While he was thus preparing himself for an ever wider ministry, the dignitaries of the Orthodox Church were discussing how best to combat his influence. As early as 1886, Mgr. Nikanor, archbishop of Kherson and Odessa, preached against "this latter-day heretical master"; in 1891, Butkevicli, archpricst of Kharkov, called him an "impious infidel"; in 1892, during the great famine, the priests of the country churches exhorted the muzhiks to refuse the renegade's bread; in 1896, Pobyedonostsev tried in vain to persuade the tsar to imprison him in the Suzdal monastery. And now at last, in 1900, Mgr. Anthony, president of the Holy Synod and Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, furious at his attacks against the Church in Resurrection, determined, at Pobycdonostsev's instigation, to excommunicato the culprit A confidential pastoral to the clergy was drafted, declaring Leo Tolstoy an outcast from the ecclesiastical community and forbidding the cclcbration of requiem masses, should he die impenitent. But after a few months of reflection, the members of the Holy Synod, meeting in plenary session, deemed it prudent to moderate the terms of the circular. On February 22, 1901 they adopted an official decision and ordered it to be posted on the doors of every church. It was signed by three metropolitans, one archbishop and three bishops:
"God has permitted a new false prophet to appear in our midst today, Count Leo Tolstoy. A world-famous author, Russian by birth, Orthodox by baptism and education, Count Tolstoy, led astray by pride, has boldly
and insolently dared to oppose God, Christ and his holy heirs. Openly and in the sight of all, he has denied the mother who nurtured him and brought him up: the Orthodox Church; and he has devoted his literary efforts and God-given talent to spreading doctrines which are contrary to Christ and the Church, and to undermining their fathers' faith in the minds and hearts of the people—the Orthodox faith, which upholds the universe, in which our ancestors lived and were saved and in which Holy Russia has remained strong until this day. In his works and letters, circulated in great numbers throughout the world by himself and by his disciples, and especially within the frontiers of our beloved fatherland, he preaches the abolition of all the dogma of the Orthodox Church and of the very essence of the Christian faith with fanatical frenzy; he denies the living and personal God glorified in the Holy Trinity, Creator and Providence of the universe; he refutes Our Lord Jesus Christ, God made Man, Redeemer and Savior of the world, who suffered for us and for our salvation, and who has been raised from the dead; he refutes the Immaculate Conception of the human manifestation of Christ the Lord, and the virginity, before and after the Nativity, of Mary, Mother of God, most pure and eternally virgin; he does not believe in the life hereafter or in judgment after death; he refutes all the Mysteries of the Church and their beneficial effect; and, flaunting the most sacred articles of faith of the Orthodox community, he has not feared to mock the greatest of all mysteries: the Holy Eucharist. . . . Therefore the Church no longer recognizes him among her children and cannot do so until he has repented and restored himself to communion with her."
Immediately after its publication, the pastoral of the Holy Synod aroused protest throughout Russia. Even those who disapproved of Tolstoy's ideas deplored this archaic procedure unearthed by the priests in the hope of discrediting Russia's greatest living author. What would other countries say to such medieval practiccs? And the moment for publishing the anathema could not have been more ill-chosen: for some time the Moscow University students had been agitating on behalf of some of their comrades in Kiev who had been sent into the army as common soldiers after a riot. The whole city was in a ferment. Groups were forming at every street corner. On Sunday, February 24, 1901, the day on which the excommunication was published in the Ecclesiastical News, Tolstoy was coming home from a visit to his doctor when he collided with a crowd of a thousand workers and students on Lubyanka Square. Someone recognized him and shouted:
"There he is, the devil in human form!"
Within seconds, he was surrounded and was being jostled and deafened by a joyful roar:
"Three cheers for Leo Nikolayevichl Ilail, the great manl Hurrah!"
He was losing his balance in the pushing, surging crowd, and a student helped him into a sledge. But the crowd would not let it move. Admirers seized the horse's bridle, and a mounted policeman had to clear a path for the apostle. Exhausted and delighted, he returned home in triumph. Hundreds of telegrams and letters of congratulations were already piling up 011 his desk. So many people came to the house that a book had to be put in the hall for them to sign. Delegations appeared bearing baskets of flowers. Little hectographed poems passed from hand to hand: "The Lion* and the Asses," or "Pobycdonostscv's Dream."
Processions were organized during the days that followed, groups of students flocked to the house to manifest their attachment to the "outcast." The authorities forbade the publication in the newspapers of any "telegrams or other expressions of sympathy for Count L. Tolstoy, excommunicated by the Church." But it was impossible to smother the news or stifle reaction to it. At a traveling art exhibition in St. Petersburg on March 25, the crowd congregated in front of Repin's portrait of Tolstoy, burst into applause and sent a message to the writer bearing three hundred and ninety-eight signatures. "For several days," wrote Sonya, "a curiously festive atmosphere has reigned in the house. A steady stream of visitors from morning to night. Whole crowds of them . . "9
Although a fervent Orthodox herself, she was nevertheless extremely- vexed at the sentence passed against her husband. As usual, while criticizing him herself, she would shield him with her own body against any blows from anyone else. She was swept along by the general enthusiasm: in a burst of bravura, she even wrote a letter of protest to Mgr. Anthony, the metropolitan of St. Petersburg—which was, of course, prohibited by the censor; but innumerable copies of it circulated in Russia:
"Having read in the newspapers yesterday of the cruel decree of the Holy Synod exiling my husband, Count Leo Nikolaycvich Tolstoy from the Church, I cannot remain silent. My indignation and grief have no bounds. ... If I put myself in the place of the Church, to which I belong and from which I shall never separate, which was founded by Christ to bless in God's name all the great moments of life (birth, marriage, death, sorrow and joy), and the duty of which is loudly to proclaim love and the forgiveness of sins, the opening of our hearts to our enemies, to those who hate us, and the necessity to pray for them— from the viewpoint of the Church, I say, the resolution of the Holy Synod is incomprehensible to me. Those who are guilty of betraying the
• The Russian word for both lion and Leo is "Lyov," which lends itself to an easy play on words.
faitli arc not those who go astray in their search for truth, but those who stand haughtily at the head of the Church and, instead of practicing love, resignation and forgiveness, transform themselves into religious executioners. God will sooner pardon those who give up their earthly possessions to live a life of humility and charity outside the Church than those who wear glittering miters and decorations and who condemn and excommunicate."
Reproduced abroad, this remonstrance created such a furor that Mgr. Anthony was compelled to reply. His letter was suave and unctuous, quoting Scripture, arguing that the Church could not bless blasphemers and pointing out that it was not the Holy Synod which had turned the count out of the Church but the count himself who had cut himself off from the communion of the faithfuclass="underline" "Priests were instituted by God and have not set themselves, as you say, at the head of the Church out of pride. Their glittering miters and decorations are of no consequence in divine worship. . . . May God bless and keep you, and your husband the count."