Filaret Gumilevsky

Filaret (Gumilevsky)

Archbishop Filaret (Филарет Гумилевский, born Dmitry Grigorievich Gumilevsky; 1805-1866) was the Russian Orthodox Bishop of Riga (1841-48), Archbishop of Kharkov (1848-59), and Archbishop of Chernigov (1859-66).

The son of a priest from the Shatsk district, Filaret is best known as a theologian and church historian.^[1] At the precocious age of 30 he was appointed Dean of the Moscow Theological Academy based in the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra.

During his tenure there was in the Livonian governorate a religious conversion movement, as a result of which more than one hundred thousand Estonian and Latvian peasants converted to Orthodoxy. He also established a school in Riga in February 1846, which grew four years later into a seminary (Russian Рижская духовная семинария, Latvian Rīgas Garīgais seminārs, Estonian Riia Vaimulik Seminar).↑

His magnum opus is The History of the Russian Church (1847-48), the first complete and systematic outline of the evolution of the Russian Orthodox Church. It was seen as a clerical counterpart to Karamzin's great history of the Russian state and went through many reprints.^[2] This work was later revised and expanded by the likes of Macarius Bulgakov and Yevgeny Golubinsky.

Filaret Gumilevsky was a very popular prelate. He is buried in the Trinity Cathedral, Chernihiv. In 2009, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) recognized him as a saint for local veneration.^[3]

References

↑ Raudsepp, Anu. Riia Vaimulik Seminar 1846–1918. Tartu, Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, 1998, page 25.