SAINT PITIRIM, BISHOP OF TAMBOV

The biography of Saint Pitirim of Tambov developed in an apocalyptic time, when the Russian Church experienced the greatest of the internal Orthodox schisms of all times and peoples, the Old Believers were being eradicated, dioceses were being closed by the will of those in power, and enlightened absolutism approached with the relentless force of the Bronze Horseman. Could the Prince of the Church, as bishops were called in the Middle Ages, become the Prince of Silence in such a time?

1 On August 10, the orthodox Church commemorates Saint Pitirim of Tambov. The saint lived from February 27 (March 9), 1645, to July 28 (August 7), 1698. He lived only 53 years, 13 of which, from February 15, 1685, as a bishop. The Diocese of Tambov was established in 1682 during the Patriarchate of Joachim by decree of Tsar Fyodor Alexeyevich. According to the Russian government’s plan, the establishment of a new diocesan structure was intended to facilitate the educational mission on the Don, promote the spread of Orthodoxy among the pagan peoples, and, of course, to counteract the spread of the Old Believers, whose followers lived in remote border areas and generally migrated there as part of the internal migration. For this apologetic purpose, the diocese was specifically separated from the Diocese of Ryazan and was very small at the time.

2 Pitirim became the second Bishop of Tambov. One could say that he was unlucky with both his predecessor and his successor. His predecessor, Leontios, arrived very late in the see, soon after his ordination became involved in simony and financial abuses, moved north, was accused of intrigue, received suspension, and ended his days in 1708 at the Savior Euthymius Monastery in Suzdal. Pitirim’s successor, Bishop Ignatius, was in turn accused of supporting a Moscow apocalyptic preacher named Gregory Galitsky, who identified Peter the Great with the Antichrist. Contrary to the previous practice of the Russian Church, Ignatius was expelled from the episcopate and even laicized, to subject him to a secular court. He died in March 1718 in captivity in the Solovetsky Monastery, and his case became a touchstone and one of the first steps in the abolition of the Moscow Patriarchate, which soon took place in 1721 by decree of Peter the Great. It turns out that both Pitirim’s predecessor and his successor each spent only two years in the Tambov diocese, and in 1700 the diocese was completely abolished.

3 Pitirim was from Vyazma. From his childhood and youth memories, we learn the story of his special love for his heavenly patron, the 9th-century ascetic and confessor in the resistance against Byzantine iconoclasm, Procopius of Decapolis. At the age of 20, he was tonsured a monk and given the name Pitirim. This is an ancient, archaic Egyptian name. Thus, it is said of Saint Abba Pitirim, or another transcription of the same name, “Pitirun,” that one day he came to one of the women’s monasteries to seek an ascetic from whom he would learn. This was revealed to him in a vision. The nuns were very surprised when it turned out that the ascetic wasn’t one of the experienced sisters there, but a madwoman from the community named Isidora, despised by all. Pitirim bowed to her in front of everyone and asked for a blessing. But after leaving the monastery to return to the place of his ascetic activity, Isidora also left, fearing spiritual fame. “Where she went, where she hid, and where she died, no one knows to this day,” — concludes his testimony the ancient patristic author and friend of John Chrysostom, Bishop Palladius of Helenopolis. Both Pitirim and Theodora are venerated as saints in the Orthodox Church, despite the almost complete lack of biographical data.

4 The biography of Pitirim of Tambov is woven from such small but astonishing coincidences in names and dates. As in Steve Jobs’ famous farewell speech at Stanford, the points of his life’s journey ultimately formed a clear, distinct, and understandable line. Pitirim’s life is an exemplary episcopal biography of the era of enlightened absolutism in Russia. It became the basis for his canonization and, for the Diocese of Tambov, restored sixty years after his death, the basis for apostolic succession through his exemplary episcopal activity. In 1758, the Diocese was restored. Famous bishops of Tambov included the great Russian church historian Metropolitan Macarius Bulgakov (in Tambov from 1857 to 1859), and after him, the spiritual writer and exegete Theophan Govorov (from 1859 to 1863), who went down in history and became a world-renowned theologian under the name Theophan the Recluse.

5 Pitirim of Tambov was canonized by the Synod of the Russian Church on July 28, 1914, literally on the threshold of the First World War, which would bring the collapse of the Russian Empire and a time of severe trials for the Church. As it is supposed to be in the semantics of canonization, the new saint ascended from earthly veneration to the glory of the Heavenly Communion of Saints. This was Saint Pitirim’s last sad farewell gesture.