Authors

Discussion

Prior to 1917, Serafim of Sarov (1754–1833) was one of Russia’s most popular, if controversial, saints. An ascetic, prophet and wonderworker, his cult attracted support from across society. After the revolution, the monasteries associated with the saint were closed and official sanction was withdrawn. However, this did not spell the end of the cult. While veneration was curtailed in Russia, his image endured in exile. Émigré clergy and intelligentsia reappraised Serafim’s traditional spirituality in the context of tensions between modernism and traditionalism, and changes in religious politics at home and abroad. This paper will explore the unique position emigrants from the Soviet Union occupied in Paris and explain their continued embrace of Serafim as they struggled with the exigencies of émigré life. This will include a review of new lives of Serafim written by Vladimir Il’in (1925) and Veniamin Fedchenkov (1933), as well as anniversary publications written by Sergei Bulgakov, Boris Zaitsev (1933) and Metropolitan Evlogii (1938). This paper will examine what prompted them to write about Serafim and why the saint was chosen as a totem of Russian spiritual values. It will consider the use of archaic literary genres and religious texts in the modern context. It will also explore the ways in which interpretations of the saint’s spirituality differed and how they reflected the cultural, social and political complexities of the emigration.