Was Solovyev a Convert to Roman Catholicism?

Was Solovyev a Convert to Roman Catholicism? 

(from the book "A Solovyov Anthology", edited by S.L. Frank)

Ten years after Solovyov’s death the paper Russkoe Slovo (April 21, 1910) published a statement by Fr. N. Tolstoy, a priest of the Uniate Church in Moscow, that on February 3, 1896, in the presence of witnesses, Solovyov received communion from him, having first read aloud the Creed in ‘ the form adopted by the Roman see for Christians joining the Catholic Church’, and handed in a written profession of faith, identical with the one published in La Russie et L'Eglise universelle (see Introduction, p. 20). This statement was later confirmed by two witnesses. Soon after, on November 2, 1910, the paper Moskovskiya Vedomosti published the account of the Orthodox priest S. Belyaev who received Solovyov’s death-bed confession and gave him communion. According to Belyaev, Solovyov said to him that he had not been to confession for some three years, since at his last confession he had an argument with the priest on a question of dogma (he did not say which) and was not admitted by him to holy communion. ‘The priest was right’, he added, ‘and I argued with him solely out of pride and a wish to carry my point ; afterwards we exchanged some letters on the subject, but I would not give in, though I knew very well that I was wrong. Now I am quite aware of my error and sincerely repent of it’ (quoted in L., Ill, 215-17). 

It follows from these two statements that after communicating in a Uniate (Graeco-Catholic) church, Solovyov did not break off relations with the Orthodox Church. It might be said that his last communion proves nothing, for even a regular Catholic on his death-bed might call in an Orthodox priest in the absence of a Catholic one. But it would certainly be out of order for him under normal circumstances, soon after communicating in a Catholic Church, to go to confession and seek communion from an Orthodox priest, as Solovyov did in 1897. 

The canonical rules laid down by the Catholic Church for converts may or may not have been strictly observed on February 3, 1896 (d’Herbigny says that one exception was made for Solovyov: ‘there was no formal abjuration, for it was considered unnecessary’), but in any case the very fact of his having been given communion shows that the Catholic Church regarded Solovyov as a convert. Solovyov’s subsequent behaviour, however, equally shows that he took a different view of the matter. The statement he made on his death-bed to Fr. S. Belyaev (and also the absence of evidence to the contrary) implies that his ecclesiastical contact with the Catholic Church was confined to that one particular occasion. His sister, Madame M. Bezobrazov, and his intimate friend, the philosopher Lopatin, both testify that to the end of his life he denied being a Catholic.[1] But then what could have induced him to communicate in a Catholic church and what did he mean by doing so? 

Fr. N. Tolstoy says that Solovyov did not receive communion in the Ortliodox Church after 1892 because since that year Orthodox priests refused it to him, evidently under pressure from the Synod. This explanation is utterly untenable. To say nothing of there being no occasion for such ‘pressure’ — since after 1889 Solovyov did not write about church matters — it was from the nature of the case impossible. Solovyov led a wanderer’s life, so that every priest in Russia would have had to be warned against him, and even this would have been to no purpose, since the custom of the Russian Church is to admit people to communion (after confession and absolution) whether personally known to the priest or no. Besides, the absence of any such action on the part of the Synod is clearly proved by the fact that no difficulty whatever was raised about Solovyov receiving communion before he died.[2] If he really had not communicated after 1892, that was simply due to his withdrawing from church life at that period (see Introduction, p. 23). 

At first sight the case is further complicated by the circumstance that in his private letters and public answers to accusations of ‘popery’ Solovyov had frequently asserted that he was Orthodox and had no intention of leaving his church ; the last statement to that effect was in 1891 (L., Ill, 199). He was definitely opposed to individual conversions to Catholicism as ‘harmful to the universal cause’ (the union of the churches), though he added that he could not ‘throw a stone at converts’ who do so from sincere ‘even if mistaken conviction' (L., Ill, 193 and 172, 1886), But curiously enough this is, perhaps, just where the explanation of the riddle is to be found. So long as Solovyov remained on purely ecclesiastical ground and worked for the reunion of the churches in strictly canonical order, it naturally seemed to him wrong and harmful for separate individuals to act on their own initiative. But in the ’nineties Solovyov’s views underwent a definite change (see Introduction, especially the letter to Tavernier) : he no longer ascribed decisive significance to ecclesiastical authority ; he believed henceforth only in the universal Church, consisting of the minority of Christians true to the spirit of Christ and having no visible boundaries; his ‘religion of the Holy Spirit’ was from the conventional point of view the faith of a religious free-thinker. His communion in a Catholic church was not the action of a man who had found in Catholicism the only true Church, but the action of a religious free-thinker who in virtue of his faith in the one universal Church considered himself entitled to ignore the actual division of the churches. He had always believed that every Christian as having ‘the unction from the Holy One' had the sovereign right to judge of church matters, and now it included for him also the right to act ‘in accordance with the spirit of Christ’. And since he retained his conviction of the necessity for all faithful Christians to unite round ‘the traditional centre of unity — the see of Rome’ (see Introduction, p. 20), he wished to testify to this faith by communicating in a Catholic church. The Catholic creed repeated by him accorded with his convictions, though he interpreted it freely, according to his religion of the Holy Spirit. While remaining a member of the Orthodox Church (this is emphasized in his personal confession which, evidently at his own initiative, he included in the rite of communion) he considered himself entitled to ignore its requirements. 

This is indirectly confirmed by another fact which also explains the meaning of the statement he made at his last confession. An intimate friend of the Solovyov family, Madame K. Yeltsov (Professor Lopatin’s sister), was at their house on the day when in 1897 Solovyov confessed to an Orthodox priest (owing to illness, Solovyov was staying at his mother’s), and she has revealed the name of that priest.[3] It was Fr. Ivantsov-Platonov, Solovyov’s teacher at the Theological Academy, who had known for years both him and his ‘Catholic' convictions (in the ’eighties they had a controversy in print — sec Vol. 4, 634-39). Obviously it was not on the ground of those convictions that Ivantsov-Platonov refused to give Solovyov communion, otherwise he would not have come ready to administer it at all. In the paper he submitted to Strossmayer about the union of the churches Solovyov testifies from personal experience that the Russian Orthodox Church admits to holy communion persons who profess Catholic dogmas questionable for it (L., I, 187, note). The only new thing about Solovyov’s ecclesiastical attitude that Ivantsov-Platonov could have learned from his confession was the fact that a year before he had communicated in a Roman church. From the canonical point of view Ivantsov-Platonov was bound to say that by this act Solovyov had cut himself off from the Orthodox Church and to refuse him communion unless he repented. But Solovyov, believing as he did in the right of every Christian to act in church matters in accordance with his religious conscience, defended his action and would not repent of it. This was the subject of their dispute. Before dying, Solovyov admitted that he had been in the wrong : not renouncing any of his general religious convictions, he repented of his unauthorized communion in a Catholic church. 

From the age of thirty to the end of his life Solovyov was conscious of himself as a member of the one indivisible universal ‘Orthodox-Catholic' Church, though his interpretation of it underwent a change. But formally and canonically he always regarded himself as belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church, and, if his last confession be taken into account, such he remained to the end, even from the purely ecclesiastical point of view. 

[1] Fr. N. Tolstoy confirms this, but his explanation is that Solovyov joined the Catholic Church of the Eastern rite. 

[2] D’Herbigny turns Fr. N. Tolstoy’s surmise about the ‘pressure’ brought to bear upon the priests into a definite assertion that ‘secret instructions were given to the clergy to refuse communion to him'! This would have been tantamount to a secret excommunication — an unheard-of case, I think, in the history of the Church, and for many reasons impossible in this particular instance. 

[3]. K. Yeltsov, Sovremetwiya Zapiski (Reminiscences about Solovyov), V. 28, p. 257. 

* * * 

[Blog commentary: The following stretch is from the book "History of Russian Philosophy" by N.O. Lossky]

In the eighties Soloviev took a particular interest in the problem of the reunion of Churches. At the invitation of Bishop Strossmayer, an eminent Roman-Catholic prelate, he went one summer to Zagreb in Croatia and there published his book History and the Future of Theocracy, In 1889 he once more visited Bishop Strossmayer in Zagreb and published in Paris a book called La Russie et l'Eglise Universelle, In this book Soloviev pronounced himself in favor of the Roman Catholic Church because it has created a universal super-state organization. 

The Catholics regard Soloviev as having renounced Orthodoxy and joined the Roman Catholic Church. In fact Soloviev had never left the Orthodox Church; he merely came to the conviction that the Eastern and the Western Churches, despite the outward breach, had not severed their mystical bond. Prince Eugene Trubetskoy who was Soloviev's personal friend says, on the authority of Soloviev's own words, that the immediate impulse for Soloviev's change of attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church which he used to regard as the Church of the Antichrist's tradition, “was a prophetic dream which he saw a year before the coronation of the Emperor Alexander III.'' He had a clear vision of himself driving through the streets of Moscow, and he remembered well both the streets and the house in front of which his carriage had stopped. While entering the house he met a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical dignitary whom he at once asked for a blessing. The other seemed to hesitate, doubting whether it was possible to give a blessing to a Schismatic; but Soloviev overpowered his doubts by pointing out the mystical unity of the universal Church which in its essence had not been shattered by the apparent disunion of its two halves. The blessing was given. 

“A year later the coronation of the Emperor Alexander III was, indeed, attended by the Papal Nuncio, and Soloviev relived his dream in reality. The blessing was asked for and given in exactly the same circumstances, the reality coinciding with the dream down to minor details. Soloviev recognized the streets through which he had driven, and the house which he had entered, and the Roman Catholic prelate who indeed after some hesitation, yielded to the same arguments as in his dream. [7]

In reality, Soloviev's new attitude toward the Catholic Church was formed before this dream and its fulfillment. In a letter to Martynov, dated July 18/30 1887, he wrote that eight years earlier he had read for the first time Y. F. Samarin's "Letters on the Jesuits." This work, he said, "considerably contributed to develop my sympathies toward the Catholic Church. The gross logical errors and obvious lack of good faith manifested by the author-otherwise so loyal and intelligent a man as Yury Samarin-made me seriously reflect upon our attitude toward Catholicism." [8] 

Being convinced of the mystical unity of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church, Soloviev did entertain to the former such relations as might have left the Catholics under the impression that he had renounced Orthodoxy and become a Roman Catholic. It can, however, be proved beyond doubt that Soloviev remained faithful to the Orthodox Church.

In 1886, on his return from Zagreb, he wrote to Archimandrite Antony (the future Metropolitan of St. Petersburg): "To achieve the reunion of Churches, any outward union and any individual conversion are not only unnecessary, but would be even harmful. To the attempts at conversion, aimed at myself, I answered in the first place by confessing and communing (at an unusual time) at the Orthodox Serbian Church in Zagreb with its curate Rev. Father Amvrosy.-Generally speaking, I have returned to Russia - if one may say so more of an Orthodox than when I left her." [9]

After the publication of his book La Russie et l'Eglise Uniuerselle, it was rumored that he had joined the Catholic Church. Soloviev's spiritual director, Father Varnava, said to him: "Go to confession to your Catholic priests." The fact that Soloviev was for a long time deprived of the sacraments, which he .deeply cherished, was so painful to him, that after several years had elapsed, he decided to undertake a very dangerous step. On February 18, 1896, he went to confession to Father Nicholas Tolstoy and received communion from this priest who had become a Catholic, but who shared Soloviev's teaching: the preservation of mystical unity of the Eastern and Western Churches, in spite of out ward separation. 

This is why, before receiving communion, Soloviev, having read the decision of the Council of Trent, could add his declaration that the Eastern Church is the true Orthodox and Catholic Church.[10] This means that he performed an act which can be approved neither by the Orthodox nor by the Catholic Church. Soloviev's further statements and acts clearly prove that he had not left the Orthodox Church.

In July 1900 Soloviev came to Moscow where he was taken ill. He left for the country home of Prince Peter Trubetskoy, located not far from Moscow, and where his friend, Professor S. N. Trubetskoy, was staying at that time. Stricken with serious kidney trouble, and aware that his end was near, Soloviev requested on July 30th (the eve of his death) that an Orthodox priest should be called from a nearby village to hear his confession and give him communion. Here is what Father Beliayev, the priest who administered the last rites to Soloviev, was to relate concerning this event: "One evening, a servant of the Trubetskoys' household was sent to me inviting me in the name of Serguei Nikolaievich (Trubetskoy) to celebrate Mass on the next day and administer a sick gentleman who had arrived from Moscow; I was to bring him the Holy Eucharist which I would consecrate at the Mass (according to Soloviev's personal wish)." The next day, "after having recited matins, I went to the Trubetskoys, Vladimir Scrgueyevitch (Soloviev) made his confession with the true Christian contrition and said among other things that he had not received communion during three years; for when he last went to confession, he had an argument with the priest on a point of dogma and was forbidden the sacraments." "The priest was right," Soloviev added, "I argued with him only because of hot temper and pride; after this we corresponded for some time concerning this question, but I would not give in, though well aware that I was in the wrong; now I clearly realize my error and sincerely regret it." [11]

According to the rules of the Catholic Church, a Catholic in extremis may make his confession to an Orthodox priest and receive communion from him if there is no time or possibility of summoning a Catholic priest. Therefore, Catholics say that Soloviev's last communion does not prove that he had remained a member of the Orthodox Church. Of course, they are mistaken. Soloviev himself put off his confession and communion until the next day; he would have therefore had the time to summon a Catholic priest from Moscow. His mention of a dogmatic argument with an Orthodox priest and the fact of his having been forbidden the Sacraments "during three years" prove that after his communion at the hands of Nicholas Tolstoy, he had wished to receive the holy species from an Orthodox priest; in any case, this shows that he had only once received communion from a Catholic priest. This is easy to understand if we take into consideration his condemnation of individual conversions from one Church to another. [12]

Professor Stroyev heard from a distant relative that several months before his death, Soloviev, speaking in a circle of his admirers, resolutely denied his conversion to catholicism. [12]

After the publication of his book La Russie et l'Eglise Universelle in 1889, Soloviev, it seems, grew temporarily indifferent to Church problems. In a letter to L. P. Nikiforov, probably written during the last year of his life, Soloviev declared: "I can tell you nothing about my works in French. Their fate interests me but little. Though there is nothing in them that contradicts objective truth, the subjective mood, the feelings and hopes which filled them when I was writing them, have been outlived by me." [14]

[...]

[7] Prince E. Trubetskoy, The. Philosophy of V. Soloviev. I. 488 ff. 

[8] Soloviev's Letters, III, 25. 

[9] Ibid., III, 189

[10] See D. Stremooukhov, Y. Soloviev, sa mission et son oeuvre, 216, 230. 

[11] See "About Soloviev's Confession," Letters, III, 215.

[12] See Letters, III, 193. 

[11] Article in Russkaya Mysl, XXIX, 136, 1926. 

[14] Letters, edited by Radlov, additional volume, 6, 1823.

[Blog commentary: it is important to note how Solovyev's views have changed over time from a optimistic one (and even utopian) towards a more pessimistic view (therefore one can doubt if at the end of his life he still held his earlier idea of a union of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches)]

During the first period, Soloviev hoped that the incarnation in the world of Sophia, Wisdom of God, can be achieved through Christian theosophy, that is through the knowledge of God and of his relation to the world. Soloviev's major writings belonging to that period are Lectures on Godmanhood and Spiritual Foundations of Life. During the second period, after 1882, Soloviev placed his hopes in the transformation of mankind through theocracy, that is through the creation of a just state and a just social order, which realizes Christian politics. His major works belonging to that period are: The Great Quarrel and Christian Politics, The History and Future of Theocracy, La Russie et l'Eglise Uniuerselle and The National Problem and Russia. Finally, during the third period starting about 1890, Soloviev was absorbed in the problem of theurgy, that is mystical art, creating a new life according to Divine Truth. His major works of that period are the Meaning of Love and The Justification of the Good. Soloviev's last work, The' Three Conversations expresses the end of his utopian hopes in the achievement of good in man's terrestrial life.  [...] In the last period of his philosophical activity Soloviev came to doubt whether theocracy in the form of a Christian State was the way to the Kingdom of God, In his remarkable book Three Conversations, and in the story of the Antichrist appended to it, he represents, in an artistic form "the last act of the historical tragedy" as an epoch of religious impostors "when the name of Christ will be appropriated by such forces in humanity as in their nature and activity are foreign and even hostile to Christ and His work." He describes the social organization of that period as a world empire, at the head of which stands a thinker of genius; he is a social reformer, an ascetic and a philanthropist, but the true motive of his actions is vanity and not love; he tempts mankind by the ideal of a social order which will abundantly secure to everyone panem et circenses. Only a small number of people remain true to the Christian ideal of overcoming earthly limitations for the sake of the Kingdom of God; they retire into the desert, bring about the union of the Churches and go forth to meet the second advent of Jesus Christ

[...] Soloviev's social philosophy at the time of his interest in the idea of free theocracy, and even as expressed in his book The Justification 01 the Good, strikes us as a philosophy of extreme optimism. He often depicts the moral progress, attained in mankind's history, as if society on earth could become the incarnation of absolute good. P. I. Novgorodzev writes in his book, The Social Ideal (3rd ed., 140), that such teachings "can only be applied to the suprahistoric, transcendent ideal, that is to the Kingdom of God" it is completely erroneous to apply them to concrete historical reality." True, Soloviev himself clearly realized this at the end of his activity.