AN ALLEGORY OF RECONCILIATION

FR. JOHN VENIAMINOV AND FR. JOSE MARIA DE JESUS GONZALEZ RUBIO

RUSSIAN AMERICA AND SPANISH CALIFORNIA
MISSION SAN JOSE

PREFACE  This page is about two priests, one Russian Orthodox and the other Spanish Catholic, who met by chance in California and who by their charity and good will demonstrated to their contemporaries and to us today that the things which unite men of different cultures, traditions and Churches are and ought to be more binding that those things which divide us. Both had valid orders by apostolic succession, adhered to the Creed of Nicaea/Constantinople, acknowledged the Trinity, the dual nature of Christ, the seven ecumenical councils, administered the seven sacraments, and confessed that Christ's Church is "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic" yet remained divided in fact due to events beyond their control. Their example then should be the model in the effort of men of good will to mend the seamless garment of Christ which has been torn for so many centuries.

RUSSIAN AMERICA  In 1552 the young Russian Tsar, John IV, led his army eastward from Moscow to the city and khanate of Kazan, remnant of the Golden Horde, besieged and conquered the same, adding it to his expanding empire, thereby containing more than two hundred years of Muslim Tatar raids of booty and slaving in the Slavic lands. Soon Siberia and much of Asia were open to Russian penetration. Ever eastward the course of empire took its way leading merchants, soldiers, adventurers, fur traders, runaway serfs, Cossacks, and renegades onward across the vast and sparsely settled space of central and eastern Asia. In their train came priests and monks to claim the souls of the heathenish Mongoloid and Turkic tribes for Orthodoxy. Quickly the line of fortifications moved onward until finally the Russians reached the Sea of Okhotsk and from there crossed over to the Kamchatka Peninsula in 1639 to view the Pacific Ocean for the first time. From the time that the Russians had crossed the Ural Mountains in 1579 until the Pacific came in sight just 60 years had passed. Within a single lifetime all Asia had been traversed from west to east.

In 1741, sixty-four years before the Lewis & Clark Expedition reached the west coast of North America, the Danish navigator, Vitus Bering, who had been enlisted earlier in the service of the Russian navy by Tsar Peter the Great (1682 - 1724), set sail from Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka with a company of explorers in two wooden ships, the Saints Peter and Paul, bound for the New World. On July 16 Bering sighted America from the sea south of Mount St. Elias and claimed the region for the Tsar. In the following decades Russian explorers and fur traders visited the Aleutian Islands and began to harvest the fur bearing animals of the coastal waters of Russian America (later called Alaska). In 1794 the first Russian Orthodox monks from Valaam Monastery, after a journey of a year, arrived in Kodiak Island to begin the conversion of the Aleuts.

The economy of Russian America depended largely on the fur trade. The fur bearing animals of the coastal areas were exploited with no regard to their eventual extinction through excessive harvesting. Agriculture was limited by availability of arable land and the vagaries of season and climate. Consequently Russian America failed to attract large numbers of Russian colonists. At no time during the 126 years of Russian occupation did the native Russian population reach 1000 souls. With the decline of the fur trade the Russian American Company chartered by the Tsar to promote colonization and economic development became a burden to the state. When the Russian American Company's charter expired and the state took over control of the colony its fortunes declined further. Following the American Civil War the Russian government offered to sell its colony in North America to the United States. In addition to the fact that Russian America had become of little value, considerable Russian opinion in high places came to recognize that the reality of American imperialism as set forth in the doctrine and policy of "manifest destiny" and the "Monroe Doctrine" would eventually result in the Russian colony's seizure and annexation by the United States. [1] In the 19th century America was a growing and increasingly menacing imperial power which prompted European powers to avoid challenging it in the Western Hemisphere. Therefore it was decided that sale was preferable to seizure. Not everyone was happy with the sale. Many Americans believed that the Russian colony of Alaska as it came be known was a frigid wasteland. And many Russians were loath to part with the colony out of distaste for selling Orthodox Christians to Protestant heretics. The sale was concluded in 1867. Just fifty years later the Bolsheviks seized Russia. One can only contemplate with apprehension what the consequences might have been, had Alaska remained in the Russian Empire and we had found ourselves facing the Soviet air force and the Red Army in North America just a short distance from the United States.

SPANISH CALIFORNIA  In 1519 the Spanish conquistador, Hernando Cortez, landed on the east coast of Mexico near present-day Vera Cruz and led his small army westward to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in the Valley of Mexico, conquering the same and claiming the Aztec empire for Spain. By 1540 the Spanish were exploring Lower California. Soon missions were established there by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). The Jesuits were replaced by the Order of St. Francis of Assisi (Franciscans) following the suppression of the Jesuits by the King of Spain.

Ever aware of the Russian penetration in the northwestern region of North America and fearing that the Russians might move into the coastal areas of California claimed by Spain, the Spanish colonial administration sent Franciscans northward to establish missions in the San Francisco Bay area. Chief among these missions was Mission San Jose founded in 1797 on the south east side of the Bay. As with the other missions in California, great effort was made to convert the Indians to Christianity and to bring the coastal areas under cultivation and settlement. The Franciscan friars were skilled in the useful arts of agriculture and animal husbandry, teaching the natives how to plant crops, orchards and vineyards, to irrigate the land, to harvest, to tend herds of cattle and to work in the practical trades as tailors, masons, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, harness makers, tile & adobe makers - all designed to divert the natives from slothful subsistence and to turn them into useful and productive subjects of the Spanish king.

Mission San Jose like the other Spanish missions received from the Crown vast holdings of land to till plus authority to direct the natives into useful activities. Needless to say, the Indians were loath to give up their indolence and many sought to abscond and to return to their old ways of subsistence as hunters/gatherers. Mission San Jose held large areas under cultivation [3] and maintained large herds of cattle and other domestic animals. As a very productive mission it was able to accumulate sufficient surpluses to trade with other missions and with the Russians at Fort Ross, Novo Archangelsk and elsewhere in Russian America. By the time of Fr. John Veniaminov's visit to the missions of the San Francisco Bay area, trade between Russian America and Spanish California had become extensive. [4] In 1824 California became a province of the new Mexican state. The government of Mexico embarked on a plan to secularize the missions of California. Secularization then, as privatization now, was nothing less than the allocation of communitarian assets to private interests for the exclusive use and benefit of those interests. As elsewhere in North America the Indians were the losers. The plan of secularization was implemented in the years between 1835 and 1840. During his visit to California Fr. John became aware of the policy and commented about it as follows: "The Mexican government has taken the Indians away from the other missions and given them the rights of citizenship, in other words, the right to be idle" to which we might add - the right to be idle and landless. Thus ended the epoch of the Spanish missions in California. [5]

By 1846 the invasion of migrants from the Unites States had become a flood. In that year American freebooters under the command of US Army Captain John Fremont staged a successful coup d'etat and seized power. A few months later the United States government annexed California.

FR. JOHN VENIAMINOV  He was born and baptized as Ioann (John) Evseevich Popov in 1797 in a small village near Irkutsk in Siberia, the son of a sacristan in the local church. His name, Popov, common in Russia, indicates that he came from a line of priests. Later he took the name of the bishop of Irkutsk, Benjamin, and was known thereafter by the surname, Veniaminov [6]. Upon completing the seminary in Irkutsk, he married a priest's daughter, Catherine, and was then ordained a deacon [7]. Four years later in 1821 he was ordained a priest and in 1823 he was sent to Novo Archangelsk (later Sitka) in Russian America to evangelize the natives. While in Russian America Fr. John ministered to the spiritual needs of the natives, learned their languages and translated service books into native languages [8]. Later he was sent to Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands where he labored from 1824 to 1834 whereupon he returned to Novo Archangelsk.

In 1836 Fr. John sailed south to the Russian mission in Fort Ross on the California coast about 70 miles north of the northernmost Spanish mission of San Rafael located on the northern end of San Francisco Bay. There he spent six weeks ministering to the colonists of Fort Ross and visiting the four Spanish missions in the San Francisco Bay area. Following the death of his wife in 1840 Fr. John was tonsured and later consecrated bishop of Kamchatka and Russian America under the name of Innokentii (Innocent) Veniaminov. In 1850 he was installed as archbishop of Blagoveschensk, 950 miles east of Irkutsk. In 1868 he was installed as Metropolitan of Moscow, highest ranking prelate of the Russian Church at that time. Eleven years later he died and was interred in a chapel at Sergiev Posad northeast of Moscow. In 1977 the Holy Synod glorified (canonized) him under the name of St. Innocent Veniaminov, Apostle to America.

FR. JOSE MARIA DE JESUS GONZALEZ RUBIO  Fr. Gonzalez Rubio, as he shall be called herein, was born of Spanish parents in 1804 in the city of Guadalajara in Mexico. In 1825 he was tonsured a monk of the Order of St. Francis of Assisi and two years later ordained a priest. In 1832 he joined a company of Franciscan friars sent north to Upper California to serve in the missions. Fr. Gonzalez Rubio was assigned as the priest in charge of the mission of San Jose, one of the largest and most prosperous outposts of the Spanish empire on the west coast of North America. It was during his tenure that the mission was secularized. In 1842 he was transferred to Santa Barbara to serve as the secretary to the new bishop of California, Garcia Diego y Moreno and later as the bishop's vicar-general. Among his duties was serving as a parish priest in a local parish as well as part-time president of the Apostolic College of Our Lady of Sorrows. He died in 1875 and is buried in the friars' vaults, mission cemetery, Santa Barbara.

THE VISIT  Upon learning that a trading ship of the Russian American Company was planning to visit California in 1836, Fr. John requested permission to accompany the ship to Fort Ross located on the California coast north of the Spanish mission of San Rafael located at the northern end of San Francisco Bay. Fort Ross was the southernmost mission of the Russian Church in North America. [9] Those 72 miles represented the practical zone of separation between Russian America and Spanish (later Mexican) California.

The ship set sail on July 1 and traveled by good weather the entire distance of 1500 sea miles southward until it anchored on July 15 at Bodega Bay, just south of Fort Ross. The voyage averaged about 100 miles per day, a fairly good rate of speed for a wooden sailing ship at the time. The following day Fr. John rode north to Fort Ross by horseback. [10] There he found the small Russian settlement of 24 houses plus iurts for the Aleuts, a population of 260 people, 120 of whom were Russians and the rest persons of mixed blood and natives. During his stay at Fort Ross, Fr. John performed the usual duties of a priest - he heard confessions, celebrated the liturgy, instructed the catechumens, chrismated and gave communion to the infants who had been baptized by laymen [11] and blessed several common law marriages [12].

On August 23, Fr. John proceeded south by horseback, crossed over the borders of Russia into Spanish viz, Mexican California and reached the northernmost Spanish mission of San Rafael where he met for the first time in his life a Roman Catholic priest and monk of the Order of St. Francis of Assisi, Fr. Jose Lorenzo de la Concepcion Quijos who received the Russian and his companions cordially, offering him an experience of Franciscan hospitality which he never forgot. [13] [14] He accepted and enjoyed the offerings of the hospitable friar who accompanied him the next day to the Mission San Jose on the southeast shore of San Francisco Bay where he arrived on September 3.

At Mission San Jose Fr. John and his companions were the guests Fr. Jose Maria de Jesus Gonzalez Rubio described by the Russian as "the most educated and kindly of any of his brethren in all of California". [15] Here the Russian observed the liturgy and rites of baptism and burial of the Roman Church, and the two priests conversed at length about "religious matters". In his travel journal Fr. John noted his joy over California's healthful air, pure blue sky, geography and native vegetation - very impressive for one born north of 52 degrees latitude and who had never been south of that latitude whether in Siberia or in Russian America until he went to California. We note for our readers that Novo Archangelsk lies at the 57th parallel north, fully 20 degrees of latitude north of San Francisco Bay which lies at 37 degrees. Those twenty degrees of latitude meant a great deal in terms of climate and human habitability at the time.

Fr. Gonzalez Rubio offered his guests the best that he had which was right much, given the richness and productiveness of the mission. Although Fr. John never said, we can imagine that the Franciscan entertained the Russian with a well stocked table and plenty of sweet, white Madera wine from the mission vineyards. [16] Together the two priests toured the farms, orchards and vineyards of the Mission. As stated above, Mission San Jose was a successful venture which traded extensively with the other Spanish missions and with the Russian missions of Fort Ross, Novo Archangelsk and elsewhere. In the words of Fr. John "the San Jose mission &133; is well run and the Indians are very satisfied with their present padre, who feeds and cloths them quite adequately. The mission has a primary school which serves as many as fifty Creole [mixed blood] and Indian boys."

From San Jose the Russians were conducted on to the next mission of Santa Clara by Fr. Gonzalez Rubio where they were again well received. Again Fr. John toured the mission lands as guest of Fr. Rafael de Jesus Moreno. At Santa Clara he had also a chance to observe the strange Roman eucharistic rite about which he commented as follows: "Here I saw three priests concelebrate the liturgy at the same time, but at different altars and, of course, in a whisper; in general, these priests always whisper during the liturgy except on certain holidays". [17]

On September 11 Fr. John's ship for the return voyage had arrived at the Port of San Francisco, but before leaving he attended liturgy at Mission San Francisco de Asis. His final comments about his California visit were: "While in California I managed to visit four missions and meet five priests. The missions are all well constructed quite uniformly according to a single plan: the central building, called the mission, is a large, quadrilateral, one-story building with a door in the center. The building is constructed of unfired brick and roofed with tile. One side is designated for the church, another for the priest, and the others for storerooms and workshops. Several blockhouses made of the same material extend out next to the mission; these are for the Indians. The married and single Indians are housed separately."

COMMENTARY

Fr. John Veniaminov's visit to the Spanish missions in the San Francisco Bay area in 1836 came at a time when the relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church and the other Orthodox Churches were rare and usually bad. In spite of the theological and ecclesial traditions shared by both there were at that time no official relations between them and references by the adherences of each Church about the other were not noted for their charity, good will or Christian content. In fact, most were not even civil by the standards of the time. That is why Fr. John's visit and the hospitality of the Spaniards seem to us out of space and out of time.

Fr. John Veniaminov and Fr. Gonzalez Rubio, although contemporaries and priests sharing similar personal characteristics, theology and ecclesiology, were far apart in most matters which form personality. The former came from a vast empire in northeastern Europe which stretched eastward across Asia to the Pacific and beyond to North America and the latter from an equally vast empire stretching from southwestern Europe westward to most of the New World. The two empires met in California just north of San Francisco Bay. The histories of Russia and Spain, while distinct in most respects, share one terrible experience of long duration which contributed much to the formation of the national character of each nation. That was the occupation and oppression of both countries by Muslim invaders who sought first to convert them to Islam and on failing in this effort resorted to their usual treatment of vanquished infidels which was the exaction of tribute and the enslavement of the people. The countries of both priests, after long struggle of centuries, succeeded eventually in throwing off the Muslim yoke and from there went on to become great empires. Paradoxically both countries are again under renewed attack by Muslims whose goal now as then remains the conversion or subjugation of non-Muslims.

The Russian was a "northern man", fair and Slavic, born in frigid Siberia and destined for the priesthood by his family. All of his life was spent in the far north of short, cool summers and long, harsh winters. The Spaniard, on the other hand, was a "southern man", dark and Mediterranean, whose parents came from sunny Spain and who knew the gentle climes of Mexico and California. The Russian had never proceeded south of the 52nd latitude except for his visit to California, whereas the Spaniard never went north of the 37th. Even as priests the two men were different. True, both preached the Gospel to the natives, celebrated the liturgy and administered the sacraments according to their respective traditions, yet Fr. John was a married man with children, while Fr. Gonzalez Rubio was a celibate who knew of married priests only as a historical abstraction, not as a current reality. One can only imagine the profound surprise of the Spaniard when he learned that his Russian guest was also a husband and father. In spite of all their differences, cultural and ecclesial, the Russian Orthodox and the Spanish Catholic responded to one another, not as their respective Churches might have wished at that time, but according to their common humanity, their common national traditions of civility and hospitality, and their common perception as to what the Gospels expected of them as followers of Jesus Christ. It is for these reasons that we offer to our readers these two priests as models of Christian charity and love and affection inspired by the Gospels who for a period of five days served as examples of how we should behave toward one another and seek to resolve our disunity.

DEDICATION

This page reaches beyond the chance meeting of two priests in the summer of 1836. We intend it also as a commentary about the re-unification of the Church - the entire "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church" of the Creed of Nicaea/Constantinople. In the year 1054 emissaries of Pope Leo IX appeared in Constantinople and presumptuously excommunicated the proud Byzantine patriarch, Michael Cerularios. The patriarch responded in kind. Thus papal and patriarchal petulance set the course of relations for the future and therewith began a process of tit-for-tat down through the centuries, which has left the seamless garment of Christ in tatters. [18] Unrestrained by its Eastern brethren the Roman Church evolved into an ecclesial imperium ruled by a prelate who increasingly took on the appearances and functions of an Oriental potentate. In the East the Church devolved into a factious assembly of independent, national and autocephalous Churches and patriarchates, all claiming to respect the senior rank of the Ecumenical Patriarch as first among equals, but in reality paying him scant attention, let alone the respect which his office deserves.

In our opinion the schism in the Church was largely Satan's mischief worked through proud prelates whose minds were possessed by inflated notions of power and caged in the theological obscurantism and sophistry of their time and space - a frame of mind absent humility and charity and forgetful of the primary mandate received at the first Pentecost, namely to hold Christ's flock together in unity as well as in faith. Even though the mutual excommunications of yesteryear were lifted in recent times by the successors of the original malefactors, the damage to the body of Christ remains. It is not our purpose to come up with another plan of reunification of the Churches, but we are confident that the model of the Eastern Catholic Churches is not the way to go. Ostensibly autonomous, they are, in practical effect, appendages of the Roman Church, which must process all major decisions including the selection of bishops through the Vatican bureaucracy. We are confident that our Orthodox brethren will not take that path. Rather, we suggest that the status quo in the first millennium, albeit imperfect, is more likely to serve as the basis of discussion of reunification and indeed we note that our saintly pontiff of recent memory was of like mind. See UT UNUM SINT 50 & 55 [19]

The task of reunification of the Churches is the work of the Holy Spirit acting through men of humility and good will such as exhibited by our two noble priests mentioned throughout this page. Because the Roman Church initiated the schism between East and West, we suggest that the burden of commencing the process of healing the rift is on that Church, as indeed was accepted and evidenced by the efforts of Pope John Paul II during his pontificate and reiterated by his successor, Benedict XVI, to which the latter has committed himself. Accordingly we wish to dedicate this page as a continuing prayer for the success of this undertaking.

SOURCES AND REMARKS

1. RUSSIAN AMERICA by Hector Chevigny, 1965;
   ISBN: 345235754165
2. ST. INNOCENT, APOSTLE TO AMERICA by Paul Garrett;
   ISBN: 0913836605
3. BERING, THE RUSSIAN DISCOVERY OF AMERICA by Orcutt Frost;
   ISBN: 0300100590
4. TWO CENTURIES AT MISSION SAN JOSE, 1797 - 1997 by Philip Holmes
   Fremont, CA 1997
5. Various materials from the PROVINCIAL ANNALS of Santa Barbara Franciscan Province Archives,
   Diocese of Santa Barbara, CA
6. JOURNALS OF THE PRIEST IOANN VENIAMINOV IN ALASKA, 1823 - 1836,
   translated by Jerome Kisslinger, University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks 1993
7. SIXTY YEARS IN CALIFORNIA by William Heath Davis, San Francisco 1899
8. RUSSIAN AMERICA by the Alaska Geographic Society, vol. 26, No. 4, 1999

The research involved in preparing this page is incomplete. Examination of the Franciscan archives in the custody of the Diocese of Santa Barbara has not yet yielded any records or correspondence of any of the friars who received Fr. John about his visit in 1836. Moreover our requests submitted to His Eminence, Norberto Cardinal Rivera Carrera, Archbishop/Primate of Mexico, successor to Fr. Gonzalez Rubio's superior in Mexico regarding any of correspondence about Fr. John's visit remain unanswered. As of the time of publication of this page, we have no knowledge of any barrel organs of Russian provenance in any of the Spanish missions in California. We hope that others with greater resources and access than ours will extend this inquiry into the many unanswered questions posed herein.

For the information of our readers, the Old Mission San Jose was used until recently by the OCA parish of St. Innocent Orthodox Church whose pastor is Fr. Leo Arrowsmith. The parish moved recently to its own temple in Livermore, CA. We wish Fr. Leo and his flock our best wishes and God's blessings in their new home.

FOOTNOTES

1) Throughout the 19th century the polity of the United States was directed by two concepts. One was "manifest destiny" by which is meant the clear duty of Americans to proceed westward to the west coast of North America, by purchase or by conquest, whichever may be expedient, until the continent is in United States possession. The other was the "Monroe doctrine" enunciated by President James Monroe which held that the western hemisphere was out of bounds for European colonization or indeed any other European interference. The western hemisphere was to be regarded as under the exclusive hegemony of the United States as its protector. These two ideas were the pillars of 19th century American imperialism.

2) Aleuts, for whom the Aleutian Islands are named and who inhabited the same, are not Indians. Although, like Indians, they are of Asian origin, they are ethnically and linguistically related to the Inuit (Eskimos) who populate the northern coastal regions of Alaska, Canada and Greenland.

3) In the first part of the 19th century visitors to Mission San Jose were impressed by the buildings, the gardens, the fruit trees and the storehouses of wheat, corn, peas, beans and other crops and the large herds of cattle, making it one of the wealthiest missions in California. The mission carried on an extensive trade with other missions and with the Russians in Fort Ross, Novo Archangelsk and the rest of Russian America, a trade including hides, beaver skins, tallow, olive oil, grease, wheat, barley, beans, honey, dried figs, wool, cotton, sugar, spices, molasses, hardware, crockery, tin ware, cutlery, clothing, boots & shoes, calicoes & cottons, crepes & silks, and furniture. No wonder that Fr. John was impressed. See TWO CENTURIES AT MISSION SAN JOSE by Philip Holmes; pp. 12 & 14.

4) Fr. John Veniaminov was a very talented man. He came to the New World with impressive skills in wood & metal working, among which was the crafting of barrel organs (sharmanka). A barrel organ was a mechanical musical instrument requiring nothing but the regular rotary motion of a handle or crank to operate it. A revolving cylinder was fitted with pegs that opened valves, permitting air to enter a set of organ pipes thus producing sounds. The repertoire was limited to whatever was on a given cylinder, which could be augmented by changing the cylinders. Barrel organs were not used by the Russians for liturgical accompaniment, because the liturgy and services in the Eastern Church were and remain a cappella. While at Unalaska (1824 - 1834) Fr. John manufactured barrel organs in his own workshop which he sold to the California missions through his agent, Kyril Timofeevich Khlebnikov, a Russian trader, in exchange for food and other necessities for use in his own missions. See RUSSKAYA AMERICA PO LICHNYM VPECHATLENIIM MISSIONEROV, ZEMLEPROKHODTSEV, MORIAKOV, ISSLEDOVATELEI I DRUGIKH OCHEVIDTSEV, pp. 157, 166 - 168, edited by A. D. Dridzo & R. V. Kinzhalov, Moscow, 1994 available from the Rasmuson Library of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks under call number ALASKA F907 R978 1994. Barrel organs were popular in the California missions, not for liturgical purposes, but as an attraction to the Indians who loved music and could thus be lured by the friars into the missions. See THE ORGANS OF HISPANIC CALIFORNIA by Prof. Dr. William J. Summers, Associate Professor of Music, Dartmouth College, published in Nov. 1976 in THE AGO & RCCO MAGAZINE.

5) The secularization viz. privatization of the California missions ordered by the Mexican government was a disaster. The practical results were the seizure of communitarian assets by private interests for the exclusive benefit and use of those interests, and the scattering and impoverishment of the Indians. Consequently the land lay untilled; the irrigation ditches dried up; the workshops became silent; and the politicians controlled the allocation of the land to themselves and to their favorites.

6) Fr. John was born with the surname, Popov, case - genitive plural - which means "of the priests" - a very common name in Russia. To distinguish him from the multitude of Popovs and to honor the recent bishop Benjamin of Irkutsk, he was given the surname, Veniaminov which means "of the Benjamins".

7) In the Eastern Church, priests and deacons are ordained after marriage, i. e. their marriage must precede ordination. This is not doctrine, but tradition incorporated into canon law. See ORDINATION OF MARRIED MEN IN THE EASTERN CHURCH at: http://www.byzantines.net/epiphany/ordination.htm.

8) It is to the enduring credit of the Eastern Church, Orthodox and Catholic, that the liturgy and other services are celebrated in the vernacular language, i.e. the language of the people or in a language sufficiently similar to be intelligible, the purpose being to allow the faithful to participate with understanding. Needless to say, Old Slavonic, the Russian liturgical language, was not intelligible to Aleuts and Indians, prompting Fr. John to translate liturgical & service books and a catechism into the local languages.

9) The Russian settlements in North America were too far north to enable the pursuit of agriculture. The natives were hunters/gatherers but the Russians were not. Russians ate bread, not blubber. Accordingly they went south to get what they needed. They established a settlement at Fort Ross, which was as far south as they dared to tread without incurring the wrath of the Spaniards, in order to produce food. Fort Ross, however, proved to be a poor choice. For that reason, the Russians traded with the Spanish missions offering to them furs and ivory in exchange for foodstuffs and other raw materials.

10) Novo Archangelsk (later Sitka) lies at the 57th parallel north whereas Fort Ross is at the 38th.

11) Another of Fr. John's duties was the chrismation (anointing) of infants baptized by laymen. In Siberia and North America priests were rare birds, yet people were being born all the time necessitating their baptism by laymen. The Eastern Church, Orthodox and Catholic, recognizes three sacraments of initiation - baptism, chrismation (anointing with Holy Oil akin to Confirmation in the West) and Holy Communion. Following the chrismation of a lay-baptized baby, the priest would administer communion thus completing the three sacraments of initiation.

12) Among Fr. John's priestly duties in Siberia and the New World was the regularization of common law marriages. A common law marriage is one wherein a man and a woman agree to live together as husband and wife and hold themselves out publicly as married. In the Early Church all Christian marriages were at common law. The Church did not get involved in the process until later. When a priest blessed a common law marriage, he merely recognized the couple as sacramentally married for purposes of canon law. The priest does not marry a man and a woman; they confer the sacrament on each other. The Russian Church upholds common law marriage today. See section X of THE ORTHODOX CHURCH AND SOCIETY issued by the Holy Synod in 2000.

13) The hospitality of the Franciscan friars in California was renowned. In his book, SIXTY YEARS IN CALIFORNIA published in 1899, the American, William Heath David, who had arrived in California in 1831, observed: "They [the Franciscans] were always hospitable to strangers; all visitors were kindly received and entertained with the best they could offer, and the table was well supplied. The wine they made at the missions was of a superior quality and equal to any that I have drunk elsewhere&133; On leaving [the guest] was furnished with a fresh horse, and a good vaquero [cowboy] was appointed to attend him to the next mission, where he was received and entertained with the same hospitality, and so on as far as the journey extended."

14) Fr. John and his hosts at the California missions conferred with each other is Latin, a language which he learned at the seminary in Irkutsk. Tsar Peter the Great despised ignorant priests and prelates in long, stringy beards and dirty cassocks. In his day the educational standards of the clergy were primitive. He directed each diocese to establish and maintain seminaries for the training of priests according to a European curriculum which included Latin language and classics. By the time that John Popov attended the seminary in Irkutsk educational standards for the Russian clergy were much improved. Little did young Popov suspect at the time that he might have use for that language later on.

15) In 1836 Fr. John Veniaminov was 39 years old whereas his host, Fr. Gonzalez Rubio was 32.

16) The vineyards of Mission San Jose yielded a sweet white wine similar to Malaga wine from Spain. The vineyards and wineries of the Spanish missions were the basis of the wine industry in California today.

17) The strange Eucharistic rite witnessed by Fr. John was not the concelebration of the liturgy by three priests whispering at three separate alters, as reported in his journal, but three separate & individual celebrations going on at the same time. In the concelebration of the liturgy all officiating priests and bishops consecrate the same Holy Gifts at the same altar. Concelebration was the standard practice in the Church, East and West, since apostolic times, but by the 8th century the practice had died out in the West. Long before Fr. John reached California the Roman liturgy had devolved into a whispered colloquy between priest and altar boy in an obscure language viz. Latin in which the role of those attending was essentially that of non-participating spectators. This mumbled mummery of the "low mass" was the norm until abolished following the Second Vatican Council. The exception of the festive occasions referred to by Fr. John in his journal was the "high mass" which was sung aloud by celebrants with responses from a choir. As in the low mass, the congregation at high mass were silent spectators. For an Orthodox priest accustomed to celebrating/concelebrating the Divine Liturgy in song in the presence of a participating congregation, the low mass was indeed strange.

18) See also Archbishop John Ireland's treatment of Fr. Alexis Toth in 1891 and Pope Pius XI's decree, Cum Data Fuerit, in 1929, each of which promoted schism in the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church in the United States at: http://www.byzantines.net/epiphany/gcu.htm

19) For an Orthodox viewpoint on this subject, see THE ORTHODOX CHURCH by Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia (Timothy Ware), pp.314 - 317

20) See the page, THE GREAT UNIFIER, at: http://www.byzantines.net/byzcathculture/unifier.html