Orthodoxy and the Unia

In the Persons of the Venerable Job, Abbot of Pochaev, & the Uniate “Saint” Josaphat Kuntsevich, as Representatives of their Churches, Compatriots & Contemporaries

 

“Show me your faith from your works” (Jas. 2: 18)

 

 

It is well known that comparisons have been made between the Unia and Orthodoxy from the most varied standpoints, and, as is fitting, never favorably for the Unia. But as far as we know, no one has yet tried to place the Unia, if one may thus express oneself, face to face with Orthodoxy in the form and activity of the highest representatives of both the Orthodox Church and the Unia, such as may, without doubt, be considered saints acknowledged in one Church or the other by their followers.

The celebration of the return of the Lavra of Pochaev from the Unia to Orthodoxy, with all of its age-old shrines, consisting, as is well known, of the healing foot print of the Theotokos, the miraculous Pochaev Icon of the Mother of God, and the incorrupt relics of the Venerable Job, Abbot and wonder-worker of Pochaev, as well as its inclusion in the family of the lavras of Russia, provides us with a basis and reason for bringing this attempt, as far as we are able, to fulfillment, taking for comparison the life and blessed struggles of Job of Pochaev and the life and activity of the Uniate saint Josaphat Kuntsevich.

We consider ourselves as having all the more right to do this in that the Venerable Job and
Josaphat Kuntsevich were, first of all, contemporaries. The former, who was born about 1551, reposed in the hundredth year of his life, 1651. The latter was slain by the inhabitants of Polotsk at the age of forty-three, in 1623; consequently he was born and died within the lifetime of the venerable one. And both lived and were active in Western Russia during the period of the Latino-Uniate domination in Lithuania and Volyn, so that, in speaking of one, one cannot, out of historical necessity, be silent about the other. Secondly, Job and Josaphat were compatriots, both as to place of birth and to the place of their ministry. Josaphat was born in Vladimir of Volyn in 1580, and spent the early years of his youth there, while the Venerable Job was made abbot of the Holy Cross Monastery in Dubno, near Vladimir, in the same province of Volyn’, to which he had been transferred from the Ugornitsky Monastery in Galicia, at the request of Prince Constantine Ostrozhsky (ca. 1582). Furthermore, Saint Job’s place of birth in the Pokutskaya region of Galicia is not less akin to Volyn’ than the city of Vladimir Josaphat’s birthplace. This is the very same province which, at the first partition of Poland in 1773, passed to Austria, and comprises at the present time the Kolomysky District between the River Dniester and the Moldau. There one finds to this day the ruins of the ancient Ugornitsky Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration, now in the village of Ugerniki, in which the venerable one received monasticism at the age of twelve, and where later he was raised to the rank of hieromonk and received the schema. Who is unaware that Galicia and Volyn’ were from ancient times one, both as to nationality and religion? This was even more so during St. Job’s lifetime, when Volyn’ and Galicia were under the sole domination of the Polish realm, and especially when the venerable one lived and was active in the Monastery of Pochaev, from which, from the heights of Pochaev, Galicia even now opens up, as we have already said, even to the simple, untrained eye.

But what is most important of all for us, the Venerable Job and Josaphat Kuntsevich, being contemporaries and compatriots, are each considered a saint in his own church, in consequence of which they give us a fuller basis for comparing them one to the other, the moreso also in that their posthumous fate and very glorification in many respects resemble each other, although not with the same results. When the Uniates occupied the Monastery of Pochaev, they also took possession of the incorrupt remains of the Venerable Job. Yet even with all their zeal for Latinism and their hatred for Orthodoxy, the Basilians of Pochaev did not dare to terminate completely all veneration for the memory of the favorite of God, and even, as we have seen, desired that he be canonized by the Pope of Rome. Now, the Orthodox have committed to the ground for all time what the Uniates considered to be the relics of Josaphat, or to put it more correctly, the Latins and Jesuits foisted the appellation of relics upon them, and according to the measure of the spread of Orthodoxy and Orthodox ideals in the Kholmsk region and Galicia, the very memory of Josaphat is being erased and is threatened with being covered with the gloom of utter oblivion in the near future.

Where lies the reason for so remarkable a phenomenon? Why is the memory of the one exalted so mightily, while the glory and greatness of the other decreases? Hear what history replies to this.

I

The Outward Life of the Venerable Job as Compared to the Life & Activity of Josaphat

 

“Wherefore, ye shall know them by their fruits” (Mt. 7: 20)

 

The Latino-Uniates usually begin by extolling their Josaphat for his intense zeal for the Unia. And we know that this zeal was actually the predominant trait in the life and activity of this persecutor of the Orthodox Church. But who will not say that this zeal was zeal not according to knowledge? The contemporaries of Josaphat themselves acknowledged this — and in whatever edition we read the famous and remarkable letter of Chancellor Leo Sapieha of Lithuania to Josaphat, either in the edition of Bantysh-Kamenski, or in the other, so-called genuine edition published recently by the Uniates themselves — we must agree with their own testimony, that Josaphat “filled to overflowing the courts of the land, magistrates, tribunals, town halls and episcopal chanceries with intrigues, lawsuits, and denunciations [of the Orthodox]”, that he “did violence to men’s conscience... locked up Orthodox churches so that the people perished for lack of divine services, the Christian rites and sacraments, as though they were unbelievers. “Christ the Lord did not seal up, did not deny access to churches as Your Puissance is doing” writes Leo Sapieha in his so-called genuine letter to Josaphat. “The Jews and Tartars are permitted,” he continues, “to have their own synagogues and mosques, but you are sealing up Christian churches”, etc. In the same letter, Sapieha points out to Josaphat the threatening mood of the Orthodox people and Cossacks, which, as acknowledged by Josaphat himself in his letter to Sapieha, was putting his life in danger because of his fanatical struggles against Orthodoxy, and which, as Sapieha rightly notes, “has rendered the Unia itself harmful for the state and dangerous to the existence and unity of Poland....” But for Kuntsevich, the interests of the state did not exist before religious interests. Because of his beloved Unia, he did not even care about his own safety and recklessly walked into obvious danger. In Vitebsk, whose inhabitants were more committed to Orthodoxy than others, he refused to permit the unfortunate people to serve even in huts and cabins, or to bury the dead with the holy mysteries; and he incited the populace against him to such an extent that at the first opportunity a street mob attacked him, beat him to death with clubs and, having severed his head with an axe, cast his body into the river.

Such a terrible, pitiless fanatic the infallible papacy first beatified, and then canonized (1867), designating him the “Patron of Russia & Poland”. And this is not the first time the papacy has done such a thing. They canonized the fanatical founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius Loyola (a Spaniard, and the terrible deviser of the cruel Inquisition), Peter Arbues, and others, because the Roman Church does not require God-pleasing struggles of Christian love and piety as the basis for canonization, but brilliant, even if bloody, struggles which advance the spread of papal domination and rule, ad majorem Dei gloriam… After this, the memory of a similar type of saint, at the first convenient opportunity, topples with a loud noise, as in our own eyes the memory of Josaphat has perished in Lithuania and Volyn’, and as it is now quite apparently perishing in the Kholmsk region and in Galicia.

Not such are the true servants of God, the genuine champions of the Holy Orthodox Faith. The Venerable Job also loved his native Church with the fullness of his heart, and with all the powers of his spirit and life strove to contend for its glory, purity and dissemination. But he loved it as befits a true follower of Christ, with a love united with unshakable steadfastness, Christian tolerance, and goodly condescension toward the erring, and with that real evangelical zeal which is ready to lay down its life for the conversion of unbelievers, but without doing violence to their conscience, in the spirit of persuasion, and not oppression and force. Thus did our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His apostles themselves act; thus did all the holy fathers of the ancient Church act: “You do not find among them,” Sapieha justly writes to Josaphat concerning St. John Chrysostom, “either complaints, or protests, or court cases, or legal accusations, or subpoenas… or persecution, expulsions and executions of pious priests, but find only what serves to increase [the real] glory of God, the edification of men’s souls and the moving of enraged tyrants to mercy…” This is how the Venerable Job of Pochaev, the blessed favorite of God, acted.

His primary concern after acceding to the duty of Abbot of the Dubensk Monastery, as we have seen, was to raise the level of moral life among the brethren under his care. This was the foremost, vital power, which in those times elevated Orthodoxy over other religions and gave it significance and an invincible might. One of our native historians correctly writes of St. Job of Pochaev: “Only when viewed superficially does it seem that the power of the Russian spirit and the essence of the Russian character were embodied all the more by men who built cities, worked the fields and routed the assaults of the enemy. The Orthodox Church was the soul of all these activities and the regulator of human passions, and men like Job of Pochaev preserved the Church from utter collapse. These humble men of silence, these men of ceaseless prayer, these mediators between our remote forebears and even more remote posterity, were the centers of the nation’s life, toward whom souls beset by the fears or temptations of life came from great distances, and from whom words of encouragement and edification were directed throughout the land of Russia...” This is the striking dichotomy between Job and Josaphat, of which, concerning the latter, Sapieha himself writes in his letter to him: “I know what sort of priests you are ordaining, i.e., such as are more capable of destroying than building up the Church of Christ. From everywhere we hear the complaint that the priests we have are not worthy, but rather are blind. Our ignorant priests are leading the people to destruction….” What is also astonishing is that, this being the case, the Unia was, so to speak, dying at its very root, while Orthodoxy has hitherto stood steadfast and unshaken. “May God grant,” we say with the words of this same Sapieha, “that we always have more worthy representatives among us”!!!

Another, no less essential concern of the Venerable Job which is known to us, was the distribution of church books, which during those unfortunate times, as we know, comprised the sole rampart of Orthodoxy against the Latino-Uniate pretenses of papism. In this regard, the Latino-Uniates can also show us that Josaphat for his part also “was concerned with the elevation of education among the clergy subject to him, especially with the translation of Latin theological books into the Russian language…”, and he even, they say, published “a short catechism which, on his instructions, was read weekly in the churches.” Yet it is remarkable that even such an admirer of Josaphat as the author of The History of the Union of the Russian Church with the Church of Rome, while mentioning Josaphat’s translation of “theological books”, does not indicate even one which was actually translated by him, even among the series of those Latino-Uniate books which were full of historical lies and fanatical attacks on Orthodoxy, with which the anti-Orthodox literature of the Western church abounds. But concerning Josaphat’s notorious catechesis, the same author remarks in a footnote that only “certain portions of this catechesis have been preserved to our times”, and what is even more curious, “they can be found only in the appendix to the Italian biography of Josaphat, Vita di s. Giosafat (Rome, 1867), authored by the Roman Catholic priest Contieri.” By way of contrast, in the Lavra of Pochaev itself, as we already know, there is preserved a book written in the Venerable Job’s own handwriting, comprising an anthology of various patristic teachings and other articles of a historical and dogmatic nature, which the saint himself used when delivering instruction to the brethren and the people in church, and which was especially directed toward the defense of Orthodoxy.

We are not speaking of how elevating for the Orthodox was the holy personality of the saint when we recall that one of the greatest contributions made by Prince Constantine K. Ostrozhsky — the publication of the first Bible in Church Slavonic — was made at a time when the blessed favorite of God was residing in the Dubensk Monastery, in consequence of which, as we have already said, the Venerable Job not only approved and blessed this printing of the famous Ostrozhsky Bible in 1580-81, but was responsible for the very idea for this publication, its implementation and completion. Thus, we consider ourselves all the more justified in thinking that in those times the best among the princes and noblemen, both in the East and in the West of Russia, would never have dared to do anything without the advice and participation of their spiritual fathers. And the Venerable Job was just such a father for Prince Constantine Ostrozhsky all throughout the former’s tenure as abbot of the Dubensk Monastery, until the very death of the God-loving prince.

One can only imagine how Josaphat treated the Ostrozhsky Bible, even though he was born only a year before its publication. He doubtless knew of its origin in the later years of his life if, as is beyond doubt, he was thoroughly imbued with all the ideals of the Latin church, which at that time set as one of its basic laws the prohibition of the reading of the Bible by the people, the better to keep their adherents in the darkness of ignorance and error.

Saint Job’s transfer to Pochaev and his appointment as abbot of the Holy Mountain of Pochaev provided him with new means for acting to benefit Orthodoxy. Thus, he built on Mount Pochaev a beautiful new church, and in such a way that the healing footprint of the Mother of God, which for centuries had stood under the open sky, was situated directly beneath its dome. Here, according to ancient Orthodox custom, the wonder-working Pochaev Icon of the Mother of God was placed over the royal doors, so that the new church became, as it were, the center of all the holy shrines of Pochaev, all the more precious for Russian Orthodox sensibilities, so that, throughout the Venerable Job’s sojourn on Mount Pochaev, they could breathe and find consolation only in the gracious aid sent down from on high through the wondrous footprint and the holy icon of the Mother of God, amid the storm of adversities raised against Orthodoxy by papism and its henchmen such as Josaphat.

It is remarkable that the very glorification of the wonder-working Icon of the Mother of God in the Monastery of Pochaev, beginning, as is well known, in 1595, coincides with the beginning of the Union of Brest (1596) and the subsequent persecutions raised against the Orthodox Church by Josaphat himself, so that one would have to be very inattentive to the judgments of God not to see in this coincidence the activity of the right hand of God which, at the same time as the bitter persecutions by the Unia, prepared gracious consolation for the Orthodox in the miraculous Icon of the All-pure Virgin, who in this manner chose Mount Pochaev as her headquarters for the defense of the Orthodox people, their encouragement and deliverance.

Summoned from the Ugornitsky Monastery to the Dubensky Monastery for the sake of Orthodoxy which, as we have already said, was supported primarily by the pious life of monks, the Venerable Job was prepared to use every favorable opportunity to spread Orthodox monasteries throughout Western Russia. And history bears witness that, thanks to his influence as a spiritual father, the famous noblewoman Irene Yarmolinskaya, as we know, in 1646 founded a rich monastery by a special bequest, and had it dedicated to Saint John the Almsgiver. The monastery was situated on her estate, called Zagaitsy, in Volyn’, and the venerable one personally signed her bequest as her spiritual father, and thus for all time confirmed his direct participation in the establishment of this monastery to the glory of the Holy Orthodox Church. There is a tradition that the first monks to inhabit the Zagaitsky Monastery were sent by the Venerable Job, at Yarmolinskaya’s request, from the Monastery of Pochaev.

One cannot, of course, deny that Josaphat, for his part, also drew several prominent Russian noblemen into his Unia, such as, for example, Theodore Skumin Tyshkevich, his son Janus, Jan Meleshko, Soltan, and others, as a result of which the Orthodox justly called him a “soul-stealer”. Yet by doing so Josaphat deprived his clients of what is most dear to man — their native Orthodox Faith; and we doubt greatly that by so doing he brought holy peace to the souls of the apostates. The following passages from the letter of Sapieha to Josaphat have quite a different meaning: “Show us, Your Grace, whom you have acquired, whom you have brought in with your severity, your sealings and closures [of churches].... You have transformed them [Josaphat’s followers] from sheep into goats, have imperiled the state, and have possibly brought all of us Catholics to destruction. Instead of joy over celebrated Unia has caused us only vexations, disturbances and discord; it has become so loathsome to us that we might wish that we could be left without it, so much disturbance, bitterness and care we endure thanks to it. This is the fruit of your famous Unia. To tell the truth, it has acquired fame only for the troubles and dissensions it has produced among the people and the whole border area....”

Simultaneously with his concerns for the good external order of Mount Pochaev, which had an immediate influence on the increase in the monastic population within the walls of the monastery, the Venerable Job did not forget in Pochaev his beloved work of disseminating essential books for the benefit of Orthodoxy, which, as we have seen, he intentionally printed in his Pochaev Printery, such as the famous “Mirror of Theology” by Tranquilion. He himself travelled to Kiev for a council of the fathers (1628) for the defense of Orthodoxy; etc.

It is understandable in and of itself that for Orthodoxy such feats could not pass without leaving a trace. And we know that they indubitably saved the Church of Russia, and thus preserved for all time that unshakable ground upon which Orthodoxy is built even now, even where, as for example in the Kholm region, the enemies of the Orthodox Church were fully justified in considering that it was apparently perishing utterly. It is also to no one other than the Venerable Job and that high moral law of life, the foundation of which was laid by the blessed favorite of God in his monastery, that the Monastery of Pochaev is indebted for the fact that, of all the monasteries of Western Russia, it was the last converted to the Unia (after 1721). Prior to that time, the monks of Pochaev, faithful to the testament of their God-bearing father and teacher, for almost a century after the appearance of the Unia remained unshaken in Orthodoxy, despite the most desperate efforts and dangerous ploys used by its enemies to draw the Monastery of Pochaev into the Unia.

Thanks to this, as we already know, of all the Uniate monasteries of Western Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries, only in the Monastery of Pochaev were the liturgical rites observed in a manner close to the typicons of the ancient Orthodox Church, which is why the other Basilians called divine services as performed at Pochaev schismatic. Furthermore, actual proof of this even in our times is the fact that, with the exception of the liturgicons and books of needs, the liturgical books printed at the former Pochaev Basilian Printery contain only insignificant differences from the corresponding Orthodox books, such as, for example, the horologion, octoechos, menaion, etc. Thus, the very enemies of Orthodoxy were unable utterly to eradicate what was sown through the prayer and labors of the venerable one.

It is interesting that the labors of the Venerable Job on Mount Pochaev to confirm and defend Orthodoxy (1604-1651) coincide exactly with the time when, in Eastern Russia, the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, inspired by the spirit of its great founder, which was ever present in it, was saving Orthodoxy and the Russian land from the selfsame enemies and the henchmen of the Unia with whom the Venerable Job was doing battle as abbot of Pochaev. And if it is impossible to doubt that the Venerable Job had the most circumstantial information concerning all that was happening at that time in Muscovy during the Time of Troubles (1608-1612), of the pretenders and the interregnum, one must agree that, as a true son of the Orthodox Church, with all the powers of his soul he sympathized with all that was then being done by and from the Lavra of St. Sergius, and if not in deed, then by his powerful prayer and the good desires of his heart he aided that upon which the power and greatness of the Russian nation is now unshakably established, and with this, of course, all the Russian provinces, which comprise a single, indivisible whole under the scepter of the sovereign of all Russia.

II

The Inner Spiritual Life and Struggles of Saint Job & of Josaphat & Their Glorifications

 

And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully (II Tim. 2: 5)

 

Behold the pellucid, starry night of southern Russia. Elevated hundreds of feet above the surrounding level plain, the Holy Mountain of Pochaev rests in the twilight, covered from top to bottom with age-old beeches, hornbeams and broad-leafed walnut trees. When they have finished their private rule of prayer, the monks of Pochaev have long since extinguished the fires in their little cells. Only the newly constructed Church of the Holy Trinity, white as snow, and containing the healing footprint and the miraculous icon of the Mother of God under its domes, stands welcoming on the very peak of the crag, as if watching over those who pray in it. And below, in the middle of the southern face of the mountain, on a nearly level space between the Holy Trinity Cathedral and the mountain’s foundations, Pochaev’s ancient wooden Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God is sheltered, and across from it, directly in the crag, like a dark precipice yawns the deep cave well known to the hermits of Pochaev from time immemorial as the best refuge for feats of prayer and contemplation, far from the tumult and threefold waves of worldly vanity.

But behold! the holy gates of the monastery are silently opening, and from them two men are issuing forth one after the other: the first, an elder bent beneath the weight of years, but obviously hale and hearty, vested in the full monastic schema, with an abbatial staff in his hand, on which he leans, guiding his steps. The second is a young, modest monk in the usual monastic garb. Both of them are evidently going toward the Church of the Dormition; but while the young one pauses at the vestibule of the church, the elder moves with measured step toward the cave, and there is slowly swallowed up by its sepulchral gloom.

These were the Venerable Job and his closest, most beloved disciple, Hieromonk Dositheus of the Monastery of Pochaev. The favorite of God descended into the cave, extending his hands before him, his head bent low, because the rocks hanging down above his back prevent him from standing upright. Then, having grasped with his hand a rock which stands like a column on the left-hand side within the cave, the venerable one stood erect in the cave, having thus wormed his way between rocks for a distance of about twelve feet. Here his blessed feet paused first on a little space about 28 inches square, at the head of which, if one turns to face the north, opens an empty space about 28 inches high, but irregular in shape. Despite the impenetrable darkness of the cave, the Venerable Job knows the lay of the cave perfectly well. This is why, extending his left hand and leaning it against the aforementioned column, and simultaneously bowing his head because further on there is a dome in the rock like a baldachino, Job set his foot as upon a step, and moving forward, set foot in the largest northern recess in the cave. Here the favorite of God had many years before placed an excellent copy of the miraculous Pochaev Icon on a shelf in the stone, and now, without seeing it with his bodily eyes, but directing the gaze of his soul upon it, he falls prostrate and begins to pray, as is his custom, profoundly, sincerely and with a pure heart. If we ourselves had the ability to watch the holy favorite of God while he was praying, we might see his threadbare schema part to reveal the coarse hairshirt he wore against his body, covered with blood from the cruel sores caused by the saint’s wearing iron chains against his flesh; we might see his feet, swollen from long standing, until his flesh has fallen away from his bones in pieces, to which, as Dositheus writes, “his precious incorrupt relics, which lie in his shrine, bear witness to this day.” Suddenly, an extraordinary, unearthly light illumines the cave, and for the course of more than two hours issues forth from its depths and is reflected upon the church which stands opposite, to the great terror and astonishment of Dositheus who, seeing all of this, could only fall to the ground, “overcome by such a strange sight”.

“And if this cave of stone had a mouth,” we repeat the words of Dositheus, “it might inform us how sometimes, at times after three days, at times after an entire week, he who had enclosed himself alone within it and was nurtured only with tears shed from a pure heart, prayed for the good estate of the world which lies in darkness.”

This is genuine Christian prayer, in nowise comparable to prayers which Josaphat might have uttered “while flogging himself until he drew blood”, as his panegyrists boast of him. Firstly, as true believers, we cannot fail to regard with prejudice the beating with which in general the Latino-Uniate ascetics love to accompany their feats of prayer. One may only consider prayer genuine which is made from the depth of one’s soul, without any external diversion. From this such holy favorites of God as the Venerable Job also strove primarily to choose for their prayer solitary places which present no diversions for weak human nature. And the Savior Himself among His most important instructions concerning prayer commands each of us: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy room, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, Who is in secret; and thy Father, Who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly” (Mt. 6: 6). What sort of concentration has one who prays when, pouring forth his feelings before the Lord, he is at the same time trying to inflict wounds upon himself with an instrument of well-known type? On the contrary, torture of this sort will certainly distract one’s thoughts from the Lord, and hence will render the prayer itself shallow and imperfect. One likewise cannot but agree that the so-called flagellation practiced by the ascetics of the Western Church, as admitted by the best of them, in many instances produces in its practitioners, instead of the mortification of the flesh, a certain type of pleasure, a sort of languor, which prompts one to resort to flagellation not as to a salvific means of repentance, but more readily as a well-known way of inducing a pleasure which is evidently totally contrary to the spirit of true Christian compunction and repentance.

Secondly, listen to what Josaphat prays for while subjecting his body to flagellation: “While whipping himself,” writes one of his biographers, “he cried out: O Lord, uproot the schism and grant the Unia a crown!” And he did not forget this prayer even when he had become a bishop. This is a real Latino-Jesuit prayer, alien to any spirit of love and Christian condescension, a prayer all the more sinful and contrary to God in that Josaphat himself, even though he was a Latin of the Eastern Rite, had to learn to pray with the mouth of the Holy Orthodox Church: “For the peace of the whole world, the good estate of the holy Churches of God, and the union of all...” But he obviously read more of the missals of the Latins than Orthodox service books, and hence, from the foremost of them became imbued with the spirit of the Roman prayer: “May the Lord bring peace, preserve, unify and render honorable the Catholic Church, and with the pope make her the governor of the whole world [regere toto orbe terrarum]...”, etc. With what immense magnitude does the meek prayer of the Venerable Job breathe in comparison to all of this, for he did not even pray for the prosperity of the Orthodox Church, but only “for the good estate of the world which lieth in evil...”

To the extent that the supplication of the Venerable Job is integral, holy and unselfish, his entire moral life in general is truly noble and full of divine wisdom. In this respect, one cannot but agree with Mr. Kulish, that “the real sphere of the blessed favorite of God was not administrative, not practical, but spiritual and ideal,” and although by dint of necessity he “did not avoid anything: he entered into contact with the families of the nobility when the needs of Orthodoxy or the interests of the monastery required this, and even appeared in court as a plaintiff when the heterodox Firlej had confiscated the monastery’s property,” yet he was primarily “great in his divine contemplation, and influenced men’s minds by the holiness of his own life.” This was the way Job was when he entered upon the monastic struggle at the age of ten, and this was how he remained until the end of his life.

He always “comported himself as if he were the least in the midst of elders, as the most sinful in the midst of righteous men. Even when he happened to be a witness to such a sin as thievery, he felt only sympathy for the sinner. He helped him hide his shame before men, and only meekly reminded him of the account which each of us must render before God...”

It is not surprising that after all of this “everyone feared [St. Job] as one who could penetrate the hidden secrets of the soul of his neighbor, and they loved him as an all-forgiving brother,” since “in his loving and meek soul, without doubt, the thought was always and everywhere present of Him Who came, not to be served, but to serve others...”

In view of such circumstances it would be a direct, even unforgivable audacity to compare the blessed Job with Josaphat. Here we see the integral, noble nature in which every step, every movement of the soul, every activity keeps itself on the path of duty and righteousness, humility and brotherly love, from the age of reason to the grave. On the other hand, though Josaphat did possess certain virtues, which we will not try to reject, they were all inundated by his crude fanaticism, which lay precisely in the fact that he dichotomizes the human soul and, what is even more terrible, makes it evil, cruel and inhuman in the name of the most holy principles of faith and religion, of which, unfortunately, he has an erroneous understanding.

Hence it is not surprising that the end of the one and the other were quite different. The Uniate Josaphat was murdered in the flower of his youth by a rebellious mob, while the Venerable Job reposed peacefully at one hundred years of age on October 28th, 1651, having earlier foretold his own end and served the divine liturgy on that very day, and been sincerely mourned by his orphaned brethren and all who knew and honored him.

True, there were tears shed over the corpse of Josaphat, but they were tears of suffering and bitter curses on the part of his unfortunate victims, who filled the prisons and were beheaded in the hundreds because of the murder of the fanatic.

Nevertheless, there may be perplexities now with regard to the question of the blessed glorification of the Venerable Job and the papal coronation of Josaphat. “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (rom. 12: 19). “Though the righteous be prevented with death, yet shall he be in rest; for the memorial thereof is immortal, because it is known with God, and with men” (Wis. 4: 7, 1). And one must possess very sick, weak eyes not to see the actions of the inscrutable judgments of the providence of God in the posthumous fate of the Venerable Job and of Josaphat.

Of the canonization of Josaphat by the Latino-Uniate Church, the Uniates themselves relate that “At the request of the king and the Russian bishops, Uniates and Latins, after examining all the witnesses to the life, apostolic labors and miracles [sic!] of Saint Josaphat, Pope Urban VIII beatified him in 1643, and Pius IX numbered him among the holy servants of God in 1867, declaring him patron of Russia and Poland.

“The body of Josaphat,” according to the words of the same writer, “rested in Polotsk where he had been taken after his murder until 1705. In that year, when Emperor Peter I threatened to have the corpse cremated, the Basilians of Polotsk had it removed from that city and entrusted it to Prince Carl Radziwill, Chancellor and Hetman of Lithuania, for safekeeping. The hetman transported it in his wagon-train throughout the remainder of the war, and when peace was declared, enshrined it in Byaly, at his estate on the Podlyasa. The Basilians expected that the remains would be restored to them, but Prince Radziwill would not permit them to be returned. Ultimately, he reached an agreement with them that they would be permitted to remove a single rib from the body, but that the rest of the body was to remain at Byaly, where they would be allowed to build a church and monastery of their rule. Relatives of Princes Chartorzhky and Sapieha protested against this. But the Radziwills, despite this, remained in possession of the relics. Not long afterward, however, Moscow removed them from the church in which they lay on an altar and, according to some accounts, took them away to an unknown place, or, according to others, ordered them buried in the crypt of the church, to conceal from the eyes of the faithful this most zealous and courageous defender of the Unia, which [Moscow] is striving to annihilate with all its powers.”

If one limits oneself only to these testimonies concerning the posthumous fate of Josaphat, it is impossible not to see from them that it is men and men only who play an exclusive rôle in the case of his so-called glorification… While of what is most essential in the case of the glorification of true favorites of God — the direct will of God for this, as well as of the miracles which comprise the most substantive proof of the holiness of a blessed person — we either hear nothing, or hear only in passing. And there are indubitable bases for thinking that there has never been any such higher, heavenly volition, or any miracles wrought by Josaphat. “True,” we say in the words of the closest experts in Russian history, Kulchinski, Josaphat’s biographer, and following him other Basilian writers, point to several miracles allegedly performed by Josaphat after his death, yet not one of them is confirmed by any reliable testimony, and they speak of them without adducing any proof, in the hope that a printed lie will receive the authority of the truth among the ignorant. The accounts of several miracles are so badly composed that they cannot withstand refutation. They say, for example, that the body of Josaphat, which was cast into the Dvina at Vitebsk, floated on its own to Polotsk against the current of the river, or that when a certain gentlewoman, who was returning from Polotsk to Ushach, prayed to Josaphat, her mare, which had died on the road, was returned to life.

But from the commission’s report on Josaphat’s murder, it is known that his body was cast into the Dvina, was removed three days later, formally identified and examined in the castle, and then dispatched by horse, along the course of the Dvina, to Polotsk, for burial. This shows what sort of credence one can place in Kulchinski and other zealots of the Unia like him! And if after the murder of Josaphat his body had performed anything in the least resembling a miracle, the examiners, the royal commissioners, as well as zealous Catholics, would not have failed to declare this in the aforementioned decree, where they enumerate all the minute details relating to the murder of Josaphat, praise his false piety, supposed virtues and even the fact that he wore a hairshirt.

Moreover, if such miracles had been manifested after the death of Josaphat, Pope Urban VIII himself would have mentioned them in his bulla of beatification, yet there is not the slightest hint of such miracles in it. We note also that, apart from Kulchinski and other Uniate and Latin writers who set down accounts of the miracles of Josaphat almost two hundred years after his death, no popular tradition concerning them has been preserved, nor so much as a single written contemporary act (with the exception of the resurrection of the horse), nor any other historical proof at all. Consequently, all the legends of the Uniates and Roman Catholics concerning the supposed miracles of Josaphat are pure fabrications, the product of the fantasies of the Basilian monks who wished to assure the ignorant mob that the Unia had its own saints, and among them a wonder-worker.

With this purely pragmatic goal, the popes performed the beatification, and later the canonization of Josaphat “for the exaltation of the Unia”; and “the politics of the Polish government, the personal interests of the Uniate clergy, and the ignorance of the people recognized him as a saint and began to venerate and bless him as a genuine holy man.” What is surprising is that, in the fullness of time, the Lord finally raised up the zeal of the divinely chosen Russian people to put an end to the superstition, by burying the embalmed remains of Josaphat in the ground, and thus, by His inscrutable judgments, by the hands of His elect He destroyed and annihilated what was, in and of itself, the creation of the sinful hands of man.

We see exactly the opposite in the history of the glorification of the Venerable Job of Pochaev. The relics of the venerable one were uncovered not by human calculation or at men’s request, but by direct inspiration from on high. Afterwards, a multitude of miracles were wrought through the relics of the favorite of God, which were so completely different from the “miracles” of Josaphat, that they not only took place, but have not ceased to take place even now, and each of them is fully documented as an indubitable fact, often borne witness to not only by the testimony of eye-witnesses, but also by the judicial authorities, popular tradition, etc. Furthermore, in the history of the glorification of the holy favorites of God in general, one sees everywhere the undoubted fact that the saints themselves carefully maintain the honor of their own blessed remains, and often reveal various miracles and signs in order to save them from disgrace. We read the same thing in the history of the posthumous miracles and signs of the Venerable Job.

Thus, as we know, it was in 1711, when a certain Wladislaw Kaminski from Bratslava, who was in Pochaev, mockingly expressed his doubt concerning the incorruption of the relics of the venerable one, that Job himself appeared to him in a dream, threatening him with his staff if he “dared to speak blasphemously of the saints of God...” It is even more remarkable that a similar miraculous sign was again manifested by the relics of Saint Job in 1737, when the Uniates had already seized control of the Lavra of Pochaev, in the person of a certain Lady Pontowski, her little son, and others.

The question thus arises as to whether we see anything similar in the embalmed remains of Josaphat. If he were a genuine saint, could he really have failed to stand up for himself when “schismatic Moscow” buried his body in the earth and thus forever deprived him of his former honor and veneration? But such is precisely the fate of all unrighteousness, that it is never in a position to stand up for itself openly and with honor. On the contrary, holy Truth triumphs even where, apparently, one might expect its most complete destruction and disgrace.

This is what happened also with the incorrupt remains of the Venerable Job. We already know that no sooner did the Uniates take possession of the Lavra of Pochaev (1721), than they immediately denied access to the relics of the venerable one and placed them behind a grill, terminating, for the time being, all contact with them. Yet this was only in the beginning. The Uniates had not managed to establish their control over Mount Pochaev when the Venerable Job again began to work various signs and wonders, which are of even greater interest to us in that they were recorded not by the Orthodox, but by the Uniates themselves. Consequently, although the Basilians of Pochaev, as we have seen, enclosed the relics of the venerable Job behind a grill and glass, despite all of this they could not but accord him special respect. And we know that they, for example, indubitably recognized the incorruption of his holy relics and even wrote openly of it in their own books.

Furthermore, the Uniates never referred to Job as other than blogoslaviony, the blessed, which, derived from the Latin word beatus, indicates in general a man of God who undoubtedly has been glorified from on high. There are also indubitable indications that the Basilians of Pochaev possessed an icon of Saint Job, which they venerated, and as we have said, they even secretly celebrated services of supplication [molebny] before his relics, set up candles before them, etc. We are not speaking only of the high respect for the Venerable Job which began among the Basilians of Pochaev, but that of the rest of the Uniates, by the end of the 18th century, especially during the time of the famous benefactor of the Lavra of Pochaev, Count Nicholas Potocki, the starosta of Kanev, so that in 1767 the Basilians even raised the question of the canonization of Saint Job with the pope, hoping to having him proclaimed a saint of their own Latino-Uniate church.

But the true servants of God, who are glorified by the Lord Himself, do not need to have their holiness confirmed by heterodox authorities. Despite the Basilians’ unwavering confidence that the canonization of Saint Job would take place, it was not, as it happened, forthcoming, because the pope, as we know, found the favorite of God to be too Orthodox and decided not to introduce a “blatant schismatic” into the Roman martyrologies, despite the significant amount of money donated for this purpose by Potocki.

Now it is doubtless the turn of the successors of the former Uniates who have returned to Orthodoxy within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Poland, and those of like mind with them who are striving toward Orthodoxy in Carpatho-Russia and Galicia. They are all the more obliged by a fitting reverence for the memory of the Venerable Job, since he is their close compatriot and one of the foremost representatives of the Russian nation in the history and life of southwestern Rus’, to such an extent that the very enemies of Orthodoxy could not refuse him respect, even though this respect did not result in the desired canonization of the saint.

In one passage in the Uniate service to the Venerable Job there is a remarkable Theotokion: “O Theotokos, who by thy birthgiving saved the three youths in the Babylonian furnace, by the supplications of thy three favorites — our fathers Basil the Great, the blessed Josaphat, and Job — save us also from misfortunes.” Thus, at that time the Uniates placed the venerable Job on the same level as Josaphat. Now, when the place of Josaphat has been abolished, obviously Job alone remains for all the former Uniates, and we cannot say anything better to them in this instance than the words from the same Uniate service: “Come, ye councils of those who love the feasts of the Church! Assemble, ye choirs of the faithful! Make haste, ye people from the ends of Russia and Poland, and let us enter into the temple of the Lord, the house of the Mother of God. Let us draw forth water from the well-spring of healings, and let us worship in the place where the feet of the Virgin stood. And together let us all say to her: Show forth thine ancient mercies; defend thy holy place with companies of angels, accepting as a mediator for us before thee thy blessed favorite [Job] Zhelezo; for he ever prayeth to the Lord in behalf of our souls.”

And that the Orthodox inhabitants of the Diocese of Kholm & Warsaw might know that the veneration of Saint Job is for them not only a moral duty but also a legal obligation, we consider it necessary to reproduce here, in conclusion, the following decree which, without doubt, remains in force to the present time. One ought to remember only that this decree was written at a time when the Orthodox inhabitants of the Kingdom of Poland were in hierarchal dependence upon the Archbishop of Volyn’.

“In the magazine of the Volyn’ Spiritual Consistory, 19th June 1833.

“Heard: The proposal of His Grace Innocent, delivered to this Consistory on the 17th instant, of the following content: From the tradition preserved among the people of this area and from written information it is well known that among the ancient leaders of the Orthodox Monastery of Pochaev the venerable father Job Zhelezo, Abbot of Pochaev, was glorified by the particular struggles of a strict monastic life. His mortal remains were committed to the earth in 1651, only fifty years before the seizure of the Monastery of Pochaev by the Uniates, and eight years afterwards, on the 28th August 1659, after the the venerable one had appeared several times briefly to the Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev, Dionysius Balaban, as he slept, [the relics] were uncovered by this same metropolitan in a complete intact state, and over the intervening 182 years, in witness of the special grace imparted to him by the Lord God, they are preserved in one of the monastery churches here [at Pochaev]. And it is no less also well known that this precious surety of the ancient Orthodoxy of this region, remaining for more than a century in the hands of those not of like mind with us, did not have in their eyes, as a constant, dire denouncer of their apostasy from the Faith of our forefathers, the value which their pious diligence customarily accorded objects venerated by them as holy.

“’Now, when merciful Providence has permitted, in the days of the blessed reign of our most devout monarch, Nicholas I, who tirelessly concerns himself with the dissemination and confirmation of true piety in our homeland, this Orthodox monastery, which is again returned to the bosom of our Church, to the joy and spiritual consolation of the Orthodox, the grateful memory of the ever-memorable planter of our ancient piety in this region, and his manifest, glorious sanctity, impose upon us the sacred duty of nurturing within the pious people reverent recollections of the exalted virtues of this righteous man. To this end, with the permission of the supreme government, henceforth, every year on the 28th August, the uncovering of the relics of the venerable one will be solemnly celebrated in this monastery.’

“The Consistory, in order to bring this to general attention throughout this diocese, through the announcement by sacred ministers to their parishioners on Sundays and feastdays in their churches, is immediately circulating a fitting proclamation. We have ordered: On obtaining the signature of His Grace on the indicated proposal, for fitting implementation, to send decrees from the Consistory to the ecclesiastical administrations, monasteries, and also the deans of the Kingdom of Poland and the District of Kremenets, and to inform the spiritual council of the Lavra of Pochaev.”

 

Translated from the Russian by the Reader Isaac E. Lambertsen, from Orthodoxy in the West of Russia, in Its Foremost Representatives, or the Patristic of Volynia & Pochaev, by Archpriest Andrew Khoinatsky (Moscow: D. I. Presnov Press, 1888), pp. 293-312.

Source: Living Orthodoxy, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, July-August 1997, pp. 11-21.