Antonij Khrapovickij, Metropolitan of Kiev

ANTONIO CHRAPOVIZKIJ, metropolitan of KIEV. — Alessio C. by secular name, for about 50 years he was one of the most significant representatives of the dissident hierarchy and of Russian theology. B. in 1863 in the diocese of Novgorod, he studied in Petersburg. From 1890 he was rector of the ecclesiastical seminary in Petersburg, and later of the ecclesiastical academy, first in Moscow and then in Kazan. In 1897 he was elected bishop, in 1906 archbishop, and in 1912 a member of the Holy Synod. Between 1902 and 1914 he carried out extensive pastoral activity in Volhynia. In 1914 he became archbishop of Charkov. When the Revolution broke out, in 1917–18 he took part in the Pan-Russian Council of Moscow and was one of the three candidates for the patriarchate. Later, as metropolitan of Kiev, he took refuge abroad. In 1920 he settled, as head of the Synod of Bishops of the dissident Russian Church abroad, in Sremski Karlovzi in Yugoslavia, where he died in 1936. He engaged in a lively controversy with Soloviev concerning the primacy of the Pope, in a decidedly anti-Catholic sense. A.’s entire theological orientation is ethical and moralizing. In soteriology he denied the objective aspect of the Redemption, rejecting it as juridicism (cf. Essay on an Orthodox Christian Catechism [in Russian, as are all his works], Karlovzi 1924, and The Dogma of the Redemption, ibid. 1926). Dissident theologians too opposed his soteriological errors. A. was notably influenced by Dostojevskij (cf. his Dictionary of the Works of Dostojevskij, Sofia 1921). Complete works, 3 vols., 2nd ed., Petersburg 1911; selected works, Belgrade 1935.