Nikanor Kudryavtsev

Bishop Nikanor Kudryavtsev (in the world Nikolai Pavlovich Kudryavtsev, 1884 to 1923) was Edinoverie bishop of Bogorodsk, vicar of Moscow, and abbot of the Edinoverie monastery of Saint Nicholas in Moscow. Edinoverie is the arrangement in which Old Believers united with the official Orthodox Church while keeping their old books and customs. He died of consumption at 39, in 1923. He is entered here with a reservation: there is no canonization of him by name. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia canonized in 1981 the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia as a whole, without names, and his name was only on a working list, published in the 1990s. The Moscow Patriarchate has not numbered him among the saints.

Family and studies

Nikolai Kudryavtsev was born on 15 November 1884 in Moscow, in the family of an Edinoverie deacon of the church of the Holy Trinity in Syromyatniki. He attended the theological school and then the seminary in Moscow. In 1905 he entered the Moscow Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1909 as first candidate for master of the LXIV course and was kept on as professorial fellow. He graduated the year after the class in which the first candidate was the future theologian Pavel Florensky. He received monastic tonsure with the name Nikanor during his studies at the Academy and soon after graduating was ordained hieromonk. Among his early writings are studies of Chrysostom's teaching on wealth (1907), a biography of Eustathius of Antioch (1910) and a study of the philosophy of Maine de Biran (1911).

Abbot of the Edinoverie monastery

In 1866 the Edinoverie monastery for monks of Saint Nicholas had been founded at Moscow, in memory of the Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich. Congresses of anti-⁠schism missionaries were held in it (in 1887 and 1891) and the warehouse of the publications of the brotherhood of Saint Peter the Metropolitan was kept there. By 1907 an abbot, 22 monks and 41 novices lived in the monastery. In 1911, at 27, Archimandrite Nikanor was made abbot of the monastery and at once played a notable part in the church life of both his monastery and Moscow. A witness of 1913 describes the monastery as a quiet refuge for lovers of the contemplative life, with a church of Gothic-⁠like architecture, dark red, a brick bell tower, cells, the white house of the abbot, a winter church with the famous Khludov library, an apple orchard, a small cemetery and great silence. The monks wore cowls of old pattern, low, with a rounded top. Of Archimandrite Nikanor he says he was a very strict man, but strict out of love of asceticism. The learned priest showed in detail all the antiquities of the summer church.

Archimandrite Nikanor took an active part in the theological disputes of the time, defending conservative positions. In 1916 he wrote in the journal "Missionary Review" a sharp review of the book "The Pillar and Ground of the Truth" by Father Pavel Florensky, saying that he had "not without profit to himself" taken Mashkin's work into his own hands. In the summer of 1917, as abbot, he took part in the work of the Pre-⁠Conciliar Council and in the All-⁠Russian Congress of Monastics at the Lavra of Saint Sergius.

The bishop

In 1921 he was consecrated Edinoverie bishop of Bogorodsk, vicar of Moscow, and continued to head the monastery until 1923, when he retired because of illness. The Life of Venerable Martyr Joasaph (Boev), who from 1918 served as hierodeacon at the Edinoverie monastery of Saint Nicholas, says that in 1921 he was ordained priest by Bishop Nikanor in the church of that monastery. Bishop Nikanor was a friend of the future holy hieromartyr Sergius Goloshchapov, who from 1922 served without being on the staff at the monastery, where at that time his fellow student of the Academy, Bishop Nikanor, served. The biography of Patriarch Pimen shows that in the early 1920s, still a high-⁠school pupil at Bogorodsk, Sergei Izvekov (later Pimen) sang in the bishop's choir of the Epiphany cathedral of Bogorodsk and was subdeacon to the bishops of Bogorodsk Nikanor and then Platon (Rudnev), which may point to regular service of Bishop Nikanor in 1921 to 1923 in the Epiphany cathedral. At the end of 1921 a large part of the monastery's brotherhood was mobilized into the army. By 1923 the Soviet authorities closed the monastery and made on its territory the dormitory of the commune of the Radio plant.

In 1922 Bishop Nikanor fell gravely ill and on 5 August 1922 was relieved, at his request, remaining abbot of the monastery. Patriarch Tikhon granted his request to retire. Already at the Academy he had known his future successor at the episcopal vicariate, Platon, whose Bogorodsk see he took over. He fell asleep on 30 October 1923, of consumption, aged almost 39, and was buried at the Semyonovsky cemetery in Moscow.

His grave and his name

His grave was honoured by the faithful, who constantly ordered memorial services and litanies there. In 1931 the authorities announced the liquidation of the Semyonovsky cemetery and allowed relatives to move the remains elsewhere, and most were taken to the nearest, the Preobrazhensky cemetery. In 1946 the remaining graves were opened, the remains cremated, and the cemetery largely destroyed (entirely in the 1970s). What happened to Bishop Nikanor's remains is not known for certain. One tradition says they were also moved and reburied on the grounds of the church of Saint Nicholas at the Preobrazhensky cemetery.

Bishop Nikanor's name was entered in the nominal working list of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, in preparation for the canonization carried out by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981. The canonization itself was not by name, and the list of new martyrs was published only at the end of the 1990s. It cannot therefore be said that Bishop Nikanor is a saint canonized by name.