Spiritual and Educational Activities of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery under Archimandrite Seraphim (Bogoyavlensky) (1884–1890)

The article examines the spiritual and educational activities of the rector of the Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery, Archimandrite Seraphim (Bogoyavlensky). In the second half of the 1880s, on the initiative of Fr. Seraphim, spiritual discussions were held with the people in the monastery on Sundays, in addition, the practice of congregational church singing was introduced. All this attracted hundreds of parishioners to the monastery. Archimandrite Seraphim, while still rector of the Church of the Resurrection at the Catherine’s Almshouse, was considered the founder of the practice of congregational singing, which was supposed to revive parish life. At the turn of the 19th / 20th centuries congregational singing was considered one of the most effective means of combating the spread and strengthening – especially after the adoption of the Manifesto on Religious Tolerance in 1905 – of sectarianism. The article was written with the involvement of both unpublished and published sources in the pages of the Moscow periodicals.