Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter,Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia: The Teachings of Metropolitan Platon

Reviewed by: Nigel Aston, University of Leicester, UK

Serious attention has been paid for some time to the Russian Enlightenment. What was less understood was the relationship to it of the Orthodox Church. Thanks to this interesting study by Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter – which focuses on the sermons and addresses of Catherine the Great's favourite prelate, the Metropolitan Platon (Levshin) (1737–1812) – the picture is much clearer. Platon was an enlightened prelate, perhaps the most prominent of several such within eighteenth-century Orthodoxy, whose generous vision of the faith and its relationship to an emerging civic society had many counterparts among his Catholic and Anglican episcopal contemporaries (an angle Professor Wirtschafter, in this very short book, does not explore). Born the son of a village priest, Platon's gifts as a teacher, based on a religious education grounded in biblical, liturgical and patristic sources combined with studies in Greek, French, geography and history, soon propelled him to the top of his calling. It seems probable that he read the leading philosophes, though Wirtschafter is unable to be precise on this key point (he certainly read Bossuet as part of his duties as a royal tutor). Combining ambition with genuine humility, he attracted Catherine II's favourable notice at the beginning of her reign and was named the teacher of catechism to the Tsarevitch Paul in 1763, the year he moved to St Petersburg. Further promotions followed including membership of the Holy Synod (1768), archbishop of Moscow and Kaluga (1775), and Metropolitan of Moscow (1787).

It was, above all, as a preacher that Platon made his impact. From the pulpits of the court, cathedrals and monasteries he argued for the compatibility of Christian tenets with an enlightened view of man in society or, as Wirtschafter opts to put it, offered a defence of the ‘Christian Enlightenment’ that made sense in Enlightenment terms, one in which right reason strengthened faith. For Platon took delight in human learning, contending that it was only human depravity that made learning something devilish and the antagonist of faith. The Orthodox emphasis on Christ's transfiguration as an experience that could be shared by all believers was quite central to his perspective. Again and again, he returned to this theme, insisting on the social benefits that could flow from an individual believer's earthly transfiguration: ‘our resurrection and transfiguration’ as he emphasized it in a sermon on the Feast Day of 6 August 1793, at his own Bethany hermitage.

Wirtschafter rightly insists that none of Platon's sermons can be read without recognizing two essential dimensions to her subject: first, his own Christianity was both dynamic and impeccably orthodox, nicely illustrating the degree to which enlightened attitudes could readily be the product of dogmatic adherence; secondly, Platon was a consummate courtier, neither slavish nor fawning, who challenged the empress from the pulpit in a manner that was supportive rather than confrontational. Thus he could welcome the toleration Catherine extended to non-Orthodox confessions and faiths and justify the rejection of coercion while speaking up in favour of war against the Ottomans between 1768 and 1774 as a campaign waged on behalf of Orthodoxy. The mutual support of Church and fatherland was presumed and occasionally expressly articulated, as in a sermon of 1797 after Paul's accession. As he put it then, the ‘Tsar of tsars’ governed all human thrones, so that earthly powers were essentially the instrument of his providence.

Platon died in November 1812 – a few weeks after Napoleon retreated from Russia – at a moment when a younger generation of clergy were more than ready to denounce the dangers of deism, materialism and atheism. The Metropolitan would have agreed in essentials: he was always willing to distinguish true from false enlightenment and was clear, for instance, that the Rosicrucian version of Enlightenment was incompatible with Orthodoxy. Yet his cognitive form of the faith was rather more suited to the needs of Catherinian civil society than a polity struggling for survival against Napoleon, and other strands in Orthodoxy better served the purposes of the state than his thoughtful synthesis of reason and faith.

Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter has performed a useful service for scholars in drawing attention to this fascinating juncture in the history of the Eastern Church by focusing on the life and thought of one its most distinguished products. She quotes widely throughout from his sermons, reminding us of the importance of the homiletic tradition within Orthodoxy. Perhaps this emphasis might have been tied in more closely to other aspects of eighteenth-century Orthodox vitality. This is a short book: a little more space could surely have been found to relate Platon's attitudes and outlook to the other Churches of Europe and the Enlightenment more widely, especially given her subscription to a Pocockian plurality of enlightenments. And more could have been said about his administrative policies as Metropolitan, and attempts to put into practice his own precepts. Finally, Wirtschafter strains too hard at times to fit Platon into some over-arching Enlightenment model. Overall, however, a fine achievement that deserves attention from non-Russianists.