Eugraph Kovalevsky, Saint Jean de Saint-Denis (Bishop)
Eugraph Kovalevsky, 1905-1970, Bishop Jean of Saint-Denis, was recognized as a saint in 2020 by the Orthodox Catholic Church of France to which he devoted his life, working for the resurgence of the early Church in the Christian West . Theologian, liturgist, iconographer and exceptional pastor, he professed for twenty-six years at the Institute of French Orthodox Theology Saint-Denys l'Aréopagite, in Paris, which he founded in 1944 and of which he was the rector.
After learning about his theological works, Patriarch Alexis of Moscow and all the Russias, and the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church awarded him, on July 14, 1952, the title of doctor of theology, at the same time as three other professors from the Saint-Denys Institute: Neophyte Minezac, Vladimir Lossky and Vladimir Illine.
Eugraph Kovalevsky, Saint Jean de Saint-Denis (Bishop)
His life and his destiny
He lived and had the destiny of a Father of the Church, and this account is almost an autobiography. One day in the year 1953, the archpriest Eugraph Kovalevsky, future bishop of the Orthodox Catholic Church of France under the name of Jean, went on pilgrimage to Notre Dame in Chartres. He made this mystical and intimate visit regularly since his return from captivity in Germany in 1943. Why the Virgin of Chartres? Because he knew that the Most Holy Mother of God considers, inspires and promotes the destiny of France from this high place, in this sanctuary.
On that day, it must have been November, he heard clearly during his prayer: “Today the life of the nations in the world will begin to change! As a man of discernment, Father Eugraph immediately asked: "What proof will I have of this?" and came the answer: "You will find out when you leave the Cathedral." The prayer finished and with it the pilgrimage, he left through the south portal. There, seated on a step, a man was holding a newspaper with the enormous front-page headline: Stalin is dead!
Eugraph Evgrafovitch Kovalevsky was born in Saint Petersburg on Sunday, April 8, 1905, at precisely noon, the apogee of the sun, the feast day in the Russian Orthodox Church, of the Archangel Gabriel, the bearer of the Good News. The Kovalevsky family is Ukrainian. It is European, by humanist taste and, at the same time, very deeply linked to the cultural, religious and political life of Russia to which it has given men of letters, sociologists, historians, mathematicians, soldiers, diplomats such as Maxime Kovalevsky (1851-1916), historian and sociologist, who became a member of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. This last man of vast culture and vigorous character was a friend of Karl Marx and of a whole political and learned class of France. “I thank everyone for the help provided, especially the poor for their donations and the rich for their good advice! »
The young Eugraph arrives in a country which is incubating its revolution and in a Church, the Orthodox Church, which is reforming its catechetical teaching and its constitutions to remove the exaggerated yoke of the state on ecclesial life. The nanny of the child, daughter of a deacon, senses that he is not like the other children. She takes him to a parish church, the "Savior on Blood", while his parents and brothers attend a non-parochial worldly community [1] . He recounted his experience as follows [2] :
“I must have been between four and five years old. It was a party or my birthday, I can't remember. My brothers were sick, I was in my parents' bed. Exceptionally, Dad had placed toys near the bed, but I see the room fill with an ineffable light which condenses especially above me, lighter and at the same time softer than the light of the sun. It is gold, pure, bluish. This light, I know, is his Presence. I am invaded, overwhelmed by an inexpressible happiness, and I wonder why the rest exists, why exist time, life, toys, because everything is in this light which covers me like a weightless blanket, and I decide to to regard all that is not God with benevolence, without asking for anything, having felt the fear of despising the world.
The unique love of the Holy Trinity, benevolence for the world and constant service of this world by the Church in order to fulfill its destiny according to God will now be the three dynamic virtues of a life of fire.
Interiorization to rediscover divine intimacy and to discern the ways of Christ became an early habit in the child.
He conceived for life the shame of profiting in any way from creation and the creature and the exclusive desire to imitate the Creator vis-à-vis the world by serving him. Here is what he said [3] :
“My first two shames that I never forgot were the following: around six or seven years old, I was in the country. My nanny (niania) washes me in a small iron tub. The village kids are around me and look at me. I throw water at them. My niania reproaches me for it and suddenly I am ashamed, not of having thrown water but of having taken advantage of my privileged situation.
My second shame: I took advantage. I enter the dining room with my maid. My two brothers are eating a pancake with jam. Niania, indignant that I have nothing, asks my brothers for half their pancake. So I have a whole pancake. I am ashamed ! I cheated on them. »
Much later, having become a bishop, in 1965 one summer evening in Portugal, south of Lisbon, on vacation, Monsignor Jean watches the sun set over the waters of the ocean. From the top of the cliff the spectacle is sublime. After ten minutes of silence he said to those who accompanied him:
“I am unworthy of being a man. This sunset is so beautiful that I started enjoying it. It then occurred to me that man was not created to take advantage of nature but to cultivate it and liberate it. So I said to the ocean: – Christ is risen! “Thank you,” he replied; it's been twelve centuries since anyone said that to me."
The Holy Spirit of God became the pedagogue of the child as for the prophet Elijah [4] :
“I was eleven years old. I was sitting in my room. A strange and light sleep took me. In this dream I saw a bird of fire soaring from the sky like an arrow, wings folded, beak forward. He hurt my heart with his beak. This burning wound, containing a blissful suffering and an inexpressible love remained all my life in my heart. Admittedly, I forget her, but the slightest reminder brings her back to life. It is an almost physical sensation. There were times when I wondered why my shirt was burning. Sometimes it manifests as an ineffable groan in the heart. Without understanding what the Holy Spirit is, I experienced the evidence that he is there, Giver of divine love to man. In my dream, I was invaded by such happiness that I wanted to seize the firebird in order to retain it forever. As soon as I took it, it became a carved wooden bird, like those made by Russian craftsmen, and I woke up immediately. God has wounded me by his grace but he does not allow himself to be possessed. The wound remained but I do not possess Him. I then asked the priest who taught me the catechism: – Who is the Pantocrator? - Christ. I replied: – And the Holy Spirit? He exclaimed, astonished: “Ah! Yes. I resumed: – We forget it! And a surge of cold anguish entered my soul. – Who is the Pantocrator? - Christ. I replied: – And the Holy Spirit? He exclaimed, astonished: “Ah! Yes. I resumed: – We forget it! And a surge of cold anguish entered my soul. – Who is the Pantocrator? - Christ. I replied: – And the Holy Spirit? He exclaimed, astonished: “Ah! Yes. I resumed: – We forget it! And a surge of cold anguish entered my soul.
Eugraph was also ashamed of being something, he always wanted to be for something and he never wondered what he would become [5] :
“I loved all beings, I saw no enemies but I didn't trust anyone. I needed no one, while desiring to do good to everyone. The only refuge where I felt safe was the Trinity. Everything seemed unstable to me, my life so short, the world so fragile, the beings so nonexistent. In the Trinity, I suddenly found firm ground, something real, immediate, unmistakable, unshakable, and I repeated so as not to disappear: Trinity-Unity, my only Friend. I must have been around ten years old. »
His upbringing was severe. His mother made him give, in addition to pedagogy at the reformed school of Saint Petersburg, lessons in dance, painting, music and harmony by the best teachers and artists. The school for him was a nightmare because he only wanted to create and as soon as he did not create, the thought stopped. Instead of studying, he wrote books believing that philosophy being too simple, he felt nostalgia for God, the only refuge in a world conquered too quickly.
The year 1917 is coming. Tsar Nicholas abdicates. The Russian Church convened a council in Moscow and Metropolitan Tikhon [6] , head of the Russian Church in North America, was elected patriarch. Civil war is here. The crowd shouts to the new patriarch: “We are ready to die for God. The patriarch replies, “It is easier to die for God at the sound of the trumpets than to live for Him!” Meanwhile, 11-year-old Eugraph frequents the Saints . With his brother Maxime [7] , he paints the icon of the saint of the day every day and he creates the 365 icons. Famine is coming. Eugraph is thirteen years old and thinks: "Is it possible that there are countries where we eat?"A permanent weakness then seizes him and will turn into increasing fatigue. The Kovalevsky family leaves Saint-Petersburg for Kharkov in Ukraine where the city undergoes the comings and goings of the autonomist, Bolshevik and white regimes. Religious persecution is appalling. With the monks, Eugraph, who is small, goes and pulls the corpses through the skylight out of the basement of the Tcheka to pass them to the monks who bury them.
In love with prayer and the quest for God, the 14-year-old teenager left his home and went to live in the monastery of Pokrov, monastery of the Mantle of the Virgin, protected by his relative, Metropolitan Antoine of Kiev, a great theologian and restorer of the monastic life in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Archimandrite Raphael, son of a rabbi, abbot of the monastery, calls him after a few days and says to him: "Go home, come to church, be a normal boy, learn languages, cultures, you don't don't need our customs. There is a country where the roofs are flat because there is no snow, that is where you will go. Indeed, the first vision of France where emigration was to lead the whole Kovalevsky family was that of Beaulieu-sur-Mer, near Nice where the roofs are flat .
Father Raphael communicated to him the meaning of the Hebrew letters. As Eugraph told him that he only wanted to love God, the abbot explained: “No, one cannot love only God because the Bible begins with the letter Beth, that is to say God and your neighbour. If you serve your neighbour, God will serve you; if you serve God, your neighbor will serve you; what do you prefer ? I prefer to serve my neighbor so that God serves me. Tossed from the city to the countryside and vice versa by the civil war, Eugraph arrived with his family in the Crimea, in Simferopol . He met Archbishop Theophane of Poltava (1874-1940) [8] . This one, true spiritual father, "Abba" like the Fathers of the Desert, talks a whole night with Eugraph and announces to him the main lines of his life of which here is the essential[9] :
“Every time you want to go into the world, God will prevent you. God will give you immense gifts, but you will have as much difficulty using them as they will be great. You will seek the quiet port, but God will throw you into the ecclesiastical political fray. You will feel alone and you will not find a spiritual father to guide you. You will be manhandled by grace (textual). Your martyrdom will be to suffer all your life for the Truth, not by people from outside but by people of the Church. In honors, be as if you were in dishonour. »
Emigrating from Sevastopol, the Kovalevsky family reached Constantinople by boat, where the simplicity of the Greek Orthodox bishops struck them. We embark there on a boat requisitioned by France. At the stopover in Salonica, everyone pays a visit to the Metropolitan who blesses the trip and says to the children:
“You are going to a country which is not Orthodox, but do not forget that the French have two qualities: their soul is Orthodox and their spirit loves the freedom of Christ. They gave us Greeks national freedom, and we did not know how to give them in return the taste of the freedom of our Church. »
In February 1920, the family arrived in France and settled to start in Nice where Eugraph was ordained, on October 18, 1921, reader for the Russian church in the city. If he goes back to studying, he immediately sets out to discover the high places of France and especially in search of local saints [10] .
“To fully understand my mentality, it is necessary to know the psychology of Russian culture and its duality. Two trends are emerging in Russian civilization: the “Westernists” and the “Slavophiles”.
The former were in admiration of the West, the latter saw in the West the Roman danger, the secular danger, the atheist danger and sought spiritual values in their own Russian culture. In general, paradoxically, the “Westernists” were very Russian and the “Slavophiles” real Europeans, speaking all languages.
I hated the Western complex and the Russia of the “Slavophiles” suffocated me, although I recognized the depth of their vision. » God having placed me in France, I wanted, with the discovery of the Orthodox sanctity of France to give a mortal blow to these two tendencies, to say to the “Westernists”, researchers above all of the idea of progress in the West: no, the he West is a country of holiness, and to “Slavophiles” prove that there is not only Holy Russia, but also “Holy France”. It should be added that the “Westernists” despised Orthodoxy and the “Slavophiles” confused it with the Russian experience. Finally, without the local saints, without the holy places, I could not breathe. They were as necessary to me as the air and the sun. And he adds: “I can say that my youth was spent in pilgrimages and discoveries of holiness. Pilgrimage is a marvelous thing, the slightest sign on the road is a language from heaven.
Heaven reached Eugraph Kovalevsky in Poitiers, a few years later, to entrust him with his mission in France. The event will take place in the church of Saint Radegonde, queen of France in the 6th century. In search of Western iconography, the young man came in the year 1927 or 1928 to visit the frescoes of the Sainte-Radegonde church in Poitiers. In the crypt of this sanctuary, where he had come as a purely religious esthete and forgetful of holiness, passing under the tomb of the saint, in a mixture of joy and fear which are not of this world, he hears : I want France to become Orthodox”, and he receives the strength to begin this work. The revival of Orthodoxy in France, the restoration of the Church of France in the spirit in which it lived during the first centuries of its foundation becomes today, in Poitiers, the mission of Eugraph Kovalevsky, the work for the rest of his life.
At that time, a cruel personal and interior trial will cease for him, probably placed there to humiliate him and thus make him authentic before the face of God for what it pleased him to make him accomplish. This ordeal, the experience of the state of hell, had lasted since the age of fourteen and persecuted him in various forms (anxieties, possessions, suffering of the soul, pseudo-visions, terrors and other things altogether). fact indescribable). Part of the test came from the refusal to accept suffering in the way of the salvation of men, with the will that these men enter directly into the resurrection [11] .
“My long experience ended like this: having consented interiorly to enter into the resurrection through the Cross, I prostrated myself before the icons as a sign of acceptance. One day when I got up, a cross appeared to me in the middle of the icons (I was in Meudon in my house); it was the first step towards liberation. The second most decisive, occurred in the church of Menton. I prayed to Saint Seraphim of Sarov [12] , wanting to free myself from this state, an inner voice said to me: "If you obey blindly, down to the smallest detail, you will be freed." Certainly I accepted with all my heart. As a test I was ordered to stand in the center of the church to pray. This simple gesture seemed extremely difficult to me; I still obey. I then received the more “absurd” order to order from a lady I only knew by sight, a white silk sleeve that I would wear for a while on my right arm, under my shirt. I went to this lady, she agreed to do this round as if it were quite natural. After this strange order, I lived several weeks in euphoria, each of my gestures subject to the will of Saint Seraphim. It was the beginning of the liberation and the state of hell disappeared imperceptibly and gradually. In reality, if I analyze, this “absurd” had killed the root of my word.
With a few other young Russian emigrants including Wladimir Lossky [13] Eugraph Kovalevsky founded a brotherhood in 1925 which they place under the patronage of Saint Photius, the great patriarch of the Church of Constantinople who was the most illustrious scholar of his century. , the ninth, and who thought that authority in the universal Church and decisions on divine dogmas depend on conciliarity (“where two or three are gathered in my name, says Christ, I am present” ). The purpose of this brotherhood is to work for the independence and universalism of Orthodoxy, believing that “Christian unity can only be achieved by confessing Orthodoxy” (quote from W. Lossky).
In this brotherhood, born in Paris on February 11, 1925, we study ecclesial and parochial work, the defense of Orthodoxy and the mission of Orthodoxy. Appointed president of a province of the brotherhood, the Saint-Irénée province of Lyon, Eugraph, who was at the same time, like almost all the confreres, a student at the Institut Saint-Serge (Russian Institute of Theology, with a teaching staff eminent at that time) expresses there his concern for the universal Church and the goal of his action: to restore to the West its own conscience within the universality of Orthodoxy. The brotherhood of Saint-Photius will live for twenty-five years, closing its doors on November 8, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel in the Eastern calendar. The main fruit of his labors, thanks to the ardor and application of Eugraph Kovalevsky, will be to give principles to the birth of a Western Orthodox Church and to provide it with theological, liturgical and canonical materials. With this, the exodus of Russians to Europe takes on its full meaning. As Archbishop John of San Francisco, who will consecrate Bishop Eugraph Kovalevsky, will say later in 1964, God allowed the emigration of Orthodox Russians and many of the most established among them in the faith and in the tradition of Russia. Church in order to communicate to the West the foundations and tastes of Orthodoxy. Acting then with zeal for the house of God in this "Holy France" where the Spirit led him, Eugraph thinks only of the spiritual well-being of others. He becomes the servant of the priests whom he accompanies on mission. He prepares the luggage, arranges what is needed for mass, sings, reads, visits the sick, drinks, eats with them, sometimes does not eat or drink and finds himself alone in a provincial town, accepts all trips, no longer spends any celebrations with family or friends, but repeatedly refuses the diaconate and the priesthood. He does not want to be a priest in a Russian parish, nor in a French Eastern Rite parish. Its goal, although it has not yet adopted a definitive form, is to bring out from the soil and from the French environment a Church of Orthodox faith and Western experience, especially in ritual and canonical forms. As a layman, he then agreed to take care of a nascent French parish, of the Eastern rite and, according to his expression, to give it a hand. This parish was founded on November 3, 1927. The future bishop Jean de Saint-Denis will write sometimes neither eats nor drinks and finds himself solitary in a provincial town, agrees to all trips, no longer spends any celebrations with family or friends, but repeatedly refuses the diaconate and the priesthood. He does not want to be a priest in a Russian parish, nor in a French Eastern Rite parish. Its goal, although it has not yet adopted a definitive form, is to bring out from the soil and from the French environment a Church of Orthodox faith and Western experience, especially in ritual and canonical forms. As a layman, he then agreed to take care of a nascent French parish, of the Eastern rite and, according to his expression, to give it a hand. This parish was founded on November 3, 1927. The future bishop Jean de Saint-Denis will write sometimes neither eats nor drinks and finds himself solitary in a provincial town, agrees to all trips, no longer spends any celebrations with family or friends, but repeatedly refuses the diaconate and the priesthood. He does not want to be a priest in a Russian parish, nor in a French Eastern Rite parish. Its goal, although it has not yet adopted a definitive form, is to bring out from the soil and from the French environment a Church of Orthodox faith and Western experience, especially in ritual and canonical forms. As a layman, he then agreed to take care of a nascent French parish, of the Eastern rite and, according to his expression, to give it a hand. This parish was founded on November 3, 1927. The future bishop Jean de Saint-Denis will write no longer spends any celebrations with family or friends, but repeatedly refuses the diaconate and the priesthood. He does not want to be a priest in a Russian parish, nor in a French Eastern Rite parish. Its goal, although it has not yet adopted a definitive form, is to bring out from the soil and from the French environment a Church of Orthodox faith and Western experience, especially in ritual and canonical forms. As a layman, he then agreed to take care of a nascent French parish, of the Eastern rite and, according to his expression, to give it a hand. This parish was founded on November 3, 1927. The future bishop Jean de Saint-Denis will write no longer spends any celebrations with family or friends, but repeatedly refuses the diaconate and the priesthood. He does not want to be a priest in a Russian parish, nor in a French Eastern Rite parish. Its goal, although it has not yet adopted a definitive form, is to bring out from the soil and from the French environment a Church of Orthodox faith and Western experience, especially in ritual and canonical forms. As a layman, he then agreed to take care of a nascent French parish, of the Eastern rite and, according to his expression, to give it a hand. This parish was founded on November 3, 1927. The future bishop Jean de Saint-Denis will write nor in a French Eastern Rite parish. Its goal, although it has not yet adopted a definitive form, is to bring out from the soil and from the French environment a Church of Orthodox faith and Western experience, especially in ritual and canonical forms. As a layman, he then agreed to take care of a nascent French parish, of the Eastern rite and, according to his expression, to give it a hand. This parish was founded on November 3, 1927. The future bishop Jean de Saint-Denis will write nor in a French Eastern Rite parish. Its goal, although it has not yet adopted a definitive form, is to bring out from the soil and from the French environment a Church of Orthodox faith and Western experience, especially in ritual and canonical forms. As a layman, he then agreed to take care of a nascent French parish, of the Eastern rite and, according to his expression, to give it a hand. This parish was founded on November 3, 1927. The future bishop Jean de Saint-Denis will write oriental rite and, according to his expression, to lend him a hand. This parish was founded on November 3, 1927. The future bishop Jean de Saint-Denis will write oriental rite and, according to his expression, to lend him a hand. This parish was founded on November 3, 1927. The future bishop Jean de Saint-Denis will write[14] : “And on November 11, 1927, feast of this great Saint Martin whom the history of Orthodoxy in France finds at all crossroads, the first divine service was celebrated in French and the parish was recognized by the Metropolitan . He will say later in recounting his life [15 ]
"It was not a question (in the works of research on orthodoxy in the West) of any tolerance of this or that custom, but of the restoration in universal orthodoxy of the legitimate, immortal and orthodox face of West. It was my Credo.
It was not enough either to remain a fan of the Western tradition by looking at it with Eastern eyes, one had to immerse oneself in its current. This dive is much more difficult than it superficially appears. Welded from childhood to the sacred rhythm of Holy Russia, attached almost biologically to the Typicon, that is to say to the monastic ritual, it was for me an ascetic effort, a kind of exodus. From the country of my fathers I left to settle in another climate. A Westerner, even a monk, cannot imagine how fully the liturgy seizes an Oriental. The slightest melody, the slightest word, the slightest gesture, the slightest rites or customs, even the change in the menu of the food, evoke in him a whole world.
My case was accentuated by the fact that I lived in the Church, in the liturgy which is not intellectual piety but popular and monastic. The warmth given off by the Eastern Rite, its richness, prevent us from appreciating the inestimable value of the Western Rite, especially in the current Roman form. It was a long job. I learned the Roman mass by heart. I attended the ceremonies, I read the breviary, I let Latin penetrate into my soul. Often the call from the Orient was so strong that I was forced to struggle psychologically with myself, because to love something you have to give up something else. The man's first words were: “A man will leave his father and his mother and stick to his wife”. I had to abandon my father and my mother to go to the Western rite.
Where did this conviction come from? As I said, I believe, in 1919, before taking the boat for France, two ideas had imposed themselves on my mind. God willed Orthodox emigration to Europe so that it would bring the light of Orthodoxy which for a thousand years was disinterested in the West. Two acute feelings animate me: the splendor of Orthodoxy and the sinfulness of the Orthodox with their indifference towards other peoples, or rather their static satisfaction. This sin is washed away by the martyrdom of Russia and the mission of the Orthodox in the West. I had not changed. »
Eugraph Kovalevsky, 1905-1970, Bishop Jean of Saint-Denis, was recognized as a saint in 2020 by the Orthodox Catholic Church of France to which he devoted his life, working for the resurgence of the early Church in the Christian West . Theologian, liturgist, iconographer and exceptional pastor, he professed for twenty-six years at the Institute of French Orthodox Theology Saint-Denys l'Aréopagite, in Paris, which he founded in 1944 and of which he was the rector.
After learning about his theological works, Patriarch Alexis of Moscow and all the Russias, and the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church awarded him, on July 14, 1952, the title of doctor of theology, at the same time as three other professors from the Saint-Denys Institute: Neophyte Minezac, Vladimir Lossky and Vladimir Illine.
Eugraph Kovalevsky frequented the French intellectual milieu where Jacques Maritain, close to his parents' home, brought together men such as Gabriel Marcel, Emmanuel Mounier, Jean Cocteau and Daniel Rops [16 ].
“The Maritain circle opened the doors to me of Roman Catholic intellectual circles, as well as artistic, surrealist, symbolist circles… Pre-revolutionary Russian culture had prepared my sensitivity and I was able to taste and appreciate these various tendencies… Jean Cocteau was converted… A number of between them, Cocteau at the head, show me friendship and sympathy. I come close to them, I understand them, I escape their influence because the ecclesial reality alone attracts me”. And above all [17] , “in addition to the Mounier circle, I frequent other groups, for example that of Nicolas Berdiaeff where for the first time an ecumenical meeting of Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox took place.
From the first meeting, the Dominican is in agreement with the Calvinist Lecerf and the so-called modernist, Father Laberthonnière, with the Lutheran Jundt.
These meetings of an ecumenical nature bring me an understanding of the thought of Christians in the West at the same time as they bring out that the Romano-Protestant problem is an internal problem, that of two sons of the scholastics of the Middle Ages. Orthodoxy appears very different, in its essence, from the two great confessions!
The tragedy of my situation is that my Orthodox colleagues confuse medieval scholasticism with these two great denominations and that Westerners, while appreciating Orthodoxy, treat me as representing Eastern psychology.
This will be the struggle of my entire life: to prove that Western orthodoxy exists and that the West in its instincts is orthodox. When I then take Wladimir Lossky from philosophy to theology, I will transpose for him the thought of Tertullian: the soul of a man is naturally Christian, the soul of a Westerner is naturally Orthodox. With the intellectual world [18] , God leads me towards the life of the workers in France, because I accompany the priests in the factories to serve and sing: Colombelles, Tourcoing, Le Creusot, Montargis, etc. Many Russian workers work there by contract. But God will bring me even closer to the people of France during my three-year captivity in a French prison camp in Germany.”
Eugraph gradually moves away from Russian emigration and its troubles modeled on political quarrels, shared between progressives and reactionaries. He strove to revive a French Church but, in the turmoil of Russian Orthodox options in France, his positions and his reports were received without much interest. And there [19] :
“I wanted to confess that political borders cannot break the Church and that no regime can bind the free conscience of a bishop. I said at that time: Christ before Pilate, the judge, kept the fullness of the double freedom: that of the divine will and that of the will of man. I was not acting out of love for Holy Russia but out of violent love for the Church of Christ, independent of all historical circumstances”.
The year 1936 is a definitive turning point in the life of Eugraph Kovalevsky. He will meet the one he was looking for without knowing him: Monsignor Winnaert. The latter, who came from the Roman Church where he was a priest, had founded a “Evangelical Catholic Church of France”. The man and his Church had been evolving, since 1919, without knowing it, towards orthodoxy. Rooted in the tradition and the Christian soil of France, they were seized with an acute crisis of conscience on the nature of the Church and on the content of the faith.
The context of the early 20th century gave no answer to their quest. Also they evolved near the Churches of this time, ready to listen to all those which, like themselves, also sought where could well reside the Christian prophetism. On his way, Monsignor Louis-Charles Winnaert met Emmanuel Mounier, the admirable pastor Wilfried Monod... until the day when an Orthodox priest who had come to him from the Church of Rome, Father Gillet, revealed to him the content of the faith and Orthodox ecclesiology. That day he exclaims:[20] :
“Monsignor Winnaert was never a historian, nor an archaeological liturgist like the Benedictines; he did not publish volumes like Wladimir Guettée [21]. All this was far from his temperament and out of his mission. He read in the eyes, more focused on the future than on the past. He was pushed towards men, towards life and not towards texts and scholarly documents. Pastor above all, eager to save souls in danger, he sought to revive orthodoxy in the West. He loved the liturgy with all his being, placing it at the center of Christian life, and his mind frequently rose towards theology. When he wanted to extirpate souls from their theosophical prison in order to restore them to the Church, he rose up dogmatically and with abruptness against their doctrine, but... introduced into his office elements of their prayer in conformity with Christianity, replacing for example the term “sin” by the word “misguidance”. His liturgy took on a teaching character. It is rather reminiscent of the works of the Fathers of the Church. »
At this time (1936) a saint and prophet resides in Moscow: Metropolitan Sergius, who presides over the destiny and martyrdom of the Russian Orthodox Church. Serge "the Great" is "locum-tenens" of the patriarch. Stalin will later accept that he is elevated to patriarchy.
Eugraph Kovalevsky, moved by his Christian universalism and by the ecclesial command received from Saint Radegonde, recognizes in Monsignor Winnaert and in his communities "the people" of the West who are advancing towards the orthodoxy of the faith and towards the restoration of the Churches of this same West in the spirit of the primitive Church. The two men seek the help of Metropolitan Sergius in Moscow, that is, of the Russian Patriarchal Church. The prophetic spirit of the future patriarch adopted the question and, after only three months of study, the historic decision arrived in Paris (decree of June 16, 1936, no. 75):
"...Parishes united with the Orthodox Church, using the Western Rite, shall be designated as the WESTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH..."
Replacement for the Patriarch's locus-tenens.
Signed: Serge, Metropolitan of Moscow.
One of the greatest events of this century has just happened and, as always in a nascent or resurgent Christianity, almost unbeknownst to the politically obsessed world and almost unbeknownst, too, to the religious leaders of the era.
The Western Orthodox Church rebounds from the ground after an underground millennium, helped in this by the Russians, by those who were baptized at the very time when this Church was beginning its underground career (end of the tenth century) giving way to the Church of Rome.
So everything goes very quickly, everything rushes as it was in the life of Christ after millennia of waiting. Eugraph Kovalevsky was ordained a priest by Metropolitan Eleuthère, who represented the Patriarchate of Moscow in France, and his first liturgical celebration, on Sunday March 7, 1937, was that of the burial of Monsignor Winnaert. The new Father Eugraph had agreed a few days earlier to become responsible for the Western Church. From this extreme transmission we will retain the analogy with Moses who died on the outskirts of the Promised Land leaving it to Joshua to lead the people across the Jordan, or even the analogy of John the Baptist who suddenly disappeared as soon as Christ had told the disciples of the Precursor: “the blind see, the lame walk”.
A Russian priest writes to Father Eugraph [22] :
“You will understand better than I the full weight of the responsibility incumbent on you. From the bricks that you will lay, during the construction of the building, will reside all the solidity. Pay attention to the details. My role is small and temporary, while you have been carrying the responsibility for many years and perhaps for your whole life. I write this to you because I have just felt particularly acutely the dread of responsibility before the Holy Spirit, ruler of the Church…” [23]
Father Eugraph then defines his conception of the construction effort that is beginning [24] :
“Grace is beautiful and easy, but it is beautiful everywhere, easy in the Orthodox Church. Trust in God and grace will be beautiful, easy and lasting, and little by little grace will replace our passions which are nothing but grimaces. The passions are always thirsty and hungry, but they will never be satisfied; grace satisfies more than we expect. You write: “God asks of us a great act of trust”. No, God who brought us out of nothingness cannot ask us anything great. He cannot demand the “great” from a dust. God loves us as He loves each of us. Remember He is the Good Samaritan. »
He founded a journal of theology, liturgy and spirituality, the “ Cahiers Saint-Irénée ” where he summed up all his teaching to come: “The three great messages of Orthodoxy are:
1) religion above all vital force: the Holy Spirit in the world;
2) the struggle, not against mores but against spiritual death. Man is judged above all by his heart more than by his actions;
3) the Church, finally, is the unity of all, the revealed Truth is given in possession to all, to the simple as to the intelligent, to the small as to the great. The Holy Spirit, man, the Church. [25]
An anecdote from 1938 establishes the priest's abilities well. Gathered with a few intellectuals, including Drieu-la-Rochelle, in a café near the Place de la Concorde, Father Eugraph was criticized for being "hidden" as an ecclesiastic. Then we move on to forecasts of the coming war. He suddenly said: “ You are completely mistaken because it is precisely because I am a priest, therefore responsible for freeing men from all yoke, that I find myself among you. Otherwise, according to my temperament, you would not see me. And then, as for the war, it will not take place!”Having pronounced these few words he was silent, entered into himself and saw clearly and contradictorily that war was imminent and certain. He concluded that his soul did not want war and that his mind discerned it without a shadow. This distinction between the soul and the spirit was one of the centers of his teaching which tracked down and destroyed the confusions so prejudicial to daily existence. Doesn't Christ say: “My soul is sad enough to die” and elsewhere “Father, I commend my spirit into your hands”?
The homeopathic character of the Western Orthodox Church at that time, there could not have been more than fifty Orthodox faithful, obliges Father Eugraph to work for the future, building on the strength of God for what is "the work the greatest of our time" and which calls itself the incarnation of orthodoxy in the West. The privileged instrument of ecclesial life, in the Church of all times and in the heart of Father Eugraph, is the rite, the liturgy.
Also he will give his attention and his genius to the elaboration of this instrument which is the liturgical prayer for the divine praise in the mouth of the French and other Westerners.
On August 25, 1939, Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow intervened in this work and wrote [26] : “…The Western rite which is accepted among us must be considered as a first experience… if any group addressed to us to subject us a more perfect version of the Western liturgy, there would be no reason to prevent us from accepting it …It is only necessary that this new wording... clearly stick to an authentic tradition of the Church, a Gallican tradition for France, another for other peoples, without excluding the Roman tradition with modifications..." This directive follows exactly the work of Father Eugraph.
On September 3, 1939, the war was here, Father Eugraph was mobilized and [27] “Western Orthodoxy put on the uniform of a second-class pioneer” . The construction of the Orthodox Church of France stops and a new period begins, that of the "little father" to the armies. For such is the name given to him by his fellow soldiers, and later prisoners, in the midst of extraordinary popularity. He writes [28] :
"I won't say that I see the Church as a 'universal barracks' but there are a lot of things to learn in military life, morally: simple, authentic fraternity and not 'my dear brothers and sisters' before the quest , community, solidarity and not the rush towards one's own salvation, absence of hypocrisy. These are a few elements… Let us pray for peace, but also so that these precious elements of the spirit of the army will infiltrate the parishes and the men of the Church.
But he continues to carry the Church to come in his womb like a pregnant woman and to prepare it [29 :
“You have a romantic conception of the Church-society, socialo-idealist. Fight this error in you because we must fight it in others. There are two errors in France: the pessimism of the Reformation and Romanism of the Council of Trent: corrupt nature, darkness, and the reaction of the Renaissance until the 20th century, characterized, according to the definition of Ernest Seillière “by its psychology , very exaggeratedly optimistic of human nature”: Rousseau, then the 19th century, liberalism. Orthodoxy denies both the first and the second. The first, separating God and man, makes him too transcendent; the second deifies man in thesis, whitens him. The truth is that man, often black in nature, very black, nevertheless hides in his darkness the divine light all the same. through the dust, we come to perceive the eternal masterpiece. Such is the balance of orthodoxy, its strength.
Taken prisoner, Father Eugraph was put in Stalag IV B. He wrote [30] : “The years of captivity were among the most beautiful of my life. Monastery life and possibility of contemplation. No worries, fed, housed, surrounded by camaraderie, hours of peace, because it is easy for me to abstract myself in a barrack. When we are two hundred, we are alone. And there, in the camp, he composed the mass in his heart, of which here is a short extract [31 ] :
“…I asked for forgiveness and God forgave me but on condition that I express the desire to awaken my soul.
… Oh! the Truth, You are an arrow which comes directly from my heart, an arrow well aimed, which strikes the center, sinks for a few seconds and stops dead, and stays there.
… Oh ! The Fire of Charity, You are like a bold horse that carries me away. Red horse with red wings, he is swift as light, where he passes the fire catches, the conflagration grows, the wild beasts flee, the monkeys of heresies by the thousands jump from branch to branch to fail by uttering ridiculous cries.
… Orthodoxy is the universal fire of charity.
Father Eugraph will voluntarily move from the camp of French prisoners to the camp of Soviet Russian prisoners more harshly treated by the Germans. He was released on October 13, 1943 and returned to Paris without warning, a return thus told by his brother Maxime” [32] :“One evening the doorbell rings. We were already in bed. I open and find myself in front of my brother. The meeting was so unexpected that we didn't realize it. My mother even asked, “Is that Eugraph? He comes home today earlier than usual.” My brother, in fact, always came home so late that he had been nicknamed in Meudon where we lived: “the one who comes home the next day”, that is to say by the last train. It was only a few minutes later that we understood that it was the return of the prisoner, after such a long absence. »
Finding the few French Orthodox who were filled with hope in the reconstruction of their ancient Church, Father Eugraph set to work again. He wanted to acquire and build a Western liturgy and open a university school of theology [33] : “The liturgy is not only the fruit of historical research, it is above all the very life of the Orthodox people. Where was this Western Orthodox people whose compact crowd and ardent prayer would support the workers?… Only three women had remained at their post… The first steps of the liturgical center were therefore steeped in humility.”This work will culminate in the year 1945, on Sunday October 7, in the first celebration of the "Holy Liturgy" according to the ancient rite of the Gauls. With the help of research carried out by the brotherhood of Saint-Photius and contemporary liturgists and scholars of the Church of Rome, including Father Lambert Bauduin, founder of the monastery of Unity at Amay-sur-Meuse in Belgium [34], with the help of all the generations of liturgists who since the 9th century had wanted to preserve the memory and the documents of the ancient liturgy born and celebrated on this soil of France, with the help finally of the experience of praise in the Russian Orthodox Church and his liturgical genius, Father Eugraph, after immense labors, restored to the Orthodox Church of France its ancient liturgy, its backbone and its personal inspiration, the liturgy according to Saint Germain of Paris [ 35 ]. This liturgy touches the French spirit because it restores the mysterious and divine bridge between the West and the East. Since this date of the year 1945 the ancient rite of the Gauls is celebrated in the parishes of the Western Orthodox Church in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Germany and in the two Americas, North and South. , as these communities are created. This exceptional work is now unanimously hailed by the Eastern Orthodox as authentic and salutary and by those to whom it is addressed, the Western Orthodox, as essential nourishment from the "pan-European" rite celebrated until the time of Charlemagne under the names of the Milanese rites. , Gallicans, Visigoths, Celtic, excluding the Roman rite celebrated only in Rome and its surroundings.
Eugraph Kovalevsky frequented the French intellectual milieu where Jacques Maritain, close to his parents' home, brought together men such as Gabriel Marcel, Emmanuel Mounier, Jean Cocteau and Daniel Rops [16 ].
“The Maritain circle opened the doors to me of Roman Catholic intellectual circles, as well as artistic, surrealist, symbolist circles… Pre-revolutionary Russian culture had prepared my sensitivity and I was able to taste and appreciate these various tendencies… Jean Cocteau was converted… A number of between them, Cocteau at the head, show me friendship and sympathy. I come close to them, I understand them, I escape their influence because the ecclesial reality alone attracts me”. And above all [17] , “in addition to the Mounier circle, I frequent other groups, for example that of Nicolas Berdiaeff where for the first time an ecumenical meeting of Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox took place.
From the first meeting, the Dominican is in agreement with the Calvinist Lecerf and the so-called modernist, Father Laberthonnière, with the Lutheran Jundt.
These meetings of an ecumenical nature bring me an understanding of the thought of Christians in the West at the same time as they bring out that the Romano-Protestant problem is an internal problem, that of two sons of the scholastics of the Middle Ages. Orthodoxy appears very different, in its essence, from the two great confessions!
The tragedy of my situation is that my Orthodox colleagues confuse medieval scholasticism with these two great denominations and that Westerners, while appreciating Orthodoxy, treat me as representing Eastern psychology.
This will be the struggle of my entire life: to prove that Western orthodoxy exists and that the West in its instincts is orthodox. When I then take Wladimir Lossky from philosophy to theology, I will transpose for him the thought of Tertullian: the soul of a man is naturally Christian, the soul of a Westerner is naturally Orthodox. With the intellectual world [18] , God leads me towards the life of the workers in France, because I accompany the priests in the factories to serve and sing: Colombelles, Tourcoing, Le Creusot, Montargis, etc. Many Russian workers work there by contract. But God will bring me even closer to the people of France during my three-year captivity in a French prison camp in Germany.”
Eugraph gradually moves away from Russian emigration and its troubles modeled on political quarrels, shared between progressives and reactionaries. He strove to revive a French Church but, in the turmoil of Russian Orthodox options in France, his positions and his reports were received without much interest. And there [19] :
“I wanted to confess that political borders cannot break the Church and that no regime can bind the free conscience of a bishop. I said at that time: Christ before Pilate, the judge, kept the fullness of the double freedom: that of the divine will and that of the will of man. I was not acting out of love for Holy Russia but out of violent love for the Church of Christ, independent of all historical circumstances”.
The context of the early 20th century gave no answer to their quest. Also they evolved near the Churches of this time, ready to listen to all those which, like themselves, also sought where could well reside the Christian prophetism. On his way, Monsignor Louis-Charles Winnaert met Emmanuel Mounier, the admirable pastor Wilfried Monod... until the day when an Orthodox priest who had come to him from the Church of Rome, Father Gillet, revealed to him the content of the faith and Orthodox ecclesiology. That day he exclaims:[20] :
“Monsignor Winnaert was never a historian, nor an archaeological liturgist like the Benedictines; he did not publish volumes like Wladimir Guettée [21]. All this was far from his temperament and out of his mission. He read in the eyes, more focused on the future than on the past. He was pushed towards men, towards life and not towards texts and scholarly documents. Pastor above all, eager to save souls in danger, he sought to revive orthodoxy in the West. He loved the liturgy with all his being, placing it at the center of Christian life, and his mind frequently rose towards theology. When he wanted to extirpate souls from their theosophical prison in order to restore them to the Church, he rose up dogmatically and with abruptness against their doctrine, but... introduced into his office elements of their prayer in conformity with Christianity, replacing for example the term “sin” by the word “misguidance”. His liturgy took on a teaching character. It is rather reminiscent of the works of the Fathers of the Church. »
At this time (1936) a saint and prophet resides in Moscow: Metropolitan Sergius, who presides over the destiny and martyrdom of the Russian Orthodox Church. Serge "the Great" is "locum-tenens" of the patriarch. Stalin will later accept that he is elevated to patriarchy.
Eugraph Kovalevsky, moved by his Christian universalism and by the ecclesial command received from Saint Radegonde, recognizes in Monsignor Winnaert and in his communities "the people" of the West who are advancing towards the orthodoxy of the faith and towards the restoration of the Churches of this same West in the spirit of the primitive Church. The two men seek the help of Metropolitan Sergius in Moscow, that is, of the Russian Patriarchal Church. The prophetic spirit of the future patriarch adopted the question and, after only three months of study, the historic decision arrived in Paris (decree of June 16, 1936, no. 75):
"...Parishes united with the Orthodox Church, using the Western Rite, shall be designated as the WESTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH..."
Replacement for the Patriarch's locus-tenens.
Signed: Serge, Metropolitan of Moscow.
One of the greatest events of this century has just happened and, as always in a nascent or resurgent Christianity, almost unbeknownst to the politically obsessed world and almost unbeknownst, too, to the religious leaders of the era.
The Western Orthodox Church rebounds from the ground after an underground millennium, helped in this by the Russians, by those who were baptized at the very time when this Church was beginning its underground career (end of the tenth century) giving way to the Church of Rome.
So everything goes very quickly, everything rushes as it was in the life of Christ after millennia of waiting. Eugraph Kovalevsky was ordained a priest by Metropolitan Eleuthère, who represented the Patriarchate of Moscow in France, and his first liturgical celebration, on Sunday March 7, 1937, was that of the burial of Monsignor Winnaert. The new Father Eugraph had agreed a few days earlier to become responsible for the Western Church. From this extreme transmission we will retain the analogy with Moses who died on the outskirts of the Promised Land leaving it to Joshua to lead the people across the Jordan, or even the analogy of John the Baptist who suddenly disappeared as soon as Christ had told the disciples of the Precursor: “the blind see, the lame walk”.
A Russian priest writes to Father Eugraph [22] :
“You will understand better than I the full weight of the responsibility incumbent on you. From the bricks that you will lay, during the construction of the building, will reside all the solidity. Pay attention to the details. My role is small and temporary, while you have been carrying the responsibility for many years and perhaps for your whole life. I write this to you because I have just felt particularly acutely the dread of responsibility before the Holy Spirit, ruler of the Church…” [23]
Father Eugraph then defines his conception of the construction effort that is beginning [24] :
“Grace is beautiful and easy, but it is beautiful everywhere, easy in the Orthodox Church. Trust in God and grace will be beautiful, easy and lasting, and little by little grace will replace our passions which are nothing but grimaces. The passions are always thirsty and hungry, but they will never be satisfied; grace satisfies more than we expect. You write: “God asks of us a great act of trust”. No, God who brought us out of nothingness cannot ask us anything great. He cannot demand the “great” from a dust. God loves us as He loves each of us. Remember He is the Good Samaritan. »
He founded a journal of theology, liturgy and spirituality, the “ Cahiers Saint-Irénée ” where he summed up all his teaching to come: “The three great messages of Orthodoxy are:
1) religion above all vital force: the Holy Spirit in the world;
2) the struggle, not against mores but against spiritual death. Man is judged above all by his heart more than by his actions;
3) the Church, finally, is the unity of all, the revealed Truth is given in possession to all, to the simple as to the intelligent, to the small as to the great. The Holy Spirit, man, the Church. [25]
An anecdote from 1938 establishes the priest's abilities well. Gathered with a few intellectuals, including Drieu-la-Rochelle, in a café near the Place de la Concorde, Father Eugraph was criticized for being "hidden" as an ecclesiastic. Then we move on to forecasts of the coming war. He suddenly said: “ You are completely mistaken because it is precisely because I am a priest, therefore responsible for freeing men from all yoke, that I find myself among you. Otherwise, according to my temperament, you would not see me. And then, as for the war, it will not take place!”Having pronounced these few words he was silent, entered into himself and saw clearly and contradictorily that war was imminent and certain. He concluded that his soul did not want war and that his mind discerned it without a shadow. This distinction between the soul and the spirit was one of the centers of his teaching which tracked down and destroyed the confusions so prejudicial to daily existence. Doesn't Christ say: “My soul is sad enough to die” and elsewhere “Father, I commend my spirit into your hands”?
The homeopathic character of the Western Orthodox Church at that time, there could not have been more than fifty Orthodox faithful, obliges Father Eugraph to work for the future, building on the strength of God for what is "the work the greatest of our time" and which calls itself the incarnation of orthodoxy in the West. The privileged instrument of ecclesial life, in the Church of all times and in the heart of Father Eugraph, is the rite, the liturgy.
On September 3, 1939, the war was here, Father Eugraph was mobilized and [27] “Western Orthodoxy put on the uniform of a second-class pioneer” . The construction of the Orthodox Church of France stops and a new period begins, that of the "little father" to the armies. For such is the name given to him by his fellow soldiers, and later prisoners, in the midst of extraordinary popularity. He writes [28] :
"I won't say that I see the Church as a 'universal barracks' but there are a lot of things to learn in military life, morally: simple, authentic fraternity and not 'my dear brothers and sisters' before the quest , community, solidarity and not the rush towards one's own salvation, absence of hypocrisy. These are a few elements… Let us pray for peace, but also so that these precious elements of the spirit of the army will infiltrate the parishes and the men of the Church. »
But he continues to carry the Church to come in his womb like a pregnant woman and to prepare it [29 :
“You have a romantic conception of the Church-society, socialo-idealist. Fight this error in you because we must fight it in others. There are two errors in France: the pessimism of the Reformation and Romanism of the Council of Trent: corrupt nature, darkness, and the reaction of the Renaissance until the 20th century, characterized, according to the definition of Ernest Seillière “by its psychology , very exaggeratedly optimistic of human nature”: Rousseau, then the 19th century, liberalism. Orthodoxy denies both the first and the second. The first, separating God and man, makes him too transcendent; the second deifies man in thesis, whitens him. The truth is that man, often black in nature, very black, nevertheless hides in his darkness the divine light all the same. through the dust, we come to perceive the eternal masterpiece. Such is the balance of orthodoxy, its strength. »
Father Eugraph will voluntarily move from the camp of French prisoners to the camp of Soviet Russian prisoners more harshly treated by the Germans. He was released on October 13, 1943 and returned to Paris without warning, a return thus told by his brother Maxime” [32] :“One evening the doorbell rings. We were already in bed. I open and find myself in front of my brother. The meeting was so unexpected that we didn't realize it. My mother even asked, “Is that Eugraph? He comes home today earlier than usual.” My brother, in fact, always came home so late that he had been nicknamed in Meudon where we lived: “the one who comes home the next day”, that is to say by the last train. It was only a few minutes later that we understood that it was the return of the prisoner, after such a long absence. »
Finding the few French Orthodox who were filled with hope in the reconstruction of their ancient Church, Father Eugraph set to work again. He wanted to acquire and build a Western liturgy and open a university school of theology [33] : “The liturgy is not only the fruit of historical research, it is above all the very life of the Orthodox people. Where was this Western Orthodox people whose compact crowd and ardent prayer would support the workers?… Only three women had remained at their post… The first steps of the liturgical center were therefore steeped in humility.”This work will culminate in the year 1945, on Sunday October 7, in the first celebration of the "Holy Liturgy" according to the ancient rite of the Gauls. With the help of research carried out by the brotherhood of Saint-Photius and contemporary liturgists and scholars of the Church of Rome, including Father Lambert Bauduin, founder of the monastery of Unity at Amay-sur-Meuse in Belgium [34], with the help of all the generations of liturgists who since the 9th century had wanted to preserve the memory and the documents of the ancient liturgy born and celebrated on this soil of France, with the help finally of the experience of praise in the Russian Orthodox Church and his liturgical genius, Father Eugraph, after immense labors, restored to the Orthodox Church of France its ancient liturgy, its backbone and its personal inspiration, the liturgy according to Saint Germain of Paris [ 35 ]. This liturgy touches the French spirit because it restores the mysterious and divine bridge between the West and the East. Since this date of the year 1945 the ancient rite of the Gauls is celebrated in the parishes of the Western Orthodox Church in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Germany and in the two Americas, North and South. , as these communities are created. This exceptional work is now unanimously hailed by the Eastern Orthodox as authentic and salutary and by those to whom it is addressed, the Western Orthodox, as essential nourishment from the "pan-European" rite celebrated until the time of Charlemagne under the names of the Milanese rites. , Gallicans, Visigoths, Celtic, excluding the Roman rite celebrated only in Rome and its surroundings.
The school of theology will open its doors on November 15, 1944 under the name of Saint-Denis Institute because the first courses are given there by Father Eugraph on the work of the "divine Denis", Saint Denis the Areopagite, and by Wladimir Lossky soon became known as a theologian who expounded "the theology of Light". This school, according to the formal desire of its holy founder, Father Eugraph, is a place of Orthodox influence and simultaneously of reception of the Catholic and Protestant traditions. It completes and enriches the patristic and Orthodox education provided since 1925 by the Russian Institute of Saint Sergius, showing that Orthodoxy is of interest to all walks of life. The Christian philosopher, Gabriel Marcel, became administrator of this school and remained so until his death declaring publicly in 1964, on the twentieth anniversary of the Institut Saint-Denis, that he would have seriously considered adhering to the Orthodox faith if he had been warned of it when he was younger.
The Institute has existed for forty-five years, theology is taught there according to the true tradition based on the five initial orientations:
Orthodoxy and not Orientalism,
West without compromise,
Gratitude towards the protective Churches, Russian and Romanian,
Gratitude to Monsignor Winnaert and his workers
Organization with a dynamic-apostolic character.
By tackling the gigantic and undoubtedly divine task for his heart of reestablishing the spirit and the ancient Church of the West in contemporary conditioning, Father Eugraph must penetrate the living layers and the dead layers of European civilization. He will write to François Mauriac in April 1945 through the newspaper Carrefour a response to his “Easter Review” of very great interest [36] :
“In the name of this justice which is dear to you, I feel obliged to tell you that you have not grasped it this time in your “Easter Report”. You have not grasped it because you have not seen correctly and, which is heavy with consequences, you have not seen correctly the total work of Christ in the modern world. Let me explain.
You base your “Easter Report” on the “merciful” Christian opposition and “thorough justice”, “child for child”, according to your own expression, with words full of strength you draw before us the tragic picture of the Germany which, by its own will, by its own doctrine, calls upon it “from the tomb and the rubble”, no longer “the Risen One soft and calm” but a god of vengeance. Who could contradict you! But then you distribute the roles to the nations and cultures of the modern world, entrusting to some the role of revenge, to others the role of forgiveness. You do this division, geographically, between the Western world and Eastern Europe and, historically, between the peace of 1918 and that of 1945. In this division of the world, consciously or unconsciously, I do not know, you ignore a third of Christianity: the Orthodox Church, and you speak of humanity as if the Orthodox Church did not exist, as if it were not there, present at events, as if it were not vigilant , strong, radiant in the midst of the furnace of universal upheavals. If again you were to oppose the Roman Church, as a son of this Church, to everything outside of it, your position would be understandable, but you are speaking of total Christianity. And in this total Christianity, perhaps the most significant and influential part of our time, the most ancient and authentically apostolic, the part that never ceases to give pleiads of saints and martyrs, obliging atheists to respect the Church of Christ, you haven't even considered it. And what is even more paradoxical, it is that you commit this omission in the "Balance of Easter". Among the peoples of the world, those of the Soviet Union are the most impregnated with the Easter spirit, the most uplifted by the impetus of forgiveness.
You do not know, I note it alas, the history of the Orthodox Church; you also seem to ignore that of the orthodox civilizations par excellence: but you, a modern writer, cannot ignore Russian literature and deny its deep imprint of Christian morality, of the spirit of forgiveness. This is its raison d'etre. You will answer me that you are talking about revolutionary, atheistic Russia. Can you think for a moment that the work of nineteen centuries of the Church could be erased in a few years? You yourself recognized in the relentless lay people of the Third Republic the imprint of humanitarian, Christian morality. So why would you deny this imprint to Russia of the Bolshevik revolution? Only, I fear, by a strange blindness which makes you forget the very existence of the Orthodox Church. Allow me, Monsieur Mauriac, to tell you a historical fact, laden with symbolism, which you certainly do not know. At the beginning of the revolution, a local council, in order to underline parallel to the social and economic evolution the spiritual evolution in Russia, decided to celebrate all the Russian saints on the second Sunday after Pentecost. Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 21, 1941. Little did it know that this was precisely All Saints' Day; in attacking matter, it encountered spirit. decided to celebrate all Russian saints on the second Sunday after Pentecost. Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 21, 1941. Little did it know that this was precisely All Saints' Day; in attacking matter, it encountered spirit. decided to celebrate all Russian saints on the second Sunday after Pentecost. Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 21, 1941. Little did it know that this was precisely All Saints' Day; in attacking matter, it encountered spirit.
This is why your serious forgetfulness distorts your judgment of the present world. I will not permit myself in this response to your article, which my conscience and my respect for you have obliged me to write, to analyze the consequences of this oversight. I will simply say to you: do not regret the “commercial and peaceful” spirit and the illusions of 1918. The world after 1945 can become more Christian than it was before, but on one condition: that of no longer to ignore the existence of the universal Orthodox Church and, on the contrary, to draw from it the strength of the Holy Spirit, to drink from its inexhaustible sources of mercy. »
How not to see through this letter and at a time when the state of the Soviet Union appeals to the help of the Russian Orthodox Church, the prophetic spirit of Father Eugraph. He already sees the accumulation of the treasure of spiritual energy, gained by the Russian martyrs, which will, like the martyrs of the primitive Church with the Roman Empire, force the Soviet Empire to ask for help to resolve the end of tyranny and transform public life. Such is the civilizing impact of the Church when she accomplishes, if only a little, the evangelical program: “Love your enemies.
In the effort to reclaim the spirit of the Church for the West and its liturgy, Father Eugraph Kovalevsky puts at the heart what he will call the “Battle of Easter”.Endowed with a Christianity that is a little too painful, more moral for the people than vital for the heart of man, the Christian West has forgotten that the Church and the world emerge, after the ordeal of the cross and the death, on the resurrection. The bringing of perfect Paschal joy to the West was to be effected in order to restore to its Christianity the fullness of its apostolic dynamism. So Father Eugraph, with his closest collaborators, renewed the Easter liturgy and once again offered to the living strata of the Church, to the faithful, the deep joy and joy of the resurrection. After some hesitation, the new French Orthodox people adopted the Easter rhythm, imitated the Russian Orthodox people, and marveled at the Risen One by saying and singing for forty days, from Easter to Ascension:“Christ is risen, verily he is risen! Extraordinary burning and embracing of the Passover.
Under the protection of the Russian Patriarchal Church and with "fire" activityfrom Archpriest Eugraph Kovalevsky, the Orthodox Church of France and the West learned Orthodoxy and forged its spiritual experience. As there is no Church without the bishop, the episcopate is emerging for the one who is the soul of this movement. Following in the footsteps of Bishop Theophanes of Poltava who predicted his destiny to the young Eugraph, still in Russia, another Russian bishop, in exile in Brussels, Alexander, who had become his spiritual father, again predicted to him that such was his place. This prediction is made around the year 1950 and then renewed at a time when Archpriest Eugraph began to doubt himself. This doubt comes as a consequence of a violent persecution provoked by clerics and faithful of the Russian patriarchal Church of Paris. Riddled with these noble-based critics, since they want to reabsorb the nascent Western Orthodox milieu into the large traditional Russian body, Father Eugraph thinks that he must withdraw, not being in the place willed by God, and hand over the head of the mission to someone more worthy than him. Archbishop Alexander, who clearly saw the divine will, persuaded him todo nothing . Curiously for the date, on July 14, 1952, the Holy Synod of the Russian Church awarded Father Eugraph the title of Doctor of Theology.
Here comes the time of the rupture, the first, hard test for a legitimist archpriest and attached to obedience. To preserve the identity and the truth of the small Western Orthodox Church, we must detach ourselves from the Russian patriarchal Church. Patriarch Serge is dead and Father Eugraph, condemned by the new Patriarch Alexis, explains, on January 25, 1953, to his clergy and his council [37] :
“Since 1925, I have devoted myself to the revival of the Western Orthodox Church. Its purpose is to renew the world and Christianity. I believe in his future and will be faithful to him until death… I have often fought for you in order to lay a sound foundation for Western orthodoxy and allow its development. I never flinched. All my attempts have failed. I remain immensely grateful to the Patriarchate of Moscow where I was born and who, in the person of Patriarch Sergius, prophetically saw Western Orthodoxy, but I see that the Patriarchate of Moscow has lost the grace to help. His work in Russia is splendid, in the West he did not understand. For several years, I lived in an ambiguity that weighed heavily on me. I understood that Western Orthodoxy needed a leader and I fully accepted to be its moral leader and father with all the responsibilities that entailed. I fought for it but you can't fight for yourself. I suffered terribly from this false note. It is impossible, even out of duty, to work at being a conductor. And this false note also burst out in the work. I seemed to do everything to be a chef!…”
Father Eugraph withdraws as requested. But, with him, the clergy and the faithful of the Western mission also left the Moscow Patriarchate. During a journey in 1954 to find a new protective Church, Father Eugraph visited Assisi and prayed in the basilica which encloses the Portiuncula where Saint Francis began his spiritual struggle. He then wrote [38] :
“The essence of the Christian life is to identify obedience as a pure geometric point. And behold, the Portiuncula is this pure geometric point, an orthodox point of intimacy with God, of total abandonment to him who possesses us and passes through us. It is enough for a spirit, a soul to obey him for thousands of beings and peoples to come running and, dazzled, build a mediocre basilica to safeguard this obedience. The saint is the sun where all the dark human rays gather. It shines in a personal, unique way, but gives them the opportunity to shine too.
This love of the saints, which is as necessary to him as the sun and the light, does not prevent Father Eugraph from appreciating all of humanity and from discerning its contours in the manner of a Father of the Church [ 39] :
“There are three stages in the spiritual life: that of the serfs who are moved by fear, constantly preoccupied with “splendor” and “harmful”; that of servants who seek reward, gifts, perfection, powers, who are greedy for metaphysical riches, and that of sons who stand in the unselfish praise of God. The latter love the Eucharistic impulse of the liturgy; forgetting each other, they act liturgically, that is to say in common. In the Church all have their place, serfs as well as servants; it supports the former and enriches the latter, but it is happy with those who know how to rejoice before the face of the Most High.
Four years will pass and, in 1957, the archpriest Eugraph will meet a Russian archbishop, emigrant and member of the synod of Russian bishops in emigration, synod known under the name of Russian Church outside the borders. This archbishop is Jean de Chang-hai, now known under the name of Jean de San Francisco and who will soon be glorified, canonized.
This John [40] :
“is small, ugly, neglected and he stammers, the Chinese Communists having wounded him in the mouth with a blow from their rifle butts. Its patron is Saint John of Tobolsk. He comes from Shanghai. The common Chinese say of him, "Now that the little man is gone, we will be in trouble", and his superior, Metropolitan Anastasius of the Russian Church Abroad (residing in New York) appointed him Archbishop of France and Brussels.
Three things are striking when you see him for the first time: his klobouk, that is to say his black monk's cap, pressed down on his head, with a long veil which seems to fall to his feet, his large pensive eyes which watch attentively and his bare feet, winter and summer. He stands slightly leaning forward…we learn later that he leans slightly because he carries a bag of holy earth under his cassock.
Perpetual prayer, he hasn't slept for years, living in a cell without a bed... For him, the 24-hour day is 24 hours of prayer and he quite naturally gives appointments at midnight or at three in the morning . Nothing makes him abandon an action when he judges that it is willed by God.
Born on earth in 1896, “born in heaven” in 1966, he came from the nobility of the Kharkov government. At the age of 38 he was consecrated bishop by Metropolitan Antoine (Khrapovitsky) in Belgrade and sent to China. Metropolitan Antoine said to him: "I must consecrate you because if I don't do it, you are so humble that no one will do it" and his letter of recommendation to the Russians of Shanghai is as follows: `I send you Bishop Jean as if I were sending you my heart and my soul. He is a miracle of ascetic stability. “After the Second World War, driven out of China by the Chinese Communists and not wanting to leave in the hands of the latter the young people of the school he founded in Chang-hai, he took them with him to the United States. . The boat is blocked in the port and the authorities want to turn it back with its human load. Archbishop Jean obtains a delay of three days. He goes to Washington where, unable to meet the personalities likely to help him, he sits on the steps of Congress and waits for hours in silence, reciting his rosary. The Americans, bewildered by this strange vision, end up summoning him, listening to him, and granting the children entry into the country. »
Such is the man who, projected in the East and then in the West like Father Eugraph, was to understand the latter and to have the Russian Church abroad take over and bless what had been begun and blessed by the Church of Moscow. The Orthodox Church of France is received into Russian obedience outside the borders with a status of autonomy; Archbishop Jean will be his protector and on November 11, 1964, the feast day of Saint Martin the Apostle of the Gauls, he consecrated Father Eugraph as bishop in San Francisco, where Archbishop Jean was appointed. The new bishop receives the name of John, from the patronymic of Saint John of Cronstadt, a priest of the Russian patriarchal Church born in heaven on December 20, 1908 and who was a prodigious thaumaturge, while serving the Saint-André cathedral of Cronstadt (suburb of Saint Petersburg). And as the bishop is the bishop of a place, it will be the city of Saint-Denis, near Paris, which does not have a Roman bishopric at this date, which will be attributed to Monsignor Jean. From San Francisco, on the eve of his coronation, Father Eugraph writes to his flock in Paris[41] :
“I am like a fish thrown on the shore, far from you. This parish of Saint-Irénée in Paris is “me”, so far from me; I have suspended my harp and my soul weeps at being separated from my Jerusalem! I feel widowed, mutilated. The only consolation is that I came here for the good of our beloved Church of France. America is a country full of interest, New York too. All peoples are children of God, all cities have their angels. The synodal environment is friendly, sympathetic, but I came into the world not for them but for you. Every day I am the personal guest of Metropolitan Anastasius who eats apart. Like a drunkard waiting for brandy, I await the day of my return…”
This same Metropolitan Anastasius brought him this prophetic toast [42] : “… by your consecration, Mr. Archpriest, the Russian Church Abroad does not create a new diocese, nor even a new ecclesiastical province, it has the signal honor to become the source of a new Church and to participate in the revival of the old Orthodox Church of France.
Archbishop John, consecrator with the Romanian bishop Theophilus, hands him the crosier and says to him briefly [43] :
“You served the mission according to the words: 'Go, teach all the nations.' The French people will be happy, but you will encounter difficulties, because hatred is great. You must be careful, you don't pay enough attention to the weak who are only given milk.
Today, Saint Martin is a feast for all of France. Saint Irenaeus is your protector by the certainty of doctrine. You are surrounded by Saint John of Kronstadt, Saint Nectarios of Aegina [44] , but remember also Metropolitan Anthony of Kiev, your relative, with a universal soul, and do what he would do in your place.
A prophecy has been fulfilled: the Orthodox Church of France has sprung from a pure canonical source in the midst of opposition and unrest. After three years of episcopate, one day in 1967, Bishop Jean de Saint-Denis spoke of the bishop in the meeting of his clergy [45] :
“I am the only bishop among you and I have not yet spoken to you of the ministry of the episcopate… The episcopal consecration itself has shaken me less than the priesthood. When I was ordained a priest over thirty years ago, I felt a powerful uncreated light enter my soul. My episcopal consecration passed more imperceptibly. This can be explained by the fact that for a long time already I was called to act as elected bishop, taking on all the responsibility of the bishop, without yet being consecrated. The coronation was like a recognition of the charismatic fact. If the consecration itself did not immediately give me a strong and palpable feeling, I must admit that the more I advance in my episcopal ministry, the more I notice a radical change in myself, I note first of all that in spite of my efforts to remain as I am, a power, an indisputable, almost absolute power, is given to me. But this power is not communicated to me as a moral personality, Jean-Evgraph Kovalevsky, but as I act as a bishop. It imposes itself, we can only bow. However, I spontaneously feel more limited in my personal and inspired steps, registering myself in the universal episcopate, becoming an organic, fraternal member of the apostolic college. I am more the spokesman for the whole Church at all times and in all places and, in the Church, for the episcopate, than the “prophet” of individual inspiration, this not by virtue of social position. of the bishop or out of political prudence, but out of an entirely interior necessity that transforms me and “episcopalizes” me. Thus I discern its double complementary character: on the one hand, an almost absolute power and, on the other hand, its welding and its limitation in the context of the Church and of the universal apostolic succession. The character of this episcopal or apostolic power is inseparable from the service of others. It is a plenary diaconate. We would be mistaken if we supposed that the bishop is only the servant of the souls entrusted to him. He is the servant of all mankind. His heart bleeds for the faithful and the infidels of his country and of distant lands. If he does not act universally, it is only fraternal respect for the other brother bishops. He voluntarily limits himself, being aware of being only a part of the whole. He is not “Bishop”, he is one of the bishops, he is only a representative of the Church. on the one hand, an almost absolute power and, on the other hand, its welding and its limitation in the context of the Church and of the universal apostolic succession. The character of this episcopal or apostolic power is inseparable from the service of others. It is a plenary diaconate. We would be mistaken if we supposed that the bishop is only the servant of the souls entrusted to him. He is the servant of all mankind. His heart bleeds for the faithful and the infidels of his country and of distant lands. If he does not act universally, it is only fraternal respect for the other brother bishops. He voluntarily limits himself, being aware of being only a part of the whole. He is not “Bishop”, he is one of the bishops, he is only a representative of the Church. on the one hand, an almost absolute power and, on the other hand, its welding and its limitation in the context of the Church and of the universal apostolic succession. The character of this episcopal or apostolic power is inseparable from the service of others. It is a plenary diaconate. We would be mistaken if we supposed that the bishop is only the servant of the souls entrusted to him. He is the servant of all mankind. His heart bleeds for the faithful and the infidels of his country and of distant lands. If he does not act universally, it is only fraternal respect for the other brother bishops. He voluntarily limits himself, being aware of being only a part of the whole. He is not “Bishop”, he is one of the bishops, he is only a representative of the Church. its union and limitation in the context of the Church and universal apostolic succession. The character of this episcopal or apostolic power is inseparable from the service of others. It is a plenary diaconate. We would be mistaken if we supposed that the bishop is only the servant of the souls entrusted to him. He is the servant of all mankind. His heart bleeds for the faithful and the infidels of his country and of distant lands. If he does not act universally, it is only fraternal respect for the other brother bishops. He voluntarily limits himself, being aware of being only a part of the whole. He is not “Bishop”, he is one of the bishops, he is only a representative of the Church. its union and limitation in the context of the Church and universal apostolic succession. The character of this episcopal or apostolic power is inseparable from the service of others. It is a plenary diaconate. We would be mistaken if we supposed that the bishop is only the servant of the souls entrusted to him. He is the servant of all mankind. His heart bleeds for the faithful and the infidels of his country and of distant lands. If he does not act universally, it is only fraternal respect for the other brother bishops. He voluntarily limits himself, being aware of being only a part of the whole. He is not “Bishop”, he is one of the bishops, he is only a representative of the Church. It is a plenary diaconate. We would be mistaken if we supposed that the bishop is only the servant of the souls entrusted to him. He is the servant of all mankind. His heart bleeds for the faithful and the infidels of his country and of distant lands. If he does not act universally, it is only fraternal respect for the other brother bishops. He voluntarily limits himself, being aware of being only a part of the whole. He is not “Bishop”, he is one of the bishops, he is only a representative of the Church. It is a plenary diaconate. We would be mistaken if we supposed that the bishop is only the servant of the souls entrusted to him. He is the servant of all mankind. His heart bleeds for the faithful and the infidels of his country and of distant lands. If he does not act universally, it is only fraternal respect for the other brother bishops. He voluntarily limits himself, being aware of being only a part of the whole. He is not “Bishop”, he is one of the bishops, he is only a representative of the Church. He voluntarily limits himself, being aware of being only a part of the whole. He is not “Bishop”, he is one of the bishops, he is only a representative of the Church. He voluntarily limits himself, being aware of being only a part of the whole. He is not “Bishop”, he is one of the bishops, he is only a representative of the Church.
When I became bishop, a mystery revealed itself to me during the divine liturgy: it consists in the fact that the unity of the Church is expressed in a real way by the triad: the bread, the cup, the bishop. The bread and the cup which are to be transformed, by the will of the Father, the words of Christ and the power of the Spirit, into the body and blood of Our Lord, and the episcopate which, by obedience to the Church recognizing him as the source of the sacraments and blessing (image of the Father), by the gospel of Christ correctly preached by the bishop, and by the call of the Holy Spirit upon the bishop, by the faithful, unifies, sanctifies the body of the Church. This triad, the bread, the cup, the bishop, sacramentally forms the authenticity of the Church itself, building up the body of Christ which fills all in all.
Before my consecration, I was vitally unaware of this value of the episcopate. Such is my sincere testimony, that of a bishop, which can serve for meditation, lived testimony and intellectual icon learned by experience. »
Bishop John liked to say that Christ brought two new things into the world: a new way of thinking and the episcopate. He was the living icon of this double novelty and he was able, by this very fact, to bring about this unique event of the rebirth of the Orthodox Church of the West. This work was dearly acquired and brought him physically exhausted to the brink of death.
Archbishop John of San Francisco having died in 1966, his successors did not inherit his holiness and joined forces against the Western Orthodox Church, as had done, in 1952, the representation in France of the Russian patriarchal Church. . It was necessary a second time to break with the protective Church in order to preserve the identity of the newborn. This second rupture caused such disorder in the very flock of Bishop Jean de Saint-Denis that it was the worst trial of his life and hastened his end.
In 1967, a new brother with a prophetic spirit presented himself in the person of Patriarch Justinian, Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Romania. It was too late to conclude the discussion on the Western Church, but there was still time to be received and to hear oneself say: "I receive in your Eminence not only a bishop but the head of a Church ( Statement of Patriarch Justinian, held in Bucharest in April 1967, and reported by the priests who accompanied Bishop John during his visit).
Liturge until his last breath, like his master Christ, Bishop Jean de Saint-Denis was born in heaven on a Friday at 3 p.m. It was January 30, 1970, the feast day of the three holy Doctors of the East, his lifelong companions, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus.
An immense work is inaugurated by the one who was predestined from Russia to vivify the too evening Christianity of the West in the 20th century. Liturgist, theologian, canonist, iconographer, Bishop Jean was also a painter, musician and mathematician. All these extraordinary gifts had indeed the greatest difficulty in expressing themselves but they were effective in this geometric place: France, and in its heart, Paris.
The German poet writer and philosopher, Heinrich Heine, excellently says that a genius is often an individually unremarkable man whose works are great, while a saint is a man far superior to his works, however great. So it is with Bishop John.
The Church of Christ is meant to “make saints”. When it succeeds it is justified and it gives new suns to the world; when it fails, it opens the abyss to those who already have too much. Monsignor Jean de Saint-Denis, by his life and his work inscribed at the heart of tradition and in conformity with the Fathers of the Church, opened to the West a place and a field of activity for holiness, even that bishops.
The long cohort of the living and the dead of the Church sings to the Lord the hymn thrice holy and vivifies the land of the West where a son of the Church of the East has created for many the possibility of shining also among the saints .
[1] Vincent Bourne, The Divine Contradiction , volume 1, Paris, Librairie des Cinq Continents, 1975, p. 20.
[2] Op.cit., p. 21.
[3] Op.cit., p. 22.
[4] Op.cit., p. 26.
[5] Op.cit., p. 28.
[6] Canonized by the Russian Church in the summer of 1989.
[7] Mathematician, liturgist and musician-musicologist, born in heaven on June 13, 1987 in Rambouillet.
[8] Emigrated to Bulgaria then to France, he is buried in Limeray (Indre-et-Loire).
[9] Op.cit., p. 50.
[10] Op.cit., p. 60.
[11] Op.cit., p. 75.
[12] Eighteenth-century Russian monk. He had acquired the Holy Spirit.
[13] Eminent theologian (1903-1958), author of a book entitled “ Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church ” which clearly expresses the faith of the Orthodox Churches.
[14] Op.cit., p. 96.
[15] Op.cit., p. 100.
[16] Op.cit., p. 106.
[17] Op.cit., p. 107.
[18] Op.cit., p. 108.
[19] Op.cit., p. 124.
[20] Op.cit., p. 139.
[21] Aimé-Wladimir Guettee (1816-1892). French theologian and historian who became an Orthodox priest in 1861.
[22] Michel Belsky, January 25, 1937.
[23] Op.cit., p. 158.
[24] Op.cit., p. 160.
[25] Op.cit ., p. 173.
[26] Op.cit ., p. 189.
[27] Op.cit., p. 192.
[28] Op.cit., p. 198.
[29] Op.cit., p. 199.
[30] Op.cit., p. 208.
[31] Op.cit., p. 216.
[32] Op.cit., p. 238.
[33] Vincent Bourne, The Divine Contradiction , volume 2, Presence Orthodoxe, Paris, 1978, p. 8.
[34] This foundation is now established in Chèvetogne in Belgium.
[35] Saint Germain, bishop of Paris (+ 576) and liturgist who describes the liturgy of his time in two letters copied in manuscript and preserved in the library of Autun.
[36] Op.cit., p. 32.
[37] Op.cit ., p. 137.
[38] Op.cit., p. 224.
[39] Op.cit ., p. 232.
[40] Op.cit ., p. 260.
[41] Op.cit ., p. 339.
[42] Op.cit ., p. 340.
[43] Op.cit ., p. 356.
[44] Saint of the Greek Church born in heaven in 1920, canonized in 1961.
[45] Op.cit ., p. 414.
