ANTONIO CHRAPOVIZKIJ, METROPOLITA DI KIEV

ANTONIO CHRAPOVIZKIJ, metropolitan of KIEV. — Born Alessio C., for about 50 years he was one of the most significant representatives of the dissenting hierarchy and Russian theology. Born in 1863 in the diocese of Novgorod, he studied in St. Petersburg. From 1890 he was rector of the ecclesiastical seminary in St. Petersburg, later of the ecclesiastical academy first in Moscow and then in Kazan. In 1897 he was elected bishop, in 1906 archbishop, in 1912 member of the Holy Synod. Between the years 1902-14 he carried out great pastoral activity in Volhynia. In 1914 he became archbishop of Kharkov. With the outbreak of the Revolution, in the years 1917-18 he participated in the All-Russian Council in 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 Bishops of the dissenting Russian Church abroad, in Sremski Karlovci in Yugoslavia, where he died in 1936. He engaged in a lively controversy with Soloviev on the primacy of the Pope in a decidedly anti-Catholic sense. The entire theological direction of A. is ethical-moralizing. In his soteriology he denied the objective aspect of the Redemption, rejecting it as legalism (cf. Saggi di catechismo cristiano ortodosso [Essays on the Orthodox Christian Catechism] [in Russian, like all his works], Karlovci 1924, and Il dogma della Redenzione [The Dogma of the Redemption], 1926). Even dissenting theologians opposed his soteriological errors. A. was notably influenced by Dostoevsky (cf. his Dizionario per le opere di Dostojevskij [Dictionary of Dostoevsky’s Works], Sofia 1921). Complete works, 3 vols., 2nd ed., St. Petersburg 1911; selected works, Belgrade 1935.