Research|Did *Resurrection* cause the 1901 excommunication? — the primary record

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Did *Resurrection* cause the 1901 excommunication? — the primary record

Last modified 10 August 2026 · view source

Hypothesis under test. The popular line is that the communion / church-service satire in Resurrection Part I, chs XXXIX–XL (the Mass at the prison church) was the proximate trigger of the Holy Synod’s «Определение» No. 557 of 20–22 February 1901 (O.S.) that severed Tolstoy from the Orthodox Church.

Method. Build from the primary record: the wording of the decree itself, Tolstoy’s diary Feb–Mar 1901, and his «Ответ Синоду» (Reply to the Synod, 4 April 1901). Treat the mainstream “Resurrection caused it” framing as a claim to weigh against the documents, not a baseline to confirm.

Verdict (stated up front): COMPLICATES. The decree’s indictment is doctrinally broad — rejection of the Trinity, the divinity and resurrection of Christ, the virgin birth, the afterlife, and all the sacraments. The Eucharist is named, but as the climax / culminating count of that broad indictment, not as its sole or initiating charge. The communion chapter is the most-cited single offence and very plausibly shaped the decree’s rhetoric and timing; it is not, on the face of the document, “the cause.” Reasoning and evidence below.

1. The decree wording — what it actually charges

Provenance. «Определение святейшего синода от 20—22 февраля 1901 г., № 557, с посланием верным чадам православныя греко-российския церкви о графе Льве Толстом.» First published in Церковные ведомости (1901, № 8, 24 February O.S.), then in the general press. Two independent text paths are used here:

The two paths agree on substance; minor wording variants are flagged.

1a. Opening characterisation (web-sourced)

Известный миру писатель, русский по рождению, православный по крещению и воспитанию своему, граф Толстой … явно пред всеми отрекся от вскормившей и воспитавшей его Матери, Церкви Православной …

Tolstoy’s verbatim quotation of the same opening (corpus):

«Известный миру писатель, русский по рождению, православный по крещению и воспитанию, граф Толстой, в прельщении гордого ума своего, дерзко восстал на господа и на Христа его и на святое его достояние, явно перед всеми отрекся от вскормившей и воспитавшей его матери, церкви православной».

(working English) “A writer known to the world, Russian by birth, Orthodox by baptism and upbringing, Count Tolstoy, in the seduction of his proud mind, has boldly risen against the Lord and against His Christ and against His holy possession, and has openly before all renounced the Mother that nourished and raised him, the Orthodox Church.”

1b. The broad doctrinal indictment — the list of rejections

Tolstoy’s verbatim quotation (corpus), the core operative sentence:

что я «отвергаю бога, во святой троице славимого создателя и промыслителя вселенной, отрицаю господа Иисуса Христа, богочеловека, искупителя и спасителя мира, пострадавшего нас ради человеков и нашего ради спасения и воскресшего из мертвых, отрицаю бессемейное зачатие по человечеству Христа господа и девство до рождества и по рождестве пречистой богородицы».

Then, separately quoted by Tolstoy: «не признает загробной жизни и мздовоздаяния» and «что я отвергаю все таинства».

Same passage as printed in the decree (web-sourced), fuller form:

отвергает личного живого Бога, во Святой Троице славимого, Создателя и Промыслителя вселенной, отрицает Господа Иисуса Христа — Богочеловека, Искупителя и Спасителя мира, пострадавшего нас ради человеков и нашего ради спасения и воскресшего из мертвых, отрицает бессемянное зачатие по человечеству Христа Господа и девство до рождества и по рождестве Пречистой Богородицы Приснодевы Марии, не признает загробной жизни и мздовоздаяния, отвергает все таинства Церкви …

(working English) “…rejects the personal living God, glorified in the Holy Trinity, Creator and Provider of the universe; denies the Lord Jesus Christ — God-man, Redeemer and Saviour of the world, who suffered for us men and for our salvation and rose from the dead; denies the seedless conception in His humanity of Christ the Lord and the virginity before and after birth of the Most Pure Mother of God, Ever-Virgin Mary; does not acknowledge the life beyond the grave and retribution; rejects all the sacraments of the Church…”

This is the heart of the indictment, and it is doctrinal and total: God-in-Trinity, the divinity / atonement / resurrection of Christ, the virgin birth, the afterlife, and the sacraments as a class. None of this turns on Resurrection; it is the standing content of Tolstoy’s religious writings of the 1880s–90s (A Critique of Dogmatic Theology, What I Believe, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, the Gospel in Brief).

1c. The Eucharist — the culminating count

This is the decisive clause for the hypothesis. Tolstoy’s verbatim quotation (corpus):

Сказано, наконец, как последняя и высшая степень моей виновности, что я, «ругаясь над самыми священными предметами веры, не содрогнулся подвергнуть глумлению священнейшее из таинств — евхаристию».

As printed in the decree (web-sourced):

ругаясь над самыми священными предметами веры православного народа, не содрогнулся подвергнуть глумлению величайшее из Таинств, святую Евхаристию …

(working English) “…mocking the most sacred objects of the faith [of the Orthodox people], he did not shudder to subject to derision the greatest [Tolstoy quotes: the most holy] of the Sacraments, the holy Eucharist…”

Wording variant flagged: Tolstoy quotes «священнейшее из таинств» (“the most holy of the sacraments”); the Skvortsov-printed text reads «величайшее из Таинств» (“the greatest of the Sacraments”). Same clause, near-synonymous superlative; the difference may be a Tolstoy/typesetting variant or a textual recension. Substance is identical.

Two things are true of this clause and both matter: 1. The Synod itself frames it as «последняя и высшая степень» — the last and highest degree of guilt, i.e. the rhetorical climax. The Eucharist is singled out, and it is the offence the decree dwells on with most heat. This is what the Eucharist clause refers to: Tolstoy’s flat, debunking description of the Mass — and the surrounding anti-Church satire — in Resurrection. So the communion chapter is demonstrably present in the decree, named, and given pride of place. 2. But it is the capstone of a broad list, not the foundation. The decree’s logic is “he rejects God, Christ, the Trinity, the afterlife, all sacraments — and has now gone so far as to mock the Eucharist publicly.” Remove Resurrection and the indictment 1a–1b still stands in full; remove the doctrinal rejections and the Eucharist clause has nothing to climax.

1d. The conclusion (web-sourced)

Посему Церковь не считает его своим членом и не может считать, доколе он не раскается и не восстановит своего общения с нею.

(working English) “Therefore the Church does not reckon him her member and cannot, so long as he does not repent and restore his communion with her.” (Note the decree’s own self-description is a declaration of self-separation, not a canonical anathema — a point Tolstoy presses in §3.)

2. Tolstoy’s diary reaction, Feb–Mar 1901 (PSS t. 54, O.S.)

The corpus diaries contain no entry on the days the decree appeared (the Feb 8 / Feb 11 entries predate it; Feb 11–Mar 19 is a gap Tolstoy himself notes). The first reaction is 19 March 1901 — and it is strikingly cool. Verbatim (v54_090_093_1901_03_19.xml):

Прошел почти месяц. Нынче 19 Марта. За все это время ничего не написал, кроме обращения к Царю и его помощникам … За это время было странное отлучение от церкви и вызванные им выражения сочувствия, и тут же студенческия истории, принявшия общественный характер …

(working English) “Almost a month has passed. Today is 19 March. In all this time I have written nothing except the address to the Tsar and his helpers… During this time there was the strange excommunication from the church and the expressions of sympathy it provoked, and at the same time the student affairs, which took on a public character…”

The register is the load-bearing evidence: «странное отлучение» — the strange excommunication — listed in one breath between Хаджи-Мурат revisions and student unrest. No mention of Resurrection; no sense of a single book as cause. Same entry, point 1, records what Tolstoy treats as the real substance — the Coleridge epigraph on loving truth above Church, which he calls «самый существенный ответ тем, которые боятся отказаться от божественности Христа» (“the most essential answer to those who are afraid to renounce the divinity of Christ”). He reads the conflict as doctrinal (the divinity of Christ), not as fallout from a satirical chapter.

28 March 1901 (v54_093_093_1901_03_28.xml), the one recorded thought:

Записано только одно — то, что стало совершенно ясно, что все наше православие есть колдовство от страха. И корень всего — вера в чудесное.

(working English) “Only one thing recorded — that it has become completely clear that all our Orthodoxy is sorcery out of fear. And the root of it all is belief in the miraculous.” Again the frame is the whole sacramental system as «колдовство» (sorcery) — the same word he aims at all the sacraments in the Reply — not the communion scene in particular.

31 March 1901 (v54_093_094_1901_03_31.xml): «Ответ Синоду, кажется, кончил. … Продолжаются приветствия и ругательства.» — “The Reply to the Synod, it seems, I have finished… The greetings and abuse continue.” It is the letters provoked by the decree, not the decree itself, that he says moved him to write (confirmed by the PSS commentary, §3).

3. The Reply to the Synod — what Tolstoy says he actually rejects

extracts/v34_245_253_Otvet_Sinodu.txt (PSS t. 34, pp. 245–253; dated 4 April 1901). Tolstoy answers the decree point by point, and his own structure confirms the breadth.

On the Church as a whole (verbatim): «То, что я отрекся от церкви, называющей себя православной, это совершенно справедливо.» — he concedes the renunciation, dating it to years of study of dogmatic theology, not to any novel.

On the Trinity / virgin birth (verbatim): «То, что я отвергаю непонятную троицу и не имеющую никакого смысла в наше время басню о падении первого человека, кощунственную историю о боге, родившемся от девы … то это совершенно справедливо.»

On the sacraments as a class (verbatim): «Сказано также, что я отвергаю все таинства. Это совершенно справедливо. Все таинства я считаю низменным, грубым … колдовством …» — he then walks through baptism, marriage, confession, unction, chrismation, ordination, and communion, condemning each. Communion is one item in that list:

В причащении вижу обоготворение плоти и извращение христианского учения.

On the Eucharist specifically (verbatim) — Tolstoy’s answer to the climax clause:

То, что я не содрогнулся описать просто и объективно то, что священник делает для приготовления этого, так называемого, таинства, то это совершенно справедливо; но то, что это, так называемое, таинство есть нечто священное и что описать его просто, как оно делается, есть кощунство, — это совершенно несправедливо.

(working English) “That I did not shudder to describe simply and objectively what the priest does to prepare this so-called sacrament — that is perfectly true; but that this so-called sacrament is something holy, and that to describe it simply, as it is done, is blasphemy — that is perfectly untrue.”

This is the one place where Tolstoy and the Synod meet on the communion question — and note what it concedes: he affirms he wrote the flat description (the Resurrection manner: «назвать перегородку — перегородкой, а не иконостасом, и чашку — чашкой, а не потиром»), and defends it. So the communion chapter is genuinely in play between them. But Tolstoy embeds it inside the same total rejection of sacrament-as-sorcery, and his positive credo at the end (verbatim: «верю в бога, которого понимаю как дух, как любовь, как начало всего…») is a complete alternative theology, not a quarrel about one rite.

The PSS editorial commentary (v34_575_577_Otvet_commentary.txt) states the trigger mechanism plainly and distinguishes long-laid plan from proximate occasion:

Отлучение Толстого от церкви было задумано царским правительством еще в 1880-х гг. Толчком к опубликованию отлучения послужило появление в 1899 г. романа «Воскресение», в котором Толстой разоблачил лицемерие казенной церкви и создал сатирический образ Топорова, недвусмысленно намекавший на обер-прокурора «святейшего» синода К. П. Победоносцева.

(working English, Soviet-era PSS editor A. I. Opulsky) “The excommunication of Tolstoy was conceived by the tsarist government as far back as the 1880s. The impulse to publish the excommunication was the appearance in 1899 of the novel Resurrection, in which Tolstoy exposed the hypocrisy of the official church and created the satirical figure of Toporov, an unmistakable allusion to the Over-Procurator… Pobedonostsev.”

This is the crux, and it is the corpus’s own editor saying it: the content was decades old; Resurrection was the «толчок» to publish — and, the commentary stresses, the personal sting was the Toporov caricature of Pobedonostsev, not the communion scene as such.

4. Pobedonostsev and the politics (attributed scholarship)

5. Verdict — COMPLICATES

The popular “the communion chapter in Resurrection got Tolstoy excommunicated” line is a simplification that the primary record complicates in three specific ways:

  1. The indictment is broad, not communion-shaped. The decree’s operative charges (§1b) are the Trinity, Christ’s divinity / atonement / resurrection, the virgin birth, the afterlife, and all sacraments — the standing content of Tolstoy’s 1880s–90s religious works. The Eucharist clause (§1c) is explicitly the decree’s «последняя и высшая степень», the climax of that list, not its basis. So the communion satire is real, named, and rhetorically central — but as the capstone of a doctrinal case, not its foundation. (This is the half the popular line gets right, hence complicates rather than refutes: the Eucharist genuinely is the offence the Synod dwells on.)

  2. The corpus distinguishes long-laid intent from proximate occasion. The PSS editor (§3) dates the intent to the 1880s and casts Resurrection (1899) as the «толчок» to publish — and locates its sting in the Toporov caricature of Pobedonostsev (§4), a political-personal provocation, as much as in the Mass scene. The novel’s role is best stated as precipitant of timing and publication, not cause of the rupture.

  3. Tolstoy’s own contemporaneous record reads it as doctrinal and systemic. His first diary reaction (§2) is the cool «странное отлучение», filed beside student unrest, with the divinity of Christ (Coleridge) named as the real issue; his 28 March entry indicts «все наше православие … колдовство от страха». His Reply (§3) concedes the Church-renunciation and the rejection of all sacraments, treating communion as one item in a total alternative theology. He never frames a single chapter as the cause.

Net: the evidence extends and complicates the received view rather than confirming it. Defensible synthesis: Resurrection — and especially its caricature of Pobedonostsev, with the communion satire as the most-quoted single offence — was the proximate trigger that made the Synod publish, in February 1901, an excommunication whose doctrinal substance had been accumulating since the 1880s. The communion chapter is the climax the decree reaches for, not the reason it was written. Best summarised as complicates (with a clear extends component on the Pobedonostsev/timing axis).

Provenance notes / uncertainty flags