Antonij Khrapovickij, Metropolitan of Kiev

ANTONIJ KHRAPOVICKIJ, Metropolitan of Kiev. - In the world Alessio C., he was for about 50 years one of the most significant representatives of the dissident hierarchy and of Russian theology. Born in 1863, in the diocese of Novgorod, he studied in St. Petersburg. From 1890 he was rector of the ecclesiastical seminary of St. Petersburg, later of the ecclesiastical academy first of Moscow and then of Kazan. In 1897 he was elected bishop, in 1906 archbishop, in 1912 a member of the Holy Synod. Between 1902 and 1914 he carried out a great pastoral activity in Volhynia. In 1914 he became archbishop of Kharkov. When the Revolution broke out, in the years 1917-18 he took part in the all-Russian Council of Moscow, and was one of the three candidates for the patriarchate. Then, as metropolitan of Kiev, he took refuge abroad. In 1920 he settled, as head of the Synod of the bishops of the dissident Russian Church abroad, at Sremski Karlovci in Yugoslavia, where he died in 1936. He had a lively controversy with Soloviev on the primacy of the Pope in a decidedly anti-Catholic sense. The whole theological orientation of A. is ethical-moralizing. In soteriology he denied the objective part of the Redemption, rejecting it as juridicism (cf. Saggio di catechismo cristiano ortodosso [in Russian, like all his works], Karlovci 1924, and Il dogma della Redenzione, ibid. 1926). Even dissident theologians opposed his soteriological errors. A. is notably influenced by Dostoevsky (cf. his Dizionario per le opere di Dostojevskij, Sofia 1921). Complete works, 3 vols., 2nd ed., St. Petersburg 1911; selected works, Belgrade 1935.

Bernardo Schultze