1. The Opening of the Mission and the First Period of Its Activity (Cont.) (3)

The missionaries owed their successes chiefly to the fact that, faithfully fulfilling the instruction given them, which well corresponded to their own deeply Christian disposition, they treated the savages with unusual kindness and truly fatherly love, which more than anything else could soften the stubborn hearts of these sons of nature. And this especially amazed the savages because they had not always seen such treatment before—on the contrary, they had often suffered wrongs from greedy traders; but the spiritual fathers, preaching to them of Christ’s love, themselves appeared as the living embodiment of that love. Especially remarkable in this respect was the humble monk Herman, who left the best memory among the natives and represents an example of that self-denial with which a Russian Orthodox man can dedicate himself entirely to serving the welfare of his spiritual children. Having settled on Spruce Island, Herman devoted himself entirely to enlightening the natives, whom he gathered around him and, as a father with children, conversed with them, teaching them not so much by words as by the very example of his life. With his own funds, he established something like a shelter, in which several Aleut orphan boys and girls lived, and he maintained this institution in such exemplary order that it received special attention from the company’s former head, Baron Wrangel. Thus, in apostolic labors and prayers, he lived on this isolated island, renamed by him “New Valaam,” until his death in 1837. Among the natives, who bitterly mourned the loss of their pious spiritual father, there later circulated accounts of his clairvoyance, as well as accounts that at the moment of his death his cell was filled with fragrance, and his face shone with unusual brilliance. These accounts are a tribute paid by grateful hearts of the spiritual children to the memory of their spiritual pastor!

Meanwhile, the activity of the mission was growing stronger, and the mission itself was becoming better organized. In 1796, the first wooden church was built and consecrated on Kodiak Island, and its bells brought joy to both Russians and natives alike. “In the new church they serve and ring the bells,” wrote the company’s chief manager, Baranov, with delight, and even earlier, sharing this same joy with Shelikhov, he wrote to him: “Rejoicing from my soul at the preaching here of the Gospel of holy faith, in my zeal I have given for the benefit of the church and the clergy 1,500 rubles for myself and 500 for various servants.” The archimandrite Iosaf himself made several journeys to the islands, was even on the American mainland, strengthening the faith, and at times acted as a peacemaker among quarreling and competing traders. On the mainland itself two portable churches were set up, and when a general survey of the results of missionary labors was made, those baptized amounted to about 12,000 of both sexes. Of course, this was only a handful among the masses still remaining in paganism; but in any case, a beginning had been made, and the future promised a rich harvest. At the sight of these good fruits of the mission, more than anyone else rejoiced the chief author of the whole endeavor, the merchant Shelikhov, who at that time was in Irkutsk, managing all the affairs of the company. But he was not satisfied even with these fruits and was burning with desire that the light of the Gospel would shine even brighter in the land he had discovered and illuminate all peoples living in it, whose numbers reached 50,000 souls. To give special energy and authority to the mission, he conceived the idea of establishing there a special diocese, under whose authority would fall all Russian possessions in America. He did not hesitate to appeal to the Holy Synod with a petition for the establishment of an episcopal see on Kodiak Island, promising it complete support at the company’s expense. His idea found approval from the Holy Synod, although, unfortunately, he did not live to see this happy moment, having died on July 20, 1795 in Irkutsk, where he was buried in the Novodevichy Monastery, leaving behind him a glorious name as one of the most remarkable Russian men, who showed himself not only a bold trader but a faithful servant of the state and a devoted son of the Orthodox Church.

The imperial confirmation of the determination to establish an episcopal see on Kodiak Island took place on July 19, 1796. The first and natural candidate for this see was, of course, archimandrite Iosaf, and he was to be elevated to the rank of “bishop of Kodiak and the other islands of America belonging to it, vicar of the Irkutsk diocese.” In view of his special position, he was assigned a comparatively large salary, unprecedented among other vicars—4,030 rubles and 85 kopecks per year, and for initial outfitting, 2,000 rubles. But difficulties arose in carrying out this determination. Who was to perform the consecration of the newly appointed bishop? If he were called to Russia, it would mean forcing the archimandrite to endure again the terribly difficult journey of almost 15,000 versts—partly by sea and partly by land through the impassable wilds of Siberia; even less reasonable would have been the idea of summoning archbishops from Russia or western Siberia somewhere to the shores of the Great Ocean to perform the consecration of Iosaf there. In view of such difficulties, it was decided to entrust the performance of the consecration to the Irkutsk Archbishop Veniamin alone. It is true that according to canonical rule, consecration should be performed by three or at least two archbishops; but this rule, according to the interpretation of the Holy Synod, applies more to the election than to the actual act of consecration itself; and since the election of Iosaf as bishop was performed by several hierarchs (members of the Holy Synod), the actual consecration could be entrusted to a single hierarch. But when one difficulty was removed, another appeared. Communication between Kodiak Island and Okhotsk according to the company’s rules took place only once every three years, and since the regular voyage of the scheduled ship already took place in 1796, it was necessary to wait for the next voyage, which was to occur only in 1799. Thus, the newly appointed bishop had to wait three years for his consecration. It is true that Shelikhov’s widow, Natalia Alexeevna, a worthy helpmate in all the undertakings and plans of her late husband, made efforts for this exceptional circumstance to send a ship ahead of schedule, a year earlier, in 1798; but even so, only after two years was the archimandrite Iosaf able to leave his remote island and arrived in Irkutsk with his necessary retinue. There, with due solemnity, Archbishop Veniamin performed the consecration of Iosaf (April 10, 1799—on Palm Sunday), and this unprecedented church ceremony in Irkutsk attracted not only the city’s inhabitants but masses of people from distant surroundings. All looked with unusual curiosity at the young bishop whose name was already known to everyone as that of a glorious enlightener of the savages in the newly discovered lands, and when His Grace Iosaf set out on his return journey with his retinue, he was seen off with sincere good wishes.

Without delay, Bishop Joasaph, upon his arrival in Okhotsk, boarded with his retinue a company ship named the “Phoenix,” and on May 10 the ship, its sails raised, moved across the waves of the unstable element. It is worth noting that given the insufficient exploration of ocean waters and the inadequate preparation of sailors, who relied more on their courage than on familiarity with maritime techniques, ocean voyages were fraught with very grave dangers. In the history of the early operations of the company of Russian traders, accounts of shipwrecks appear constantly—some of which were cast upon rocky shores and destroyed, others were carried by waves into unknown and desolate lands where they perished from savages or their own damages, still others were lost outright in the bottomless abyss of the ocean, seized by fierce storms and so forth. Here, among other things, are the trials that seafarers had to endure. The merchant Kiselev’s vessel, the “Saints Zosimas and Savvatius,” driven by unfavorable winds, was carried to such lands of which neither captain nor sailors had any notion. “From the time we left the Kurils,” Kozhin himself recounts in his description of this journey, sailing across the sea, we saw no land, and in the course of the voyage we came to such a place that one could not travel in one’s clothes, and at night stepping on deck the air was so heavy from the heat that the rigging melted, and around the vessel we saw many worms and water as if heated by fire, and the vessel leaked so badly that the pumps were never idle for a moment, but we took turns at them in shifts bailing out water and the labor exhausted the strength of the workers; but God was our helper, unwilling to destroy His creation, so all we could do was keep bailing water, but from the heat of the air there was no protection anywhere—neither in the cabin nor in the hold; everywhere the heat was unbearable. And the people despaired, and seeing themselves in a desperate situation, because fresh water was only one barrel, they chose another pilot and committed themselves to the power of all-wise God and began to serve an akathist to the Mother of God, and also to the saints Nicholas the Wonderworker and Zosimas and Savvatius, the Solovets miracle-workers. After the service, they brought the Mother of God out on deck, and also the saints, and they venerated them in place of confession and prayed with tears, and wherever God sends us weather, that is where we shall go, for we know not whether we traveled north or south, we found land nowhere, and in a short time favorable weather came from the south, we unfurled our sails and sailed with the wind, and we sailed one course for 1,800 versts, sustaining ourselves on rain water, and unexpectedly came to land, which turned out to be the island of Shuyakh[1]. But if a lucky star brought this ship unexpectedly to an island, the fate of other ships was much worse. Thus, Larionov’s ship, “Saints Peter and Paul and the Wonderworker Nicholas,” which departed from Okhotsk in the autumn of 1797, was tossed about for a long time on turbulent waves, and the people suffered terribly from want of water. When this ship was dashed upon coastal rocks, nine men died from exhaustion and from drinking water upon arriving at shore. The crews of many vessels driven to islands inhabited by savages perished at their hands, sometimes becoming victims of their cannibalism. Our missionaries were familiar with these dangers, but strengthened by firm trust in God and inspired by zeal to serve the glory of His name, they did not think of them, burning only with the desire to reach as soon as possible their native Kadiak, so that with fresh graces they might continue their apostolic ministry. The missionaries who remained on the island, along with their spiritual children, waited in longing expectation for these precious guests. They had already grown weary enough in their orphanhood during their leader’s absence and, moreover, had suffered not a little from representatives of the company, who at first received the spiritual fathers with great sympathy, but then seemed to begin to harbor a kind of envy when they saw how the fathers, with their paternal kindness, wholly bound the natives to themselves, who in turn began to feel the difference in how they were treated by those on the one hand and the others on the other. And these spiritual orphans gazed with ever-increasing impatience into the misty expanse of the ocean, wondering if the white sails of the familiar “Phoenix” might appear somewhere. But she did not come and did not come. Already the ordinary time for crossing the ocean had passed, yet the Phoenix still did not appear, and amid the gnawing anguish of waiting, finally the traders brought terrible news that they had found wreckage of the “Phoenix” cast by violent waves upon the shores of Kadiak. By the inscrutable judgments of God’s Providence, Bishop Joasaph was not destined to set foot as bishop upon the soil of the island illuminated by his apostolic labors and bless his flock. The “Phoenix,” plainly, became the victim of one of the fierce ocean storms and perished with all its passengers and cargo…[2]

This deeply tragic event darkened the whole subsequent history of the Valaam mission. The orphaned brothers seemed to fall into despondency, especially since from among them were lost forever the most active members who had constituted the very heart of all the apostolic work. Herman withdrew to his “New Valaam,” and there devoted himself entirely to missionary asceticism, while the other members somehow managed current affairs. It is true that soon they received reinforcement—in the form of several new mission members, among whom was particularly prominent the hieromonk Gedeon of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, a young, educated monk who had previously been a teacher at the Belgorod theological seminary and knew, among other things, French[3]; but this reinforcement did not lift the mission’s spirits, and Gedeon was forced only to witness the sad relations that were increasingly unfavorably developing between the company director Baranov and the missionaries. Even before this the missionaries had occasion to be somewhat dissatisfied with Baranov, this capable but proud and harsh man[4]; but later he became ever more crude and willful, so that the missionaries were finally forced to lodge a collective complaint against him with the Holy Synod[5], and hieromonk Gedeon later confirmed the substance of it in a special report to his Grace Ambrose, metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg. When the company learned of this, it submitted an explanation of its own, in which, pointing to its constant concern for the spread of Christianity among the savages and the construction of churches, it attempted to cast aspersions upon the missionaries themselves and expressed the opinion that under the existing conditions it would be better if the government were to send missionaries from the white clergy, as those pastors who, by their very condition standing nearer to life and its cares, could serve as a visible example of family virtues to the newly converted. This last opinion found approval, and in 1811 a resolution of the Holy Synod was issued for a fundamental change in the position of the North American mission. In accordance with it the American episcopal see was closed, and it was decreed that persons of the white clergy should be sent to carry out missionary work there, with the islands and coasts of America being attached to the Irkutsk diocese.

Thus ended the first period of the mission of the Orthodox Russian Church on the islands and mainland of North America. The period was not long, but highly fruitful, for it was during this time that the firm foundation of this holy work was laid, which remained only to be continued and developed by later workers. And all this glory of apostleship and enlightenment in a land of spiritual darkness belongs wholly to the Valaam Monastery, whose monks’ exploits, crowned with the martyr’s wreath and Christian endurance amid all adversities, forever formed a glorious page in its remarkable history.

A. Pavlovich

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