Alexander Tuberovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Alexander Tuberovsky (Alexander Mikhailovich Tuberovsky) was a Russian theologian and archpriest, extraordinary professor at the Moscow Theological Academy (1917), born in 1881 in the village of Makkaveevo, in the Kasimov district, Ryazan province, and shot on 23 December 1937, in the Ryazan province. He was numbered among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia in August 2000, for veneration throughout the Church. He is remembered on 10 December, old calendar (23 December), the day of his death.

Studies

He was born in the family of a priest. He finished the theological school at Kasimov (1896), the Ryazan seminary (1902) and the Moscow Theological Academy (1907), with the title of candidate in theology, and on 12 June 1907 was kept a year at the Academy as a professors' fellow. From September 1908 he taught fundamental, dogmatic and moral theology at the Kaluga seminary. From 16 August 1911 he was docent at the Moscow Theological Academy, at the chair of dogmatic theology. After defending the thesis "The Resurrection of Christ. An Attempt at an Orthodox-⁠Mystical Ideology of the Dogma", for which he received the second prize of Metropolitan Macarius, he was confirmed on 11 October 1917 master of theology and docent at the Academy, and from 16 November 1917 supernumerary extraordinary professor.

The theologian

In his main work, The Resurrection of Christ, Tuberovsky critically examined the interpretation of the paschal mystery given by Vladimir Solovyov and Viktor Nesmelov. The first held that Christ's victory over death was the fruit of His perfect, sinless humanity, and the second saw in the Resurrection a saving fact, which showed man the possibility of eternal life. Unlike them, Tuberovsky pointed out the mystical sense of the paschal proclamation of the New Testament. In Christ's victory over death was shown not human power, but divine. The Resurrection is a mystery of faith, which grants man union with God through the Risen One. The defence of this work as a master's thesis was not easy. Although the Council of the Academy had a favourable opinion, the defence was postponed because of the protest of the rector of the Academy, Bishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky), very conservative, and the work was returned to the author for revision. The defence took place only when Bishop Theodore was removed from the post of rector after the February Revolution.

He also wrote articles on the Resurrection of Christ, on religious ethics and education, on the religious creativity of N. V. Gogol and others. Among his writings: "The Sweetness of Being: Against Suicide" (1913), "The Inner Light" (1914) and "The Resurrection of Christ" (1916).

Priest and martyrdom

In 1919, with the closing of the Theological Academy, he returned to his native village, Makkaveevo, where he married a merchant's daughter, Tatiana Dmitrievna Tretyakova, who had a university education. In the years 1922 to 1924, in the midst of persecution of the Church, he accepted the priesthood and served together with his father, the priest Mikhail Mikhailovich Tuberovsky, in the village of Makkaveevo, and was raised to archpriest. He enjoyed great authority among the people, not only as a priest, but as a man of wide learning, who kept his farm exemplarily. He used the latest successes of agronomy, corresponded with I. V. Michurin, receiving from him new varieties of fruit, and shared his knowledge with the peasants. He was arrested on 26 September 1937, and on 23 December of the same year twenty-⁠three people were shot, among them Alexander Tuberovsky.