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Ekaterina Sienskaya Abrikosova (1892–1936): A Dominican Uniate Foundress in the Old Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Aidan Nichols OP
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Vladimir Vladimirovic Abrikosov, the future husband and cousin of the central personality of this article, was born on 22 October 1880. When his schooling was finished, he entered the faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, where he wrote a dissertation on the causes of the Western Reformation. In years to come he would deplore the manner of his historical studies as formalistic, lacking in attentiveness to history’s significance. A constellation of attitudes by no means uncommon among educated Russians liberal families of the period. In 1904 Abrikosov married a cousin two years his junior. Anna Ivanovna Abrikosova was born on 23 January 1882. She attended the first gimnaziya (high school) to be opened in Moscow for the education of girls, and in 1899 won a scholarship to Girton College Cambridge. There she read history, assiduously, earning from her contemporaries the nickname ‘Deadly Earnest’. She was a gifted linguist with an excellent grasp of English, French, German and Italian, as well as considerable knowledge of Greek and Latin.

The household of the newly-weds was free-thinking. God was neither affirmed nor denied. Politically they supported the current which would lead to the constitutional Revolution of 1905. Their inherited wealth enabled them to live a carefree life, devoted principally to European travel and the arts. Thus, with the exception of a single month in 1905, they spent the entire period from 1904 to 1910 in France, Italy and Switzerland.

Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 72 , Issue 848 , April 1991 , pp. 164 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Most of the biographical information about the Abrikosovs found in this article derives from A.K. Eszer, O.P., ‘Ekaterina Sienskaja (Anna I.) Abrikosova und die Gemeinschaft der Schwestern des III. Ordens vom heiligen Dominikus zu Moskau’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum XL (1970), pp. 277–313. Cited below as ESA

2 K. Foster. O.P., and M.J. Roynane. O.P. (eds.), I, Catherine. Selected Writings of St Catherine of Siena (London 1980). p. 281.

3 For his life up to 1920, see C. Korolevsky, Le métropolite André Szeptickyj (Grottaferrata 1921); a perceptive overview is D. Attwater. ‘Andrew Szepticky, Father Metropolitan’, Blackfriars (February 1948). pp. 53–59.

4 P. Mailleux, S.J., Entre Rome et Moscou: L’Exarque Léonidé Féodoroff Brussels, 1966) p. 84.

5 T.G. Stavrou and R.L. Nichols (eds.), Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Régime (Minneapolis 1978); and more specifically on the attempts at reform, A.A. Bogolepov, ‘Church Reform in Russia 1905–1918’. Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 10 (1966), pp. 12–66; J.W. Cunningham. A Vanquished Hope. The Movement for Church Renewal in Russia 1905–1906 (Crestwood, New York 1981).

6 The complete text in Eastern Churches Review VII. 1 (1975), pp. 40-65.

7 Cited ESA, p. 310.

8 On this see H.J. Stehle, Die Ostpolitik des Vatikans 1917-l975 (Munich 1975). ch. 1.

9 Cited ESA, p. 313.

10 For a fuller account of the couple’s ecumenical activities, on the Catholic side definitely pioneering for their period, see ibid., pp. 336–338. Cited

11 P. Mailleux, S.J., Entre Rome et Moscow: I’Exarque Léonide Féodoroff, op. cit.. pp. 101–102.

12 For the wider process. see J. Zatko, Descent into Darkness. The Destruction of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia, 1917–1922 (Notre Dame, Indiana 1965).

13 ESA, p. 359.