John Popov

Saint John Popov, New Martyr, was a Russian theologian, church historian and patrologist, professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, unmarried, who led in the world a life essentially monastic. Born on 17 January 1867 at Vyazma, he was shot on 8 February 1938 at Yeniseisk, after years of camp and exile. The Russian Church numbered him among the saints in 2003. He is commemorated in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 5 (18) November, in the Synaxis of the Fathers of the Local Council of the Russian Church of 1917.

Studies

He was the son of Fr Vasily Mikhailovich Popov, of the Resurrection church at Vyazma, and Vera Ivanovna. He graduated from the ecclesiastical school at Vyazma (1882), the Smolensk seminary (1888) and in 1892 the Moscow Theological Academy, as candidate of theology, with the thesis "On Conscience and Its Origin". He was a professorial fellow of the academy in 1892 and 1893. He was master of theology (1897, with the thesis "The Natural Moral Law") and doctor of church history (1917, with the thesis defended at the Petrograd Academy, "The Person and Teaching of Blessed Augustine", the first volume having two parts, "The Person of Blessed Augustine" and "The Epistemology and Ontology of Blessed Augustine").

Professor

From 1893 he was acting lecturer in the chair of patristics at the Moscow Theological Academy, from 1897 lecturer in the first chair of patrology, from 1898 extraordinary professor, and in 1901 and 1902 he was on a scientific trip to Germany, at the universities of Berlin and Munich. From 1917 he was ordinary professor. From 1897 he was a member of the Moscow Psychological Society. Between 1903 and 1906 he edited the Academy's journal, "Bogoslovsky Vestnik", which gained great popularity, but the editor was criticized by conservatives. He fought for the Academy's autonomy and wrote in the press against the dismissal of V. O. Klyuchevsky (1906). He was a member of the Pre-⁠Conciliar Commission. From 1907 he was also privatdocent in the chair of church history of Moscow University; in 1917 he was professor at the Higher Theological-⁠Pedagogical Courses for Women, laureate of the Makary Prize and chairman of the Commission for the reform of theological academies. He was a member of the Local Council of 1917 to 1918 for the Academy, deputy chairman of the twelfth section and member of other sections. In 1917 to 1919 he was on the board of the Orthodox communities of Sergiev Posad; between 1918 and 1923 he taught at the Academy and in the chair of medieval philosophy of the university, soon transformed into the Philosophical Research Institute, and in 1919 to 1926 at the academic theological courses in Moscow.

He was a great expert in patrology and used both Russian sources and foreign church literature. Archbishop Hilarion Troitsky, already at Solovki, said in an assembly of imprisoned bishops and clergy: "If we put together all our knowledge, it would be nothing before the knowledge of Ivan Vasilyevich." His work on Blessed Augustine received the Makary Prize, and Professor Anatoly Orlov said that it surpasses in thoroughness everything in our literature, translated and original, in showing the spiritual personality of Augustine in the period of his religious and philosophical searches, uncovering the historical-⁠philosophical factors with decisive influence on the epistemological and ontological views of the thinker of Hippo. According to Protopresbyter Mikhail Polsky, after the Bolsheviks came to power he wrote a second volume, which remained in manuscript.

Arrests and exile

In 1919 he protested to the Sovnarkom against the authorities' plans to remove the relics of Saint Sergius of Radonezh from the Lavra. In 1924, on Patriarch Tikhon's commission, he composed the answer to Patriarch Gregory VII of Constantinople, who had recognized the Renovationists and urged Tikhon to retire. In December 1924 he was arrested and sentenced to three years. Between 1925 and 1927 he was at Solovki, where he worked as a teacher in a literacy school for common criminals, and was one of the authors of the "Solovki Epistle" (1926), which proposed mutual concessions of state and Church on the basis of the Church's loyalty to the state and the non-⁠interference of power in church affairs. Metropolitan Sergius's Declaration he regarded as "shameless lie". From 1927 he was in the Urals region, and from 1928 in exile in the village of Sytomino on the river Ob, where he worked on a study of Gregory of Nyssa; through him money and food were sent from central Russia to the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Peter Polyansky, exiled in the North. In 1931 he was arrested at Surgut and sentenced to a further three years of exile in the village of Samarovo (now Khanty-⁠Mansiysk). In 1932 he was allowed to return to central Russia, probably because of illness (weak heart, tumour of the legs) and age.

He lived near Moscow, and on 21 February 1935 was arrested again as a "member of the Orthodox group of a Russian-⁠Catholic counter-⁠revolutionary organization"; in reality it concerned parcels he had received from the International Red Cross and perhaps the sending to the West of data on the persecution of the Church in the USSR. He did not admit guilt and received five years of exile, in the village of Ignatovo in the Krasnoyarsk region. On 9 October 1937 he was arrested in exile, on the charge that he "systematically carried on agitation against the existing order, discrediting the Stakhanovite movement and the Constitution of the USSR and spreading slander about the leaders of the party", and did not admit guilt. By decision of the NKVD troika of the Krasnoyarsk region of 5 February 1938 he was shot on 8 February.

Canonization

In preparing the canonization of the new martyrs by the Russian Church Outside Russia in 1981 his name was entered in the provisional list, but not in the official list published in the 1990s. He was numbered among the saints by decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Church of 30 July 2003, as a new martyr, together with his disciple Hieromonk Seraphim Thiéry, who died in the camp in 1931. On 4 May 2017 the Holy Synod included him in the Synaxis of the Fathers of the Local Council of 1917 to 1918.