EVALUATION OF THE CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY OF ARCHPRIEST AVVAKUM AS HE HIMSELF PRESENTS IT

by

Hugh R. Whinfrey

Archpriest Avvakum, by any standard, certainly led an extraordinary life. He rose from a humble beginning as the orphaned son of a hard-drinking village priest and zealously Christian mother¹ to a stature so great that he could spurn the opportunity to become the confessor of the Tsar himself.² He travelled the length and breadth of his vast country in a time when such travel was both demanding and dangerous. He exhibited an extraordinary commitment to his faith, undergoing incredible physical hardships in its name. But most of all he was a leading player in the religious strife of the time, which in the context of his life as he lived it, was the only game in town. All these achievements, which are a matter of historical record, show a man undisputably successful in body, intellect and spirit.

The Archbishop's autobiography presents these achievements with all the unabashed bravado of any man who has gone out into life and slain the proverbial dragon. It does so however within the Christian context of Avvakum's personal world. Avvakum's character and personality emerge in the autobiography measured not only by this pious standard, but also by his own personal definition of what constitutes this pious standard.

The dominating character trait that Avvakum continually emphasizes throughout the autobiography is the strength of his spirit. It runs as a thread of continuity throughout his own autobiographical writings, simply cannot be ignored in any analysis of his life, and is an unmistakable part of the historical record. Being strong in spirit is a central theme of the Christian faith, and Avvakum is certainly deliberately notifying the reader that he has excelled in this area.

He portrays nearly all the events in his life either implicitly or explicitly as tests of the spirit. His temptation with the young woman he was confessing³, an episode placed directly after the paragraph about his childhood, emphasizes the importance of this theme.

It is also from this perspective that he justifies his affiliation with the Old Believers. Many of the countless hardships he endured were caused, as a matter of record, by this partisan stance in church politics. He cites many episodes where he would have been relieved of physical privations if he had only allowed himself to weaken in spirit.

Other central tenets in the Christian faith are humility and suffering. Avvakum again deliberately leaves the reader with the impression that he has excelled in these areas. Self-depreciating statements are casually littered throughout the text, often taking the form of a rationalization of his sufferings as a consequence of his sins. "As a reward for my sins he [Pashkov] was a harsh man." ⁴

A massive amount of the text is devoted to a detailed description of his sufferings. The portion of his life prior to his exile in Siberia reads like a catalog of all horrors known to man. The reader is however reminded before the enumeration of these horrors that Avvakum has chosen to suffer these events. In his vision of the boats on the Volga, he is told "[this is] your boat. Sail in it with your wife and children if you're going to pester the Lord." ⁵

Avvakum not only insures that the reader comprehends that he has excelled at life within the context of the Christian faith, but he goes further to make the point that he has some special divinity of his own. God is continually performing miracles to keep him alive during his sufferings. Two pistols directed at him misfire ⁶, an angel feeds him in his cell⁷, and Pashkov's son returns at just the right time to save him from certain death by torture⁸.

The Archpriest is certainly developing the case for his sainthood. Avvakum ascribes to himself all the qualities short of actual martyrdom that are necessary for sainthood. He may even have thought of himself as a living saint. He unabashedly tells of saintly apparitions of himself as seen by others. The tale of Pashkov's son's dream of being led out of the wilderness by an apparition of Avvakum⁹ introduces this saintly quality.

More boldly, he describes "a man in my image and in radiant vestments came to him with a censer and censed him, and taking him by the hand raised him up, and he was healed." ¹⁰ He also goes into several lengthy descriptions of his abilities to cast out devils.

Besides the strong points of his character that Avvakum points out within a religious context, he also leaves the reader with the impression that he has been a dutiful husband and father. His autobiography never lets his wife and children stray far from the topic of discussion.

He also paints himself in the proper respectful setting with regard to his country. While it is obvious that the Tsar is a driving force behind the religious reforms that Avvakum is so opposed to, the Archpriest nevertheless refrains from explicitly damning the Tsar as he does his other enemies. He describes the rulers of Russia before Nikon as pure and spotless in the Orthodox faith¹¹, which only implicitly criticizes the Tsar. Only a true patriot would have a right to make such a judgment.

As can be expected with an autobiography, there isn't much negative information explicitly provided about the personality of the Archpriest. The negatives he does give have a self-depreciating purpose which are intended to enhance his stature within the context of the Christian faith. He does however leave a very large clue about the negative aspects of his personality. This is found in the sequence of events he describes prior to his exile in Siberia, which consist, in general, of Avvakum being thrown out of one town after another.

Certainly in the countryside, support for this or that reform such as crossing with two or three fingers must have been a far less important issue to the townsfolk than it was to the church hierarchy in Moscow. So why then was he thrown out of town so often? Avvakum doesn't really satisfactorily address this issue.

The obvious conclusion is that he was probably an abrasive, loud-mouthed, vindictive character. He implicitly justifies his relentless contempt for his enemies in the name of the spiritual tests provided by the Nikonian reforms. Such contempt is contrary to the Christian context in which he was portraying himself. It may be that, during his time, these were considered acceptable feelings for a Christian to possess. There would otherwise be little reason for including them and spoiling the carefully crafted pious image.

Avvakum also devotes considerable space at the end of the text to the subject of the Holy Fools with whom he has associated. While it is clear at the outset that Avvakum was neither mentally retarded nor insane, he nevertheless lived his life much in the manner of the Holy Fool. He apparently said what he liked to whomever he pleased, irritated many people of high position, and followed an inner sense of logic that may have been incomprehensible to many people of his time. He seems to have deluded himself into seeing himself as a living saint. Insanity perhaps? Even if it wasn't insanity, retreating into the acceptable image of the Holy Fool after losing the political battle within the church would have been a smart move.

Seattle, December 1990.

Endnotes