Archimandrite Gerasim (Shmaltz) of Spruce Island, AK, passed away on this day in 1969. Mikhail Aleksandrovich Shmaltz was born in 1888 into a pious Russian Orthodox family in Aleksin, Tula Region. In 1906, Mikhail became a novice at St. Tikhon’s hermitage Kaluga district. In 1911, he was tonsured there and named Gerasim. After that, he traveled to Mount Athos, Serbia, Greece, and Romania. In 1916, Priestmonk Gerasim came to help minister the diocese of Alaska and got “stuck” there because of the Russian Revolution. Bishop Benjamin (Fedchenkov) was the head of the military clergy in the Russian Arof General Peter N. Wrangel in Crimea. He stood behind the foundation of the Russian Church Abroad in 1920 in Constantinople, while Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitskii) was initially skeptical about this canonically unprecedented idea. In 1927, the Russian émigré bishops got into a dispute with Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky). Bishop Benjamin served 40 liturgies in the hope of better understanding God’s will and decided to stay with the Church in Russia in the person of Metropolitan Sergius. Similarly, Fr. Gerasim was perplexed about whom he should follow from the beginning of the divisions within the Russian Church diaspora in 1926. There was Metropolitan Platon (Rozhdestvenskii) of Odessa in America, who, in 1926, took himself out from under the Council of Bishops in Serbia. There was Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitskii) of Kiev and Galicia, whose authority was recognized by most Russian refugee bishops. And after 1927, there was also Bishop Benjamin (Fedchenkov), directly under Moscow. All the Orthodox in Alaska were in the jurisdiction of the North American Metropolitanate under Metropolitan Platon and Fr. Gerasim followed suit, remaining in its jurisdiction. However, he maintained correspondence with all Russian Orthodox outside the Soviet Union. During the salmon fishing seasons in the summers of 2000 and 2001, I worked on fishing vessels and visited Fr. Gerasim’s cell on Spruce Island, part of the Kodiak Archipelago. Since the death of Fr. Gerasim in 1969, Ouzinkie Village Native Corporation has preserved the cell as it was at the time of his death. Among his belongings, one could find issues of Russian periodicals such as Tsarskii Vestnik, which was published in Belgrade before World War II. Metropolitan Laurus of blessed memory had tried to secure the transfer of these rare periodicals to Holy Trinity Monastery, but alas…. Fr. Gerasim became a role model for Fr. Herman (Podmoshenskii), who explained in an interview that he wanted to visit Fr. Gerasim to learn which way to choose in his life: “I learned that in Alaska there lived a hermit [Fr. Gerasim Shmaltz], and Fr. Vladimir [Sukhobok of Holy Trinity Monastery] gave me his address. They’re in correspondence. I inherited his letters. And I wrote: ‘I want to visit you, dear [unintelligible] father.’ And I decided then and there to seek an answer. And so then I went.” In 1967, Archimandrite Laurus (Škurla) of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordnaville, NY, became Bishop of Manhattan and Secretary of the ROCOR Synod of Bishops. Following the mutual cancellation of the anathemata between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Roman Catholic Church, several ecclesiastical refugees attempted to “set ROCOR’s foot” in Alaska –, soon after his consecration, Bishop Laurus and his cell-attendant Victor Lochmatow. Vladyla Lavr told me that they slept on Spruce Island in Fr. Gerasim’s cell and that he woke up during the night and asked, “Who is here?” Relevant Links: Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh, “Reminiscences About Metropolitan Veniamin (Fedchenkov),”Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad. Children of an Age of Martyrs. Monk Herman (Podmoshenskii). Ιn Memoriam (June 30, 2014). Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad. |
