Schema-Bishop Peter (Ladygin): An Unshakable Pillar of the Catacomb Church

by S. V. Shumilo and V. V. Shumilo

 

 

The editorial board of Church News continues to acquaint readers with the life and struggles of outstanding ascetics and confessors of the Catacomb Church. Today we offer the opportunity to touch upon pages from the autobiographical memoirs of the Hieroconfessor Schema-Bishop Peter (Ladygin, +1957), the last canonical bishop of the TOC and, in fact, its First Hierarch until the end of the 1950s. Vladika Peter dictated these memoirs to his spiritual children in portions, when he was already half-blind. Their various parts, under conditions of strict secrecy, were written down from Vladika Peter’s dictation by different people and at different times. Some parts of these manuscripts, alas, have already been lost forever. But even what has survived is a priceless source, opening up the blank pages of the life of this outstanding Orthodox Hierarch-Confessor of the persecuted Catacomb True Orthodox Church.

Hieroconfessor Schema-Bishop Peter was born in the village of Bolshoy Seleg, Krasnogorsky District, not far from the city of Glazov (Udmurtia), on December 1 (Old Style), 1866. He was baptized as Potapy Trofimovich Ladygin. In his youth, during his service in the imperial army in the city of Kiev, he became the spiritual child of Elder Jonah (in schema Peter), who in turn had been the spiritual child and obedient disciple of St. Seraphim of Sarov. When P. Ladygin, upon completing his military service, asked Elder Jonah for a blessing to enter the Kiev Caves Lavra, Fr. Jonah, instead of Kiev, sent him in obedience to Jerusalem and to Athos (Greece), where in 1880 he was tonsured a monk with the name Pitirim. From 1889 he was a hieromonk. From 1910 he was the superior of the St. Andrew’s metochion of the Athonite monasteries in Odessa.

As early as 1901, the future Hierarch Peter was shown, in a subtle dream, his own future and that of the Russian Church. This is how the Confessor recalled it:

“At the Athonite metochion in Saint Petersburg, in the month of May, 1901, I saw a dream:

Two men of extraordinary beauty came to the metochion. And they said:

‘Get ready, come with us.’

I asked:

‘Where?’

They replied:

‘The Queen has appointed you to steer a ship; you must go out to sea.’

I said that I had never been a sailor and could not steer; I would sink the ship and drown myself. They said:

‘We cannot leave you, since the Queen has sent us; you must go.’

I went. We came to the Winter Palace. At the landing-stage on the Neva River there stood a beautiful sailing vessel, and we boarded this vessel. And suddenly the Queen, the Mother of God, came out and said to me:

‘You must bring this ship to the other side of the ocean. And all these people whom I entrust to you.’

I began to weep. I fell at the feet of the Mother of God and said:

‘I cannot.’

She said: ‘Do not fear; I Myself will be here with you,’ and immediately said to me:

‘Give the command for the vessel to go out to sea.’

And at once we sailed away from the shore, and the vessel quickly went along the Neva River. We came out into the sea. And a terrible storm arose on the sea. Our vessel was moving swiftly, and the storm had no effect on it. In the sea we encountered two enormous ships, and on them a multitude of people, full vessels, and these ships were being tossed with all their might by the waves in different directions. Terrible waves were coming from every side. You think, now they will plunge them into the abyss of the sea. We quickly passed by them; they remained in the midst of the sea, and soon after this we arrived at the shore. On the shore there was such beauty that it is impossible to describe: various trees, fruits. We all climbed out of the ship onto the shore, and the Mother of God said to me:

‘And now we have crossed the terrible abyss.’

With that I woke up. I told Father Hieroschemamonk Ambrose about this. He said to me:

‘Write all this down, and for the time being say nothing to anyone. In a grievous hour the Mother of God will entrust you with governing Her flock.’”

This prophetic vision came to pass in the years of the godless persecutions, when after the 1950s Vladika Peter (Ladygin) remained the only canonical bishop of the True Orthodox Church of Russia and its de facto First Hierarch.

In 1918, Archimandrite Pitirim (Ladygin) took part in the enthronement of St. Patriarch Tikhon. With the blessing and by special commission of the Patriarch, in 1918 he traveled to Constantinople for an audience with the Ecumenical Patriarch, during which he delivered St. Tikhon’s Epistle concerning the restoration of the patriarchate in the Russian Church. Having received in Constantinople the reply epistle of the Ecumenical Patriarch, he delivered it personally to Patriarch Tikhon.

In 1923, the Holy St. Andrew Athonite metochion in Odessa was closed, and Fr. Pitirim was arrested by the Bolsheviks. After spending some time in prison, Father Pitirim and the brethren of the monastery were forced to move to the farmstead of Yeremeyevka, where they cultivated the land, engaging in agricultural work. Soon Fr. Pitirim was again arrested and sent by prisoner convoy into exile in the Ufa region. On the way he stopped in Moscow, where he managed to see St. Patriarch Tikhon and other Orthodox hierarchs. As Schema-Bishop Peter later recalled: “I visited St. Patriarch Tikhon; he asked me, under holy obedience, to become Bishop of Yeram, but I was very weak, and I asked His Holiness to allow me to stay in my homeland and recover my health; but I was detained there, and His Holiness departed to the Lord in March 1925.” While already in exile, in the Ufa region, he founded a secret skete in the forest. For his steadfastness in true Orthodoxy, his loyalty, and his invaluable assistance to the Patriarch and the Russian Church, His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon nevertheless issued a decree elevating him to the episcopal rank, sending it by letter to Archbishop Andrei (Prince Ukhtomsky) of Ufa, and in the Urals the exiled Fr. Pitirim became a bishop. By the will of St. Tikhon and at the insistence of the church people, on June 8, 1925, he was consecrated Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod (the Ufa district) and Urzhum by Archbishop Andrei (Prince Ukhtomsky) of Ufa and Bishop Leo (Cherepanov) of Nizhny Tagil. This took place secretly, at Tedzhen Station (Tajikistan), the place of exile of Vladika Pitirim. But already in 1926 Vladika Pitirim was under investigation in the case of the Ufa clergy. On April 21, 1927, he was tonsured into the schema with the name Peter. He did not recognize the apostate Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) and his uncanonical Synod.

For his faithfulness to True Orthodoxy and his refusal to recognize the Soviet church, he was repeatedly subjected to arrests, imprisonments, and threats of execution. In December 1928, he was again arrested in connection with the case of the “branch of the TOC.” He was sentenced to three years in a corrective labor camp. From 1931 to 1933 he was imprisoned. After his release, from 1934 to 1937 he hid in Glazov. From 1937 to 1940 he lived illegally in Kaluga, and from 1940 to 1945 in Beloretsk (Bashkiria). In 1945 he was arrested in Ufa. For belonging to the TOC, he was sentenced to five years’ exile in Central Asia. There he escaped and hid in the mountains. From 1949 to 1951 he hid in Belarus and in the Kuban.

Hieroconfessor Schema-Bishop Peter (Ladygin) remained to the end of his days a faithful hierarch of the persecuted Catacomb Church. Vladika Peter united various groups of catacomb believers on the territory of the USSR, for whom he ordained many clergy in secret. This outstanding hierarch of the Catacomb Church ended his much-suffering life in complete isolation and under covert KGB surveillance, as a very old man, and moreover blind, at the age of 91 — on February 6 (Old Style), 1957 (according to other information, June 2, 1957), in the city of Glazov (Udmurtia). He was buried in the city cemetery. On the grave there was left only a brief inscription: “Here rests the servant of God Peter.” The catacomb believers who care for the grave of Hieroconfessor Peter testify to cases of healing from illnesses after prayers at the grave of the Schema-Bishop.

 

Translated from the original Russian.