MEDVJEDEV, SILVESTRO

MEDVJEDEV, SILVESTRO. — Born at Kurk on 27 January 1641, died on 11 February 1691. The son of civil servants, he too found a position in Moscow, where in 1665 he became one of the four pupils attending the school of Simeon of Polock. In 1672 he entered the monastic state. 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 Savior, and whose ideas—Simeon had remained faithful to the Moghilian orientation of Kiev—he upheld with intrepid courage.

Simeon had already initiated the controversy over the form of the Eucharist. M. defended his teacher’s position, opposed to the Epiclesis, by publishing the Panis vivus, against the hieromonk Euthymius; the Manna, a response to another writing by the same Euthymius; and finally the Izvestia istinnoi, a vigorous reply to the Akos of the Likhudi brothers. These works, condemned by the Moscow synods, were collected and published in Ctenija, 1885, iv; 1896, IV.
M. was becoming an excessively troublesome enemy. Accused of having conspired against the life of Patriarch Joachim, he was condemned to death and beheaded.

He completed the higher course of studies and there donned the religious habit on 8 September 1890. In Rome he made his solemn profession on 25 December 1894, and, having returned to Maredsous, was ordained a 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. Returning to Rome in 1918, he again became 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 to the Congregation for the Oriental Churches and in 1937 to Propaganda Fide; he was also a member of various commissions. In 1939 he was appointed archimandrite by the Melchite Patriarch of Antioch.

A scholar of Oriental disciplines, he made many journeys to the East in order to become more closely acquainted with its people and institutions: the important articles he published in various journals were the fruit of these studies. His principal works are: Leone XIII e la Chiesa greca (Rome 1904); L'uno acatisto, studio storico letterario (there 1906); Genèse, source et division du texte grec de la liturgie de st Jean Chrysostome (there 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. on Oriental liturgy.