MEDVJEDEV, SILVESTRO. - Born at Kurk on 27 January 1641, died on 11 February 1691. The son of clerks, he too found a post in Moscow, where in 1665 he became one of the four pupils attending the school of Simeon of Polotsk. In 1672 he took monastic vows. In 1677 he returned to Moscow and lived together with his teacher Simeon, whom he succeeded as rector of the School of the Most Holy Saviour, and whose ideas — Simeon had remained faithful to the Kievan Mohylan orientation — he upheld with intrepid courage.
Simeon had already begun the controversy over the form of the Eucharist. M. defended his teacher's opinion, contrary to the Epiclesis, by publishing the Panis vivus, against the hieromonk Euthymius; the Manna, a reply to another writing of the same Euthymius; and finally the Izvestia istinnoi, a vigorous rejoinder to the Akos of the Likhud brothers. These works, condemned by the Moscow synods, have been collected and edited in Ctenija, 1885, iv; 1896, iv.
M. was becoming too troublesome an enemy. Accused of having conspired against the life of the patriarch Joachim, he was condemned to death and beheaded.
he completed the higher course of studies and there took the religious habit on 8 September 1890. In Rome he made his solemn vows on 25 December 1894, and having returned to Maredsous he was ordained priest there in 1897 and devoted himself to philosophical studies, which he completed in Rome. From 1897 to 1909 he was a professor at the Greek College, and from 1909 to 1918 at Maredsous. Having returned to Rome in 1918, he was again a professor at the Greek College, bursar of the Pontifical Commission for the Vulgate and, from 1920, also procurator general of the Belgian Congregation of his Order. In 1923 he was appointed consultor of the Congregation for the Oriental Church and in 1937 of Propaganda Fide; he was also a member of various commissions. In 1939 he was appointed archimandrite by the Melkite Patriarch of Antioch.
A scholar of Oriental disciplines, he made many journeys in the East in order to become better acquainted with persons and things: the fruit of these studies are the important articles he published in various journals. His principal works are: Leone XIII e la Chiesa greca (Rome 1904); L'uno acatisto, studio storico letterario (ibid. 1906); Genèse, source et division du texte grec de la liturgie de st Jean Chrysostome (ibid. 1908); Voyage de deux bénédictins au Mont Athos (Lille 1908); Le Collège Grec Pontifical de Rome (Rome 1910); Riti e particolarità liturgiche del Triodio e del Pentecostario (Padua 1947); Studi sui Sacramenti amministrati nel rito bizantino (Rome 1947); De monachico statu secundum byzantinam disciplinam (in Fontes Juris Can. Orientalis [Vatican City 1947]); Etudes sur la théologie orthodoxe (4 vols., Maredsous 1947-50). He was an active contributor to the Enc. Catt. for Oriental liturgy.