas Eve in the Russian church in Wilkes-Barre, PA, the priest, St. Alexis Toth, held a special event for the children of the parish. From the Wilkes-Barre Times (1/7/1907):

A large Christmas tree, prettily decorated and lighted, had been erected on the platform and after several hymns had been sung the treat consisting of candy and fruit for each child had been distributed by Father Toth, there were several more hymns, including the rendition of “America” in English.

It’s not clear, from the newspaper, whether the Christmas tree was actually inside the temple, or in some other part of the building.

While some Orthodox exchanged gifts on Christmas Day, others waited until Old Calendar New Year’s Day. From the Galveston Daily News (1/8/1913):

Christmas among the members of the Greek Orthodox Church is purely a religious festival. Unlike the Yuletide celebrations of the other Christian churches, it contains no elements of feasting or gift giving. The Greek New Year, which is to be celebrated on Jan. 13, is in commemoration of the circumcision of the Child Christ and is the day of feasting and giving of gifts among the members of the faith. Places of business are closed and every child of the Greeks, rich or poor, great or obscure, is remembered with presents.

The giving is observed in a peculiar form. Santa Claus is not known by name, but the children are told that the “ghost” has come down the chimney and brought the candies, sweets and presents that make them happy. Every child is remembered without any exception, and the parents cloak their giving unselfishly, letting the child believe that the gifts came direct from God, as the ghost who brings them is supposed to be the Holy Spirit.

I’m curious; do any of our readers know about this tradition — both the giving of gifts on New Year’s Day and the Holy Spirit coming down the chimney?

Old Calendar Christmas is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

St. Raphael Hawaweeny

It’s a funny thing — slander, that is. Once it’s out there, you can’t take it back. Good men — saints — have been accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable, and been completely innocent. At the same time, bad men have been accused of the same crimes, and been guilty. Ultimately, as an historian, it’s difficult to determine innocence or guilt. We piece the story together based on the evidence that has survived, and we try to get a sense of the characters involved. In this case, the accused was Raphael Hawaweeny, the great Syrian Bishop of Brooklyn. I am quite confident that the charges against him were trumped-up, and that he did nothing wrong. But I base that conclusion not only on the evidence of the case itself, and not only on his subsequent acquittal in open court, but also on everything I know about him as a person. I trust him, because he proved himself, time and again, to be trustworthy. The accusations against him are completely out of character, and we know more than a little about his character.

This is a messy story, but it has to be told. To start, I’m going to turn to the capable reporters of three New York newspapers. We’ll begin with the New York Tribune (8/28/1905), the most straightforward version of the story:

Threats of murder have been sent in anonymous letters to several members of the Syrian colony of New-York as a result of a bitter controversy which has been carried on for weeks in the columns of two of the Syrian newspapers of the city. The Rev. Raphael Hawaweeney, of No. 320 Pacific-st., Brooklyn, who recently became the Bishop of the Orthodox Greek Church of the Syrians in Brooklyn, has been dragged into the controversy and accused of inciting a movement for bloodshed. He and his friends declare that he has preached only peace and has advised against violence.

A formal appeal to Police Commissioner McAdoo for protection has been made by Syrian merchants who have received threatening letters, and who have been arming themselves and avoiding going into the streets alone for fear of being murdered. In the appeal to Mr. McAdoo it is declared that Bishop Hawaweeney recently called a meeting of members of his church and asked them to defend him against attacks in one of the Syrian newspapers, telling them that he was to be regarded as a grand duke, to be defended by his people, and that, if necessary, some of them must be ready to lay down their lives for him. It is said in the appeal that some of the young men of his congregation laid their knives on a table in the church, in accordance with an Oriental custom, and swore that they would defend the bishop with the last drop of their blood.

Bishop Hawaweeny said yesterday to a Tribune reporter that nothing of the kind happened, but that he attended a meeting of his congregation to counsel the members against violence, telling them to pay no attention to the attacks on him, as he forgave all his enemies. The trouble, he said, grew out of a circular sent to the six Syrian newspapers of the city by a newly formed society of fifteen men, known as the Champagne Glasses Society, and in reality a drinking club, demanding that the editors and publishers stop publishing paid articles attacking business or social rivals. The circular led to a clash between “Al Hoda,” a daily Syrian paper, published by N.A. Mokazel, and “Meraat-ul-Gharb,” a weekly paper, edited by N.M. Diab. The latter declared in his paper that “Al Hoda” referred to the bishop in certain of its alleged slanderous articles. The bishop was asked by friends of “Al Hoda” to stop the controversy, but he said it was none of his business. N.N. Maloof, a Syrian merchant, had a talk with the bishop in an effort to patch up peace, and “Meraat-ul-Gharb” published an account of the conference, which led Mr. Maloof to insert some signed articles in “Al Hoda,” demanding an explanation from the bishop.

Talks with members of the Syrian colony yesterday disclosed the fact that the newspaper controversy had excited them greatly and had led to a religious fight in which Roman Catholics and members of the Orthodox Greek Church had become involved. Mr. Mokazel said he had been accused of publishing a book attacking the Virgin Mary. A book which he thought was harmless, written by his brother-in-law, was printed at the office of “Al Hoda,” he said, and it created some hostile comment. His life had been threatened in an anonymous letter. His character had been assailed by a friend of Bishop Hawaweeney in an article by published in a paper believed to be under the bishop’s control, he said, and the bishop had declined to stop the attack.

Syrians in the city said yesterday that some articles in “Al Hoda” and “Meraat-ul-Gharb” were indecent. They said they had forbidden the women of their families to read the papers as a result of the controversy.

Mokazel, the editor of Al Hoda, was a real piece of work. In an interview with the the New York Times (8/28/1905), he openly slandered St. Raphael, in one of those classic bits of slander-while-denying-that-you’re-slandering:

He [Raphael] asserts that his morality has been attacked. I say nothing about his private life — his wine, his card playing. I have not put it in my paper. I respect his church and wish my church to be respected. I am a Roman Catholic. I have heard that the Bishop has said he would crush me, do me bodily and moral injury. He has called together his congregation and appointed a committee of six desperate men to take vengeance upon me and others. Well, I am willing to die for the truth.

And Raphael denied the allegations:

I am a man of peace. I have nothing to do with newspapers. I have been dragged into this controversy without a move on my part. Mr. Mokarzel has attacked my character. But far from urging my congregation to vengeance, I went to their meeting to tell them they must forgive as I forgive and do no violence. Mr. Mokarzel respects nobody. This attack against me comes from a society of freelivers with whom he is in sympathy. They call themselves Jamiat-Al-Alodh, which means “Champagne Glass Club.” These ruffians they say I have hired are poor men whom I have helped to a living.

Likewise, he told the New York Sun (8/27/1905),

There is in New York a Turkish society known as Jamiat-Al-Akdh. The literal translation of that is “Champagne Glass Society.” Its members do not like me because I would not indorse [sic] certain ideas of theirs, and they attacked me in the columns of a newspaper called Al Hoda. On Wednesday of this week members of my congregation met in the basement of St. Nicholas Church, of which I am in charge, and expressed their indignation at the slurs cast upon me. There was no display of arms and no one vowed to avenge the wrongs that had been done me. I am surprised that any one should believe that I would countenance anything unchristian. It is absurd. I am the Bishop of the Orthodox Greek Church in America and my paths do not lead my into politics.

That all happened at the end of August, 1905. Three weeks later, there was an explosion.

The Trial of St. Raphael, Part 1 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, 1905

Very soon after his 1905 conversion to Orthodoxy, Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine wrote a letter to his archbishop, St. Tikhon, on “the Anglican Church’s claims.” It was, for Tikhon, a valuable document: a view of Anglicanism from one of its own, who had himself converted to Orthodoxy. Irvine, who retained a sincere affection for his old Church, was in the perfect position to outline the good and the bad of the Anglican Communion.

In 1906, Irvine published the letter as a small book, titled On the Anglican Church’s Claims. He contacted some of his old friends in the Episcopal Church, well-respected figures, to expand on specific aspects of Anglicanism, and their responses were included as appendices in the book. The preface was written by Rev. Daniel J. Odell, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Annunciation in Philadelphia. Odell, a longtime friend of Irvine, provides a perspective on Irvine’s ordination that differs markedly from the negative reaction of Bishop Grafton. I’m reprinting Odell’s preface in its entirety:

In view of the assembling of a council of the Holy Orthodox Russian Church for the recasting of its internal ecclesiastical affairs during the coming Autumn and the approaching Fourth Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in 1909, it would seem pre-eminently fitting that the letter of the Reverend Dr. Irvine, “On the Anglican Church’s Historical Claims, Doctrines, Discipline, Worship, etc.,” written to his Grace, the Most Reverend Archbishop Tikhon of North America and Aleutian Islands, shortly after the reception of Dr. Irvine into the Priesthood of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, should be reprinted; with the earnest hope that the cordial relations hitherto existing between the two Churches may be restored and, further, that something definite and explicit may be done by the Bishops of the respective Councils which, under the controlling guidance of the Holy Spirit, will make for righteousness and the reunion of Christendom.

The unhappy position of the Protestant Episcopal Church, as an integral part of the Anglican Communion, in allowing herself to be constantly and continuously classified with the Protestant bodies which have no Historical Episcopate, and scarcely ever, as she should, fearlessly asserting her Catholic and Apostolic heritage, has naturally permitted herself and the whole Anglican Communion to be grievously misunderstood by the Holy Eastern Church. And again, as Dr. Irvine most clearly points out, she has never zealously and unitedly “pressed her claims before the four Eastern Patriarchates” during the past “three hundred years.” The English Church and her daughter churches, with the Protestant Episcopal Church, after drifting along all these years, apparently content with herself in the self-depending knowledge of her own claims or, possibly in a spirit of indifference as to what others may think or say of these claims, finds herself to-day in the unique and notable position where she alone, amidst the entire religious world, Catholic and Protestant, acknowledges and maintains her historical claim of Catholic heritage and Apostolic continuity. She has been unjust to herself, and her Episcopate is to-day receiving the due reward of their own compromising weakness and failure in not safeguarding the Priesthood of their own Church, which looks to them for perpetuation and protection.

In ordaining Dr. Irvine to the Priesthood of the Holy Orthodox Church, his Grace, Archbishop Tikhon, acted, as he was morally and canonically bound to do, in strict obedience to the canonical and ancient usage of the Catholic Church, and the ordination has not been held sacreligious nor discourteous to the Anglican Church outside of one or more irresponsible Church newspapers and some individual ecclesiastics who wrote hastily and unfavorably of the action as doing harm to the cordial relations then obtaining between the Protestant Episcopal and Holy Orthodox Churches. Even the Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Tuttle, in his individual protest to the President of the Holy Synod, seems to have moved unadvisedly as judging the act of Archbishop Tikhon intrusive and tending to disturb ecclesiastical relations when, in fact, no inter-communion really existed at the time or had ever existed.

The act of Archbishop Tikhon in ordaining Dr. Irvine has fearlessly and clearly opened up all questions of difference between the Anglican and Holy Orthodox Churches and boldly brings the chief and leading issues straight before the Bishops of the Lambeth Conference and of the Holy Orthodox Russian Church.

The Roman Catholic Church denies, without condition, the truth of any such claims made by the Anglican Church, but has been irrefutably and successfully answered in the noted “Response of the Archbishops of England to the Apostolic Letter of Pope Leo XIII on Anglican Ordination,” dated February, A.D. 1897, and addressed to the whole body of Bishops of the Catholic Church. Yet it has not been followed up by any united organic action of the entire Anglican Church tending toward effectual inter-communion, and so long as the Anglican Bishops have not collectively and officially pressed her claims for recognition as “part of the Historical Catholic Church,” they cannot actively fault the Holy Eastern Church for not having full knowledge of her Catholic position; and until a conciliar and formal judgment and decision shall be given upon the facts at issue the Anglican and Holy Orthodox Churches will remain estranged and separated.

The opportunity for mutual investigation and explanation of all differences between the Anglican and Holy Orthodox Churches is greater to-day than ever, and he must appear blind who will not see the real bond of union now existing between the Churches made reasonably clear by the opportune and friendly letter of Dr. Irvine to Archbishop Tikhon on “the Anglican Church’s Historical Claims,” etc., in which he says:

“I would not do the Anglican Church a wrong. I would not any more than I would cut off this hand which holds the pen by which I communicate my thoughts to your Grace in black and white, withhold one truth or hide away one merit of which she glories. On the contrary, I trust my very frankness may be the cause of stirring up a spirit of interest on the part of the Holy Orthodox Church so that the Anglican claims may be fairly and quickly weighed and that the Saviour’s prayer so far as the Anglican Church and the Holy Orthodox at least are concerned, may be fulfilled — ‘that they all may be one.’”

God grant it, in His way and time,

DANIEL J. ODELL.

Rectory, Church of the Annunciation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Eastertide, 1906.

Irvine’s ordination: another Episcopalian perspective is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

The ordination of Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, November 5, 1905. This sketch appeared in the Wilkes-Barre Times on November 9.

2009 has been an eventful year for American Orthodoxy — perhaps the most eventful in our history. But it’s got competition. The year 1905 may well have been even crazier. Here is a list of the major happenings of 1905, in no particular order:

• The headquarters of the Russian Mission were transferred from San Francisco to New York. Bishop Tikhon was elevated to Archbishop, and the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska became the Archdiocese of the Aleutian Islands and North America.
• Archbishop Tikhon wrote his now-famous proposal for an American Church divided into ethnic jurisdictions, all under the authority of the Russian Archbishop.
• The first Orthodox seminary in America was founded, in Minneapolis.
• Bishop Raphael published the first issue of Al-Kalimat (The Word).
• Then-Bishop Tikhon received an honorary doctorate from Nashotah House, the famous Episcopalian seminary. Later that year, the degree would be rescinded.
• To ensure its independence from the Russians, Holy Trinity Greek church in New York City was legally incorporated — by an act of the New York State Legislature — as, “The Hellenic Eastern Orthodox Christian Church of New York.”
• Bishop Raphael consecrated the grounds of St. Tikhon’s Monastery, in South Canaan, PA.
• A fake bishop, Seraphim Ustvolsky, was operating in Canada.
• Fr. Alexander Hotovitzky, the dean of the Russian cathedral in New York, received a bomb threat, which turned out to be a hoax.
• The first Orthodox services were celebrated in Utah. Construction began on a Greek church in Salt Lake City a few months later, and by October, the church building was consecrated.
• Fr. Michael Andreades, an ethnic Greek who was educated in Russia, was ordained a priest by Abp Tikhon. He was one of a handful of Greek priests to serve in the Russian Mission.
• The first Orthodox parish was organized in Washington, DC (St. Sophia Greek church).
• The Russian statesman Sergei Witte came to the US to negotiate with the Japanese to end the Russo-Japanese War. Fr. Alexander Hotovitzky was present for the negotiations.
• Bishop Raphael was arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder. This crisis lasted for a couple of months, but in the end, Bishop Raphael was exonerated.
• Isabel Hapgood put the finishing touches on her English translation of the Service Book, which would be published the following year.
• Just in the month of October, Fr. Sebastian Dabovich 1) established the first Serbian church in Chicago, 2) was raised to the rank of archimandrite by St. Tikhon, and 3) laid the cornerstone for the first Orthodox church in Montana.
• Robert Morgan, a black Episcopal deacon, regularly attended the Greek church in Philadelphia.
• Ingram Nathaniel Irvine converted to Orthodoxy and was ordained a priest by Abp Tikhon. With his conversion, the “English Department” of the Russian Mission was created.
• Fr. Aftimios Ofiesh arrived in New York, beginning his colorful career in America.

And those are just the big events. An interesting book could be written, just on American Orthodoxy in 1905. Eventually, we’ll have articles on each of these events here at OrthodoxHistory.org. For now, though, it’s worth reflecting on a year that was, quite possibly, even more chaotic than our current one.

1905: The busiest year in American Orthodox history is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

St. Tikhon, flanked by his two vicars, Bishop Innocent and St. Raphael

In 1905, the Holy Synod of Russia was preparing for an All-Russian Council. In advance of this, the Synod asked all the diocesan hierarchs of the Russian Church to send in their opinions on various church reform issues. St. Tikhon was among the respondents, and a portion of his reply has become rather famous among American Orthodox Christians. There are a couple of translations of this section of Tikhon’s response; I’ll print one of them here:

The diocese of North America must be reorganized into an Exarchate of the Russian Church in North America. The diocese is not only multi-national; it is composed of several orthodox Churches, which keep the unity of faith, but preserve their peculiarities in canonical structure, in liturgical rules, in parish life. These particularities are dear to them and can perfectly be tolerated on the pan-orthodox scene. We do not consider that we have the right to suppress the national character of the churches here; on the contrary, we try to preserve this character and we confer on them the latitude to be guided by leaders of their own nationality. Thus, the Syrian Church here received a bishop of its own (the Most Rev. Raphael of Brooklyn), who is the second auxiliary to the diocesan bishop of the Aleutian Islands, but is almost independent in his own sphere (the bishop of Alaska having the same position). The Serbian parishes are now organized under one immediate head, who for the time beign is an archimandrite, but who can be elevated to the episcopacy in the nearest future. The Greeks also desire to have their own bishop and are trying to settle the matter with the Synod of Athens. In other words, in North America a whole Exarchate can easily be established, uniting all orthodox national Churches, which would have their own bishops under one Exarch, the Russian Archbishop. Each one of them is independent in his own sphere, but the common affairs of the American Church are decided in a Synod, presided by the Russian Archbishop. Through him a link is preserved between the American Church and the Church of Russia and a certain dependence of the former on the latter. It should be remembered however that life in the New World is different from that of the old; our Church must take this into consideration; a greater autonomy (and possibly autocephaly) should therefore be granted to the Church of America, as compared with the other Metropolitan sees of the Russian Church. The North American Exarchate would comprise: (1) the archdiocese of New York, with jurisdiction over all Russian Churches in the United States and Canada. (2) the diocese of Alaska, for the orthodox inhabitants of Alaska (Russians, Aleutians, Indians, Eskimos). (3) The diocese of Brooklyn (Syrian). (4) the diocese of Chicago (Serbian). (5) a Greek diocese.

That translation comes from St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, in 1975. There was, however, an earlier translation, commissioned by St. Tikhon himself. This earlier version appeared in the Vestnik (the official periodical of the Russian Mission), in March of 1906. There are some notable differences between the two translations. Among them:

• The 1906 version includes St. Tikhon’s full (and fascinating) response to the Holy Synod, which runs 22 pages. The 1975 version consists only of the section quoted above, thus lacking the context of St. Tikhon’s proposal.
• The 1906 version says that St. Raphael is “nominally the second vicar”; the 1975 version does not include the word “nominally.”
• The 1906 version does not include the parenthetical “(autocephaly)”, which the 1975 version has. On this point, the 1975 version appears to be more accurate; I am told by those who can read Russian that the original Russian text does include that parenthetical.
• The 1906 version, when it mentions a diocese (bishopric) for the Greeks, includes a question mark: “The bishopric (?) of the Greeks.” The 1975 version omits this question mark, which does in fact appear in the original Russian.

Otherwise, the two versions basically agree with each other, aside from the obvious differences in word choice in translation. I don’t know who translated either version — neither the 1906 nor the 1975 version credited anyone.

Needless to say, St. Tikhon’s vision was never fully realized. Fr. Sebastian Dabovich never became bishop for the Serbs, and the Greeks weren’t about to submit to Russian authority. And, as pragmatic as it might have been, St. Tikhon’s proposal was also completely uncanonical, predicated as it was upon overlapping episcopal territories that were a total violation of Orthodox ecclesiology. But St. Tikhon’s vision would inspire two later efforts to form a single American Orthodox jurisdiction — the “American Orthodox Catholic Church” in the 1920s/30s, and, in 1970, the OCA — and it is still hailed by many today as a viable solution to our present jurisdictional situation.

PODCAST NOTE: Today on the American Orthodox History podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, we’re airing Part 2 of my interview with Fr. John Erickson, on the subject of the Russian Mission. In this two-part interview, Fr. John gives us, among other things, the context to understand St. Tikhon’s vision.

St. Tikhon’s Vision, 1905 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Roman Catholic writer Andrew Shipman

In 1905, the Roman Catholic religious writer Andrew Shipman wrote an article on the Russian Church in America. It’s an enlightening piece, a snapshot of the Russian Mission taken by an intelligent outsider. Given that the Russian Mission is the subject of my latest podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, I thought this would be a good time to reprint part of Shipman’s article.

Much of the article isn’t actually Shipman; it’s Fr. John Nedzelnitsky, a Russian priest from Pittsburgh. Shipman translated an article by Nedzenitzky into English — an appeal to the Russian Holy Synod to elevate the North American Diocese to the status of an Exarchate. Given that the Russian Mission is the subject of my latest podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, I thought this would be a good time to reprint much of Shipman’s (and Nedzelnitsky’s) article here. (By the way, the article comes from the June 1905 issue of The Messenger, a Roman Catholic monthly.)

In the United States the Russian Orthodox Church has been established for a hundred years. At first it was confined to Alaska, — then known as Russian America, — then it came to San Francisco and along the Pacific coast. Then it flourished along the Atlantic coast and the adjoining States, and now has its chief and most splendid temple in the City of New York. The episcopal title has varied as the fortunes of the Church have waxed. First, it was “Bishop of the Kodiaks,” afterwards “Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands,” (Bishop Innocent), then “Bishop of New Archangel” (Bishop Paul), then “Bishop of Aleutia and Alaska” (Bishops John, Nestor, Vladimir and Nicholas), and finally now it is “Bishop of Aleutia and North America” (Bishop Tikhon). The latter bishop has been provided with two vicar-bishops or auxiliary bishops, Bishop Innocent, “Bishop of Alaska,” and Bishop Raphael, “Bishop of Brooklyn.”

It is now proposed by the Russian Orthodox Church to form the United States into an Exarchate or at least an Archiepiscopal province. This is to be an ecclesiastical organization, the head of which will be subject directly to the Holy Governing Synod, but which in other respects will be completely autonomous, the bishops and clergy of which will be ruled by the Exarch.

To appreciate the significance of this, let us consider a moment the latest official figures of the Russian Orthodox Church in the United States. They are as follows for 1905:

• Russians from Russia – 1,706
• Russians (Ruthenians) from Galicia — 7,747
• Russians (Ruthenians) from Hungary — 4,676
• Bukovinians and Wallachians — 3,653
• Servians and other Slavs — 6,386
• Greeks — 731
• Syro-Arabians — 5,484
• Half-breeds — 2,124
• Indians — 2,281
• Aleutians — 2,272
• Esquimaux — 3,210
• Americans and others — 71
• TOTAL — 38,341

These figures show a slight increase over those for the preceding year. Among themre 772 persons who were formerly Uniate Greek Catholics.

I cannot better explain the purpose and scope of this movement to erect an Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church than by translating an article on that subject by the Reverend Archpriest John Nedzelnitzky, of the Russian Church of St. Michael, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After giving a short history of the Russian mission in America, he says:

“The American Orthodox diocese, after a century of its existence, has grown in the number of its members, both clergy and lay, and has become exalted in its significance in the eyes of those of other faiths, — such as the Episcopalians and the old Catholics of America, and it has so important a missionary purpose in spreading orthodoxy among the Uniates, the Slavs and other peoples of the new world, that in justice, both by reason of its purpose and by the merits of its bishops, it ought to have for its visible head in America an Exarch or at least one with the title of Archbishop. For this the following facts will speak:

“In the past year, 1903, the Holy Synod in Russia established in America a vicariate with the cathedral see at Sitka, and on February 24, 1904, the first vicar-bishop arrived in America. He was the Right Reverend Innocent, with the title of ‘Bishop of Alaska.’ On the first of February, 1904, the Holy Synod established a second vicariate for the Syro-Arabian missions, with the cathedral see in the city of Brooklyn, and on February 29th there was celebrated in New York the first Orthodox consecration of a bishop in America, when the Archimandrite Raphael was made Bishop of Brooklyn. There are therefore now America two vicariates and the ruling bishop, who continues to bear the title of ‘Bishop,’ the same as for a century past. There is nothing in the title to distinguish him from his vicars, and he is only differentiated from them by the powers exercised by him, although in reality it follows that a ruling bishop should be distinguished from assistant bishops even in title. For the effectiveness of an archbishop and two vicar-bishops in America, the Diocese of Aleutia ought to be placed first in rank of Orthodox dioceses, not only by the alphabet, but in reality. It ought to be an Exarchate like the Exarchate of  Georgia, or at least an Archbishopric. If in Russia there is not a diocese where the ruling bishop with two vicars bears only the title of ‘Bishop,’ but is called ‘Archbishop,’ so it should be in the American Exarchate or Diocese of Aleutia and North America.”

Fr. Nedzelnitsky goes on for another paragraph, comparing the American Orthodox situation to that of the Roman Catholics, who had an Apostolic Delegate, 16 archbishops, and 85 bishops. He then asks,

“If the dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church in America are ruled by archbishops, why then does not our Orthodox Church in America have even one archbishop, especially now, when the Holy Synod, having established two vicariates in America, has thereby extended the importance of the diocese of Aleutia and its head? And of course it will soon establish also a third vicariate, for the Servians in America, since the Servians, having erected their churches and parishes, wish to have a bishop of  their own nationality.”

Nedzelnitsky then notes that the Episcopalian bishops oversee a relatively small number of parishioners — an average of 7,825 per bishop. He continues,

“Our Orthodox diocese in America is comparatively great in the number of its members, only there are now regular statistics, in view of the huge territory in America, of those scattered in towns and villages, where the Orthodox may live, the majority of them leading a nomadic form of life, such as factory hands (Russians, Servians and Ruthenians), and a few tradesmen (Syro-Arabians and Greeks) and the like.

“The official publications of the American government and of our diocesan organization in regard to the number of the Orthodox differ widely in view of the causes we point out. Dr. H.K. Carroll, late special agent of the United States Census Office, informs us that up to 1905 there were in the United States of America 40,000 Russian Orthodox (including probably also Ruthenians), 21,230 Greek Orthodox and 15,000 Syrian Orthodox. Therefore, according to the information of this government official, there are 76,230 Orthodox souls in the United States, but from his statistics there does not appear the quantity of Orthodox Servians, Bulgarians, Macedonians and Roumanians, who altogether amount to more than 10,000. Nor does this official reckon in the half-breeds, Indians Aleutian and Esquimaux, who comprise the Orthodox inhabitants of Alaska and its islands. And there are not a few of these last-named races! In Canada there dwell more than 5,000 Bukovinians and Wallachians. An official of the United States of course cannot count them in, for Canada belongs to England. Our missions, for instance, count only those Greeks who go to confession to Russian priests, and in America there are many purely Greek parishes which do not give us their statistical results, but all these really have common ground with us and our bishops, as they are one in faith with us. And in the eys of the Greeks the presence in America of an Orthodox Metropolitan or Archbishop-Exarch would have tremendous importance, as they, as well as the Syro-Arabians and Servians of Austrian territory are accustomed in Europe and in Asia to have many metropolitans, archbishops and bishops of their own.

Nedzelnitsky makes more arguments — that an exarchate would help combat imposter clergy, and that it is essential in drawing Uniates to Orthodoxy. Shipman then concludes his piece:

Thus far the archpriest. But other articles have appeared in the Russian Orthodox papers, showing the proposed foundation of an ecclesiastical seminary in Cleveland, Ohio, the laying out of an extensive school plan and other signs of progressive church work. The latest news in a statement in the daily papers that Bishop Tikhon, with his entire cathedral staff, is about to remove from San Francisco to New York, which latter will hereafter be his chief see city. The change is expected to be made in the month of May of this year, and if San Francisco thus becomes a vicariate with a new bishop, the American Exarchate may be an accomplished fact within a very short time.

St. Tikhon did move from San Francisco to New York City, and a seminary was indeed established (but in Minneapolis, rather than Cleveland). No bishop was assigned to San Francisco, though, and the dream of a full-fledged American Orthodox exarchate never really came to fruition.

Another interesting thing to note is the demographics of the Russian Mission, which I believe Shipman got from the Diocese itself. There were only 721 Greeks in the Russian Diocese, but according to Nedzelnitzky, there were over 21,000 in the country (and the next year’s Census of Religious Bodies would put the figure at more than 90,000).

Also, there were very few actual Russians in the Diocese — just 1,706, or less than 5% of the reported total. The biggest groups in the Diocese were actually the Ruthenians / Bukovinians / Wallachians (16,076 / 42%) and various types of Alaskan natives (9,887 / 26%).

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Bishop Charles C. Grafton

On November 5, 1905, St. Tikhon ordained Ingram N.W. Irvine an Orthodox priest. It was a courageous action, and I cannot help but think that St. Tikhon’s feelings on the matter were bittersweet. He knew — he must have known — that he was indeed ushering in a new “epoch in Church history,” as Irvine put it. He knew Irvine’s baggage, and Irvine’s dreams. He knew that Irvine would work for a distinctly American Orthodoxy, one in which English would increase and Slavonic would decrease. But more than that, he knew that by ordaining Irvine, he would irreparably damage the close relations he had built up with leading Anglicans, most especially his dear friend, Bishop Charles Grafton.

Bishop Grafton was a great man. He was the Episcopal Bishop of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, but he was much more than that. He was the head of Nashotah House, one of the preeminent seminaries in the Anglican world (and in the very year of Irvine’s ordination, Nashotah House had awarded Tikhon an honorary doctorate). Grafton was also one of the leading lights of “Anglo-Catholicism,” that High Church part of Anglicanism which was most friendly towards Orthodoxy. In his long life — he was 75 when Irvine was ordained — Grafton had done as much as anyone to foster close ties with the Orthodox Churches, and virtually from the moment of St. Tikhon’s arrival in America in 1898, Grafton was a close friend and confidant. Grafton represented the very best that the Episcopal Church had to offer, and for Tikhon, his friendship was invaluable.

And Tikhon must have known that, in accepting Irvine, he would lose his friend. On November 4, 1905 – the day of Irvine’s chrismation and ordination to the diaconate – Grafton wrote in a letter, “I have been very busy this last week in the endeavor to stop Bishop Tikhon from ordaining Dr. Irvine to the priesthood on Sunday the 5th November.” He continued,

[Tikhon] is a good, gentle, pious Christian Bishop who has been imposed upon. For the sake of the Russian Church I am sorry it should take up with a man who rightly or wrongly has been deposed from the priesthood. There was no necessity for it, for Dr. Irvine could have appealed to the Court of Review lately established, or to the House of Bishops sitting, as they do, in Council. The action of Archbishop Tikhon can only be based on the view that we are no part of the Catholic Church and so all relations between us must terminate, or on the ground that he has received authority from the Holy Synod to receive appeals from our courts. In the latter case I said that we had received no notice of such authority being delegated, and if we had, and had accepted it according to the Canon of the Universal Church which he was bound to respect, he could only hear appeals from bishops and not from priests who were confined to appeals within their own nationality or province.

While well intentioned, Grafton was in error. Of course, his arguments display a fundamental ecclesiological misunderstanding: Grafton thought that the Orthodox and Anglican Churches were both parts of the “Catholic” (Universal) Church, and thus that the Orthodox had to respect the territorial rights and judicial decisions of the Anglicans. In Grafton’s (and the Anglicans’) view, St. Tikhon was roughly paralleled by the Russian Ambassador. Ordaining Irvine was equivalent to the Russian Ambassador declaring a convicted American criminal to be innocent, and then bestowing a Russian consulate on him. The Russian Ambassador had no such rights; he was in America for diplomatic purposes, but he had no jurisdiction here. The same basic restrictions applied to St. Tikhon, so thought the Anglicans.

Incidentally, Grafton also misunderstood his own Church’s appeals process. When Irvine was defrocked by his Episcopal bishop in 1900, the Episcopal Church had no mechanism by which he could appeal the punishment. They established a court of appeal in 1905, but that court was not able to make retroactive rulings. Irvine simply had no way of being reinstated in the Episcopal Church.

Grafton concluded his letter with strong words:

My telegrams will be published in next week’s Living Church; our presiding Bishop has protested. The Archbishop has made a big, bad blunder. I asked the Russian Ambassador to interfere with his influence. But I fear Tikhon will steer his craft on the rocks. My hope is that God will in some way overrule this to good, for it is Satan’s work.

Neither God nor the Russian Ambassador prevented Irvine’s ordination. Richard Hatfield — than an Episcopal priest, but now Fr. Chad Hatfield, the chancellor of St. Vladimir’s Seminary — wrote in 1992, “The friendship between Grafton and Tikhon ended with the ordination of [Irvine]. … The ordination of Father Irvine brought to an abrupt close the first phase of Orthodox-Anglican relations in the new world.”

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The Rev. Ingram N.W. Irvine, D.D., was, on St. Mary’s Day, Nov. 4th, received into the Holy Orthodox Church by our beloved Archbishop the Most Rev. Tikhon, D.D. and on the same day advanced  through the Minor Orders and elevated to the Diaconate. On the following day, Sunday, he was ordained Priest and as[s]igned to his duties at St. Nicholas Cathedral viz; that of Priest in charge of the English work.

The Rev. Dr. Irvine, for over a quarter of a century, was a Priest of the Anglican Church, or as it is known in the U.S. “The Protestant Episcopal Church”. He is a graduate of The General Theological Seminary, Chelsea Square, N.Y. City, and was ordained both Deacon and Priest of the Episcopal Church by the first Bishop of Long Island — the Rt. Rev. Abram Newkirk Littlejohn, D.D., LL.D.

The Rev. Doctor for several years was Rector of St. James Church, Smithtown, Long Island. While as such he became acquainted with the widow of  the “Prince-merchant” and millionaire A.T. Stewart. It was at his suggestion, that Mrs. Stewart gave a building, then being erected for undenominational purposes, as a Cathedral for the Diocese of Long Island and richly endowed both it and several schools.

Dr. Irvine has filled several important pastorates in the Protestant Episcopal Church and has held the positions of Rural Dean and Cathedral Dean.

The following Prelates and Clergy were in the Sanctuary and officiated on the occasion of his ordination to the Holy Orthodox Priesthood — His Grace, Most Reverend Archbishop Tikhon, D.D. of North America and Aleutian Islands, The Right Rev. Bishop Raphael of Brooklyn, N.Y., Very Rev. Fr. A. Hotovitzky, Dean of the Cathedral, Rev. Fr. E. Zotikoff, Rev. Fr. Joanniky, Rev. Fr. Solomonidis, M.D., Rev. A. Kalneff, Deacon.

A number of members of the Protestant Episcopal Church were at the Service. The venerable Hon. Wm. S. Price, who was for fourteen years Chancellor of the P.E. Diocese of Pennsylvania, came with his daughter, Mrs. Brown, from Philadelphia to show by his presence his respect for Dr. Irvine as well as his approval of the act of the Holy Orthodox Church. Another striking character in the Congregation was that of the great army surgeon who ministered to the Martyr-President of the U.S. — Abraham Lincoln, when he was shot in  Ford’s Theater, Washington D.C. at the close of the late Civil War, — we refer to Charles A. Leale, M.D., of 604 Madison Ave. N.Y. who with his daughter Miss Lillian was present. Herbert Noble Esq. one of the most celebrated members of the New York Bar, as well as the Rev. Thomas P. Hughes, D.D., LL.D., and both members of the P.E. Church, were also present. The Congregation was very large and filled every part of the Cathedral. The music under the leadership of Mr. N. Greevsky was well rendered.

Thus passed off a remarkable service which marked an epoch in Church History and which was attended by representatives of all parts of the Church of Christendom, and since it’s [sic] performance has brought out the spontaneous commendation of sober minded Christian scholars.

While this article doesn’t have a listed author, I am certain, based on the writing style, that it was written by Irvine himself. It was the Russian Mission’s introduction to its first “American” convert priest.

No doubt Irvine felt it necessary to defend and justify himself. As soon as news of his impending ordination became public, many Episcopal Church leaders raised an outcry against it, mostly on the grounds that the Russian Church did not, in their view, have the authority to ordain a defrocked Episcopal clergyman to the Orthodox priesthood. We’ll present the Episcopal perspective later; for now, it’s enough to understand that Irvine was probably feeling pretty defensive when he wrote this article.

One of the things that jumps out about this article is at the end, where Irvine refers to the “Church of Christendom.” He wasn’t an adherent of branch theory, exactly, but at the time of his conversion, his ecclesiology wasn’t far from it. In the years that followed, Irvine’s ecclesiology did evolve a bit, becoming more traditionally Orthodox in the process.

Also notable is the involvement of three canonized Orthodox saints — Tikhon, Raphael, and Alexander Hotovitzky. St. Tikhon was the main celebrant who ordained Irvine; St. Raphael assisted; and St. Alexander was Irvine’s sponsor into the priesthood.

Finally, and, in my view, most interestingly, Irvine acknowledges the beginning of “an epoch in Church history.” He certainly knew that Protestants had become Orthodox before him, and he was probably aware of the fact that even other Protestant clergymen had converted to Orthodoxy. But there was something different about Irvine’s ordination. It was such a public affair, involving such a visible figure, that it could not be ignored. But more than that, Irvine was a man with a vision, and he had the support of two great hierarchs, Tikhon and Raphael. His dream was to see the use of English spread in American Orthodoxy, and for Orthodoxy to “penetrate the United States,” to use St. Innocent’s words, and he would spend the rest of his life working towards that goal.

The Ordination of the Rev. Ingram N.W. Irvine, D.D. is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

First, the Anglican Church is not the true platform of unity.  She is too political and diplomatic, always compromising for expediency and shading like a chameleon to attract each Protestant Sect.

Second, because the Anglican Church, while she teaches the true Faith, still permits the filioque.

Third.  Because she allows her Bishops in some respects to be more papal than the Pope of Rome and she gives to her laymen the casting vote in Doctrine, Discipline and Worship.

Fourth.  Because I can do more good for Jesus Christ according to the dictates of my own conscience, and for the Unity of Christendom, in the Holy Eastern Church than I can in the Protestant Episcopal.

Fifth.  Because the Holy Eastern Church says just what she means; and means what she says.

Sixth.  Because all of her priests and children have but one mode of conducting worship and believe exactly in one interpretation of the Sacraments.

Seventh.  Because God the Holy Ghost, on the morning of Whitsunday [Pentecost], 1905, in St. Mary’s Church, Philadelphia, in response to my the inquiry of my soul, ‘Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?’ commanded me in an irresistible way, ‘Go and work for the Holy Eastern Church.’  And I was obedient unto the voice.

This is my answer.

Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine: Why I Became Orthodox is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.