From: Greg Grant <grant@asd2.jsc.nasa.gov>
Subject: Death of Romanovs
Organization: LESC
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Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 15:35:28 GMT

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Subj:   Re: On the deaths of the Romanov family ...

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Date:         Tue, 21 Jul 1992 20:03:17 EDT
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From:         Joseph McLellan <ST403231@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject:      Re: On the deaths of the Romanov family ...
Comments: To: orthodox@indycms.iupui.edu
To:           Multiple recipients of list ORTHODOX
<ORTHODOX@INDYCMS.BITNET>

>From:         "VALENTINE M. SMITH" <CDELL@UMKCVAX1.BITNET>
>
>A set of comments stemming from postings on ORTHODOX and RUSSIA that
>I hope could extend to further conversations on other lists.
>
>Nicholas Romanov perished 74 years ago the night of the 16th. On
>ORTHODOX and RUSSIA, I saw him, his wife Alexandra and the five
>children extolled as martyr/saints on that anniversary. I think this
>belief to be in error. Martyrs yes, saints no. I cannot be as harsh
>as some critics, and say that they invited their deaths by their
>behavior, though the whole Rasputin interlude from 1905-16 reflects
>terribly on their judgement.
>
[subsequent subjective political evaluation of the reign and
character of the Emperor Nicholas II and his wife, together with
spurious and unsubstanitated allegations of drug use omitted]
>
>The Bolsheviks were incredibly cruel to murder the Romanov family,
>though they had a genuine fear of the Romanovs always being a
>claimant to the mantle of Russian government as long as one member
of
>the immediate family lived (and as a matter of fact, to this day, 74
>years later, there still remains a pretender to the defunct Romanov
>throne). At least Great Britain shares in the culpability for
>Nicholas and his family's death in their refusal to take them in
>after the Revolution. Kaiser Wilhelm II, an alleged war criminal for
>his part in World War I, and palbably more directly responsible for
>that war's occurance, received better treatment at war's end in
being
>allowed to go into exile in the Netherlands.

Other members of the imperial family did succeed in fleeing the
country.  The Dowager Empress, Maria Fedorovna, ended her days in
Denmark, as she had been a Danish princess when she was wed to the
future Emperor Alexander III.  Nicholas's sister, the Grand Duchess
Olga Alexandrovna, eventually emigrated to Canada, and died in
Toronto.  There is evidence that the Emperor could have fled the
country with his wife and children if he had used the resources
at his disposal to do so.  He did not, however.  Rather, he stayed
in Russia and shared the fate of his country.
>
>So, I excuse Lenin nor the Ekaterinburg Soviet for their barbaric
           ******
I presume you meant to insert "neither" between those words.

>attack of wiping out the deposed Royal family, nor do I disagree
with
>calling them martyrs. I do feel that calling the seven of them
saints
>goes too far, and that the mere act of dying a gruesome death does
>not place that mantle upon them. From my limited theological
studies,
>I have always understood that sainthood, as it is understood in a
>historical context, was conferred primarily upon what did with one's
>life, not on the manner of one's passage from this plane.

The crux of the matter is evident in your words, "from my limited
theo-
logical studies" and "I have always understood."  Before you can
under=
stand what sainthood means in the Orthodox Church, it is necessary to
dismiss the preconceived notions of sainthood that are in the public
consciousness connected with the process of canonization in the
Roman Catholic Church.  While the understanding of what a saint is
is similar in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, the process
of determining who is a saint and the criteria for making that
determination are vastly different.  Your background as a scholar,
Valentine, and the area in which you do your scholarly work is
history and social science, and so it is natural for you to think
of a saint as a worthy and useful christian paradigm; a model to
follow.  Your criticism of the martyred Emperor Nicholas's tenure
of the Throne of All Russia seems to be an attempt to link his
record as a statesman with the issue of his sanctity.  Yet the
two are very different matters.  However important a love for
democratic government and universal religious tolerance may be
in our Western and particularly in our American civic religion,
they count for nothing in reckoning of sanctity.  And however
important a peaceful, prosperous and enlightened term of office
may be in attaining political immortality, these things have
no bearing on the immortal soul of the officeholder.

One of the most popular Russian saints, the Right-believing
Prince Alexander Nevsky, fought off the western Teutonic
Knights with all the strength he could muster, as though
he were fighting the devil himself, yet he peacefully sub-
mitted to the Tatar Khan.  Saint Constantine the Great, the
Roman Emperor who christianized the Empire in the 4th century
did not have the strength to deal with the Arian heresy
(even after calling the Nicene Council to resolve the Christo-
logocal issues Arianism raised) and was himself only baptized
on his deathbed.  Yet no one suggests that either of these
rulers is not a saint.

Christian history shows that how one lives one's life, one's
spiritual disposition at the time of death *and* the manner of
death are all important determining one's fate after death.
Saints are nothing more or less than those people who have
obtained God's favor and now, after their death, are enjoying
the blessedness of eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The have led all manner of lives and suffered all manner of
deaths.  One kind of saint is the thief who was crucified next
to Christ, who, after leading a reprobate life and suffering
a just execution for his crimes, repented and confessed Christ
as the Son of God.  There is nothing worthy of emulation in the
way he led his life, but the way he ended it was so important and
edifying that it was included in the Gospels.  The lives of the
saints are full of narratives of how persecutors of Christianity,
seeing the faith of the Christian martyrs, gave up tormenting
them and joined them, suffering their lot.  "The manner of one's
passage from this plane" is extremely important in determining
whether someone is a saint.

St John Chrysostom, the often-exiled 4th century Archbishop of
Constantinople and commentator on the Gospels and Episties of
St Paul once went so far as to say that all those who die un-
just deaths, confessing Christ, are numbered among the choirs
of the saints (my Chrysostom is still packed away; maybe some-
one else can provide the reference).  In Russian Church history,
we have the examples of Ss Boris and Gleb, the Passion Bearers,
to shed light on the sanctity of the 20th century Royal Martyrs.
These sons of St Vladimir prefered to suffer unjust death at
the hands of their brother to entering upon a bloody fratricidal
war in their own defense.  The immediate cause of their deaths,
as was the case with Nicholas and family, was political.  As
princes/rulers, they can only be seen as washouts ("weaklings,"
perhaps?).  Yet their faith, and their Christ-like meekness
in the face of others' brutality is what still stands out
about them, and what makes believing Russians and other
Orthodox people honor their memory to this day.  It is the
parallels between the Emperor Nicholas and the Princes Boris
and Gleb that are striking, and inspire the reverence for
the Tsar-Martyr that is evident among the Russian people
today and led the free part of the Russian Orthodox Church
to perform the services of Glorification (this term is
preferable to the Roman Catholic term "canonization") of
him and his family in 1981.  Watch and see, Valentine.
I am quite sure the Church in Russia will follow.

It is evident that you do not like Nicholas II.  I am not
going to suggest that you adopt him as a political hero.
Yet there is no evidence that he was less than a devout
and believing son of the Orthodox Church, a devoted hus-
band and father, and the victim of a brutal and anti-
Christian, even theomachistic regime.  There is much in
his life, and more in the way he left it, for Orthodox
to honor.  By his holy prayers may we be saved, and may
the Russian land be strengthened and cleansed.

Joseph McLellan
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet