IVANTSOV-PLATONOV, ALEKSANDR MIKHAILOVICH. - Born in 1835, died in 1894, archpriest, noted Russian historian and churchman. A doctor of church history, from 1858 he published numerous articles in various journals, both ecclesiastical and secular, for the Ecclesiastical Academy of Moscow. From 1872 he was a professor at the University of Moscow.
He was among the principal contributors to Pravoslavnoe Obozrenie ("Orthodox Review"), which appeared between 1860 and 1891. He soon had dealings with the Slavophiles. He translated into Russian the French and English theological works of Chomjakov (the pamphlets and the letters to the Anglican Palmer), furnishing them with extensive notes. In contrast with the Slavophiles, however, he held a more positive judgment on Western Christianity and theology. He sought a rapprochement between clergy and society, between theology and life. He was more a historian and a man of action than a speculative theologian. His relations and his controversies are well known: with V. Solov'ev, formerly his disciple, who addressed to him 9 questions concerning the intangibility of the Nicene Creed and the filioque; with the philosopher B. Cicerin on the relations between religion and science; with the historian A. P. Lebedev on the philosophical currents in the times of the first ecumenical councils.
Among the principal works in Russian worthy of note: On Roman Catholicism and its relation to Orthodoxy (2 parts, Moscow 1869-70); Sketch of the history of Christianity among the Slavs (ibid. 1869); On the Western confessions (1st ed., ibid. 1887); Roman Catholic doctrine on the power of the pope and The secular power of the pope (ibid. 1868); Religious movements in the East in the 4th and 5th centuries (ibid. 1880-81); The heresies and the schisms of the first three centuries of Christianity (ibid. 1876-77; doctoral dissertation, judged favorably by Harnack); Contribution to the investigations on Photius, patriarch of Constantinople (St. Petersburg 1892).
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Bernardo Schultze