Archbishop Anthony (Galysnky-Mikhailovsky) And Those With Him

Archbishop Anthony, in the world Ivan Ilyich Mikhailovich, was born in 1889 (according to another source, 1887). His mother bore him in Jerusalem during her pilgrimage there.

"I was born in Jerusalem and baptized in the Jordan," he used to say with a flourish.

It is known that he went to a seminary and graduated from a Theological Academy. He knew six languages. They say that he was made a member of an Orthodox mission that was sent to preach in some foreign country (according to some sources, this was Turkey). There were fifty people altogether in this mission. An armed band of horsemen with sabres fell on them in the desert. The missionaries were all killed except for Anthony, who managed to hide in a hollow or (according to another source) under a ledge overhanging the sea.

On January 30, 1913, Metropolitan Vladimir ordained him to the rank of hieromonk in the Moscow cathedral of the Theophany. (According to another source, he was ordained in 1916.)

Concerning Fr. Anthony's consecration to the episcopate, the sources are in conflict. (Some of these sources are openly hostile to Vladyka Anthony, which explains some of the contradictions in this account.) According to Metropolitan E., he was consecrated on June 29, 1922 with the blessing of Patriarch Tikhon in the Moscow cathedral of St. Tryphon in which Fr. Anthony was serving at the time, and the consecration was carried out by Metropolitans Boris and Arsenius, Archbishops Ambrose (Smirnov) and Seraphim (Ostroumov) and others. According to another source, he was consecrated in 1924 to a vicar-bishopric of the Bryansk diocese by Archbishop Bassian (Pyatnitsky), Bishop Agathangelus (Sadkovsky) and Bishop Juvenal (Maslovsky) in Orel. According to Schema-Nun Leokadia from Orel, Vladyka Anthony was consecrated as vicar of the Bryansk diocese, probably as Bishop of Orel, by Bishops Juvenal (Maslovsky), Bassian (Pyatnitsky) and Ignatius (Sadkovsky) during Patriarch Tikhon's lifetime. That Vladyka Anthony was indeed Bishop of Orel, Bryansk diocese, seems likely, since he had many spiritual children in that diocese, and according to Bishop A., his first arrest took place immediately after a service in Bryansk cathedral. However, it should be pointed out that the Bishop of Orel in the 1920s according to most lists was Archbishop Seraphim (Ostroumov).

It appears that Bishop Anthony wanted to leave the Soviet Union together with the clergy that were accompanying the White Army into emigration. But Patriarch Tikhon said to him:

"Stay here - you will suffer together with your people."

This patriarchal blessing defined the whole future life of Vladyka.

According to one source, Vladyka Anthony fell into renovationism, but repented in about 1925 and was exiled to Vyatka. According to the same source, however, in December, 1927 he was received into communion by Archbishop Victor (Ostrovidov) of Vyatka. Since Archbishop Victor was one of the strictest anti-sergianists, this proves that Bishop Anthony rejected the notorious "declaration" of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) in 1927, which placed the Russian Church into subjection to the God-hating Bolsheviks.

He also rejected all the other renovationist declarations which the Soviet authorities gave him to sign. They tried to bribe him by offering him various privileges (they say these included a car with a chauffeur), but he remained unbending. Among other things they demanded that he recognize the canonicity of a renovationist clause to the effect that baptism of babies by pouring was permissible. Vladyka declared that this was not permissible according to the apostolic canons, which prescribe that baptism must be performed by threefold full immersion. In 1927 or 1928 he was imprisoned for refusing to sign this.

When he was still serving openly a man came and confessed to him that he had been about to shoot him during a service, but had been unable to. Apparently the crime had been averted by the power of the cross - Vladyka had just made the sign of the cross over the whole people and the church.

Vladyka was exiled to Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, where he was received into communion by the Catacomb Bishop Amphilochius of Krasnoyarsk, about which Vladyka preserved a document

According to one source, Vladyka fell into Sergianism and Grigorianism during the 1930s. However, according to another, more reliable one, he was arrested again in about 1933 and in 1938 was sent to Ukhtizhemlag, from where he was freed in about 1946.

According to his spiritual children, he spent 20 years in all in the prisons and camps. They say that he was arrested three times, and his last arrest took place in 1946. But his parishioner Tatyana says that he was arrested about 10 times.

While in prison, Vladyka strengthened the believing prisoners, telling them that as long as Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky) was Patriarchal locum tenens they could pray for him as for the first hierarch of the Church. According to one nun who had been with him in prison, he used to tell prisoners who were being brought for interrogation when such-and-such a feast was, because many of them had forgotten the exact dates of the feasts while in exile.

According to the same source, while in exile in Komi ASSR, on July 29, 1937, Vladyka Anthony was raised to the rank of archbishop by three other exiled hierarchs - Metropolitan Anatolius, rector of the Kiev Theological Academy, Archbishop Bassian (Pyatnitsky) and Archbishop Juvenal (Maslovsky). The ordination took place in the Knyazhesky churchyard of Knyazhesky chapel. However, there is a problem with this date insofar as Archbishop Juvenal is known to have been in the Siberian city of Tomsk in July, 1937, and Metropolitan Anatolius was under convoy and in very serious health.

We know something about Archbishop Anthony's activities during the war from four thoroughly Orthodox letters signed "Archbishop A.", which are very probably his, and from the text issued by the NKVD GULAG administration towards the end of the war, in which it was decided: "1. To enrol qualified agents from among the prisoners who are churchmen and sectarians, ordering them to uncover the facts concerning the anti-Soviet activity of these prisoners. 2. In the process of the agents' work on the prisoners, to uncover their illegal links with those in freedom and coordinate the work of these links with the corresponding organs of the NKVD." As a result of these instructions, many catacomb organizations among the prisoners were liquidated. For example, "in the Ukhtoizhemsky ITL an anti-Soviet group of churchmen prisoners was liquidated. One of the leaders of this group, the priest Ushakov, composed prayers and distributed them among the prisoners. It turned out that he had illegal links with a Bishop Galynsky [Archbishop Anthony]"

According to one (dubious) source, although many members of the Catacomb Church distrusted Archbishop Anthony, one Catacomb bishop, Romanus of Ingermannland, once investigated all the accusations against him and found him innocent. However, according to this same source, Bishop Romanus did not succeed in getting Archbishop Anthony received into communion by the Catacomb Council of Chirchik, near Tashkent, in 1948.

Vladyka Anthony was sentenced to be shot three times. But the Lord preserved his life, and there were even found people who went to the firing-squad instead of him. As a result of one such incident, Vladyka acquired a second passport with the name Galynsky in addition to his first surname of Mikhailovsky. They say that when Vladyka was still at liberty, a Baptist preacher by the name of Tikhon Galynsky went with his books to the house of Vladyka with the intention of converting him to his faith. When he came to the door he heard Vladyka told his novice nun to go and meet "the servant Tikhon" - although he could not know who was coming to the door at that moment.

In the end, instead of his planned sermon, the Baptist repented before Vladyka and after a discussion put away his books and accepted the Orthodox Faith. In prison they met again. Tikhon declared that he would go to the firing-squad instead of Vladyka because the life of a bishop was more important than his own. Such a swap was possible at that time because people's identities were checked according to their passports, in which there was no photograph. So when Vladyka's name was called out, Tikhon went in his place, and received the crown of martyrdom.

Before his death, however, he secured a promise from Vladyka that on leaving prison he would take care of his wife and two daughters. Later, Archbishop Anthony carried out this promise. He told the wife about the martyric death of her husband, and she sheltered him in her house. He helped her and inscribed her children's names in his passport, which is how he acquired his second surname "Galynsky".

We have some more information about the holy Martyr Tikhon, but since it comes from a source which, whether deliberately or not, confuses him with Archbishop Anthony himself, we recount it with reservations. According to this source, a nun from Bryansk province who spoke to Schema-Monk Epiphanius (Chernov), Tikhon Ivanovich Golynsky graduated from a modern school in Bryansk. Then he began a teaching career, in which he showed talent and reached the rank of inspector. During the First World War he was called up and became an officer. He was wounded in the leg on the Turkish front, and was for some time in hospital in Moscow. After the revolution - or perhaps even before - he became a Bolshevik. And he became a secretary of Lenin himself, working with him in the Kremlin until 1921. In that year, with the agreement of Lenin, he left the party and became a Baptist preacher and "presbyter". He was very successful in public disputes with atheists, and women showered him with flowers. But in the same year of 1921 he understood that the Baptists did not have the true faith, and in 1922 he converted to Orthodoxy, taking his wife with him...

Another source states that Tikhon Ivanovich Galynsky-Mikhailovsky (again, probably confusing him with Archbishop Anthony) was born in 1889 in the village of Semenovka, Karachevsky uyezd, Orel province. Before his arrest he was in an illegal situation in the city of Balashov, Saratov district. On February 10, 1950 he was arrested on a charge of "participation in the anti-Soviet Church organization 'The True Orthodox Church', and on January 13, 1951 was condemned by the MGB to 25 years deprivation of liberty. In this account he is called a priest.

Once, when he was in the camps, Vladyka Anthony was being driven to work in a brigade of workers. But he was so weak that the guard wanted to shoot him. At that moment, however, a huge man suddenly appeared out of the bushes and said to the convoy:

"If you touch him, I'll break all your bones!"

Then, taking hold of Vladyka, he brought him to the brigade. Noone ever discovered who this man was.

Vladyka Anthony's parishioner Tatyana relates a similar incident. Once he weakened so much on a march that the convoy wanted to shoot him. But the other prisoners stood up for him and said:

"If you do that, we'll kill you."

One of Vladyka's hieromonks, now Metropolitan E., says that he and Hieromonk Michael heard Archbishop Anthony say that during the war he was called to see Stalin. Stalin asked him what would be the outcome of the war. Vladyka replied that the Germans would lose the war.

"But don't you rejoice," he added.

The same bishop explains these last words of Vladyka Anthony's as a prophecy to the effect that Stalin would be poisoned shortly after the war, which in his opinion took place at the hands of a Jewish doctor.

About Vladyka's experiences in prisons and the camps, Metropolitan E. writes: "He was terribly tortured in the prisons and camps. They broke his arms, knocked out his teeth, pulled the hair out of his beard, dragged him by the legs over concrete steps with his head banging against each of them. He was kept in a room full of criminals who drove him under the plank bed, where he lost consciousness and was on the point of death. But thanks to God, a foreign commission was sent to inspect the prisoners. During inspection of the barracks in which Archbishop Anthony was, one of the prisoners ironically remarked that there was an archbishop under the bed. The commission checked and found out that it really was so. In accordance with their petition, the dying Archbishop Anthony was sent to hospital. By the providence of God the doctor was a believer. She treated him and fed him with a spoon until he came to himself. Then he was advised to petition some acquaintances to take him out on bail. He wrote to his spiritual children in Sochi, who took him out on bail (in 1946).

"In Sochi he had to go to the police once a month and show that he was not going anywhere. His spiritual children used to bribe the police so that he could go round visiting the believers."

Vladyka was released from his last term of imprisonment in 1954 (although according to one source he was arrested again in the 1960s). There is a photograph taken in Sochi in 1957 which shows him sitting in an armchair against a background of cypresses.

To the end of his life Vladyka Anthony had no communion with the Moscow Patriarchate and continued to serve in secret in accordance with the traditions of the Catacomb Church.

In about 1958 he arrived in Kiev. There he had invited the Byelorussian Protopriest Theodore (Rafanovich) to meet him. They had not met before. Fr. Theodore had no bishop and asked Archbishop Anthony to take him under his

omophorion.

Metropolitan E. writes: "I accompanied Fr. Theodore on this visit to

Kiev as his closest disciple. The meeting was touching. When Fr. Theodoresaw Vladyka, he fell on his knees and went up to Vladyka in tears, sobbing before him like a child. Fr. Theodore was ill, and he could perform the services

only sitting down. But when he served together with Vladyka Anthony, he stood throughout the whole service. Vladyka tonsured him and made him a hegumen, then an archimandrite. When we returned home, Fr. Theodore was in such spiritual rapture that said:

"'This is no earthly man. I am weak and sick and I stood throughout the whole service.'

"That was how the meeting between our Fr. Theodore and Vladyka Anthony took place. During it he recognized Vladyka by the Grace of God."

Fr. Theodore's large Belorussian flock also came under Archbishop Anthony's omophorion. Vladyka lived most of the time in Kiev, but he visited his flock in Belorussia about four times.

Vladyka Anthony ordained about 25 priests for the Catacomb Church. He carefully examined and tested all the candidates. Thus before raising Metropolitan E. to the rank of hieromonk he tested him for about five years. Once, not long before his ordination, he invited him to come to him to prepare for Communion at the end of the week. On the appointed Saturday, Fr. E. arrived in Kiev after a long journey. At the door he was met by an abbess, who put a strange question to him:

"E., why have you come here?"

Out of humility he did not begin to explain that he had come at the invitation of Vladyka, but said:

"Matushka, bless me to go to Vladyka and take his blessing."

At that moment the archbishop himself came out and asked in amazement:

"E., why have you come here?"

"Bless me, Vladyka, I'm going back," replied E. And, receiving Vladyka's blessing, he went back.

Soon after this incident Archbishop Anthony ordained E. as a hieromonk:

"From Fr. Theodore I received the novitiate. Earthly life became foreign for me. From Vladyka Anthony I received monasticism and then the priesthood. When Vladyka Anthony decided to make me, the sinner, a hieromonk, he took me to himself for two years to learn how to serve as a priest and

learn everything that a hieromonk needs to know...

"I was twenty years under the guidance of Archbishop Anthony. I the sinner consider myself unworthy to have been led by an elder of such high

life. He spent all his nights in prayer, and I watched in reverence, recognizing my unworthiness."

Archbishop Anthony blessed his clergy to receive people from the Moscow Patriarchate into the Catacomb Church through repentance. He also ordered

that those who had been baptized in the Moscow Patriarchate in an incorrect manner - through pouring - should be baptized again by full threefold immersion. He did not bless the other sacraments performed in the Moscow Patriarchate to be repeated, explaining that their external form had not been distorted and they had been performed in accordance with the Orthodox rite.

Metropolitan E. relates that when Archbishop Anthony arrived in Kievin about 1958, he was sought out by a novice nun of a certain Bishop Sergius

whom Vladyka had never met. Bishop Sergius served in secret. For this he was persecuted by the authorities. When they learned of his arrival in a certain town, they planned to arrest him. At this time he was accompanied by this

novice-nun. She advised him to shave off his beard so as to put off his pursuers. For some time he wavered, because he would have to abstain from

serving the Liturgy until his beard grew again, so as not to scandalize the believers. In the end, however, he shaved off his beard, took a staff in his hand and put on a hat. Meanwhile, matushka put on some lipstick and high-heeled shoes. Then, arm in arm, they went onto the street, down the road and left the town without being hindered.

Several years later, the novice was arrested by the KGB.

"You deceived us then," they said, referring, it would seem, to the above incident.

After five years in prison, Bishop Sergius felt the approach of death. The day of his death was revealed to him. He summoned the camp commandantand said to him:

"At Pascha (on such-and-such a day) I am going to the Lord. Do not stop my spiritual children from burying me and chanting my funeral service."

He gave his novice a command concerning his mitre: "Give this mitre to Archbishop Anthony. Seek him out in Kiev and go under his spiritual direction. He is a real, truly Orthodox pastor."

On the day indicated by him he died. After his death, the nun was released and found Archbishop Anthony. She gave him the mitre which Bishop Sergius had entrusted to her. Archbishop Anthony smiled, shook his head and received it from her in silence. This nun stayed with Vladyka until his death. He bought her a house in Armavir, in which she lived from that time. After the death of Archbishop Anthony, she was served by his hieromonks.

Vladyka is known to have cast out demons. Once he was casting unclean spirits out of a sick nun. After his prayer there suddenly rang out groans and weeping.

The second incident took place at the Great Vespers for Palm Sunday.

When they were singing the verses for "Lord, I have cried," the demon-possessed Anna, who was present at the service, cried out:

"Where am I? Oh, so much holiness... They're singing and singing...

They're singing 'Christ is risen!' I'll free the servant of God Anna, I'll free her and I'll smother Martha. Why have they sent me where they're praying - they must send me where they're not praying!"

(Martha was a fortune-teller who sent unclean spirits into people.)

During this noise Archbishop Anthony came out of the altar and laid his cross upon her. At 11.45 Anna became so bad they had to lay her on a bed and tie her arms up.

"Go, go," she said. Finally, she said to her child's godfather, who was holding her by the hand: "Let go my hand - I'll come out by myself!"

Then he said: "Come out, demon!"

And he came out...

Archbishop Anthony had the gift of prophecy. Those who knew him say that everything he foretold was fulfilled in time.

He was often in dangerous situations. Protopriest I. remembers that Vladyka had the custom, before a service, of putting several small piecesof paper under the altar covering. One of them was blank, but on the others,

which were divided by the sign of the cross into four parts, he wrote where he needed to go after the service on that day. After the service, without

looking, he would take out the first piece of paper that came to hand and, if it was blank, he would go nowhere that day. Acting in this way he often escaped danger.

Deaconess A. and Schema-nun M. tell the story of how Vladyka Anthony

became invisible. He was once walking with two believers along a street. The police came up to them and arrested his two companions, but in some incomprehensible way did not notice Vladyka himself. The arrested people had his things - his cross, Gospel and hierarchical vestments.

"Where did you get these?" - they were asked during the search.

"I'm taking them to the monastery. I've made a vow that if my son gets better, I'll give them to the people there," - explained one of them.

They were let go. On coming to the place where they had been walking

with Vladyka, and not finding him there, they began to weep. That evening

Archbishop Anthony unexpectedly came to them. To their amazed questions:

"Where did you get to? Where were you?"

- he replied: "Oh, now where was I? Where was I?!..."

The same nuns recounted another story from his life. Once, having gone to a certain town and hired a taxi at the station, he sensed that he was being followed. The mistress of the house where he was going was already waiting for him. He came to her and said:

"Say that I came to the wrong address."

Then he quickly left the house and again got into the taxi and said to the driver:

"Take me back to the station."

On the way the driver left the road and went to a kiosk to buy some cigarettes. At that moment a police car went past in the direction of the

woman's house. Having arrived at her place, the police asked:

"An old man came here. Where has he gone?"

"He came to the wrong address," she replied as agreed.

Meanwhile Vladyka arrived at the station and left the town.

It is known that Vladyka practised confession by correspondence. On receiving a letter of confession from a penitent he absolved him from his

sins and sent a letter of absolution in reply in the form of a leaflet with a type-written text.

During his life Vladyka suffered much from slander. Once he was accused of being a name-worshipper - a member of a heretical sect which worshipped the name of God. Metropolitan E. writes:

"When rumours spread that Archbishop Anthony was a name-worshipper, I, the sinful one, asked him about this, and he replied meekly and humbly that he drew people out of name-worshipping into Orthodoxy, and explained to me what this heresy was. Therefore I am a living witness of his actions and life. I am not worthy to loose the straps of his shoes. Let many slander him, but I pray God not to let me fall into madness and say something similar or agree with it...

"Our Archbishop Anthony was very strict about serving. He never left

anything out and was always vested fully like a soldier of Christ. He never performed a single service or need without wearing his omophorion. I am a

witness of this. When he came out to speak with the people, he always wore his epitrachelion."

The last words of the metropolitan refer to the accusation made against Vladyka Anthony that he carried out "many ordinations without an omophorion or service-book..."

There were also people who accused him of having children in his passport who came into the world only after he became a bishop. But it has already been explained above why Vladyka carried this passport and whose children were inscribed in it...

Once God worked a terrible sign in defence of Vladyka from similar attacks. A nun slandered Vladyka, and tried to turn his flock against him. Some people, seduced by the authority of the nun, were inclined to believe her. But there were others who said:

"Fear God - do not say false things about Vladyka. God is not mocked. He will punish you for these words!"

"But look - he is not punishing me! See...?!" replied the nun boldly.

The next day after these words were spoken, a lorry travelling at great speed ran the nun over and killed her. Moreover, her monastic prayer-rope

flew away and was found far from her body. Also at a distance from her body was found her monastic paramon and cross, which monks and nuns always wear on their breasts under their clothes tied across the shoulders and around the body. In an inexplicable fashion it had flown away over her breast and head. Thus did God Himself deprive of monasticism her who instead a humble fulfilling of the vows she had made at her tonsure, occupied herself in slandering a true archpastor and sowing scandal in his flock.

Archbishop Anthony tried to imbue his flock with his truly Orthodox Faith. He was arrested for the first time, in actual fact, for defending the dogma of baptism by full immersion, and he zealously watched that baptisms were carried out by his clergy in the same fashion - only by threefold immersion. He warned them that he would defrock any of them who dared to baptize any healthy person by pouring.

Vladyka Anthony always served on feasts, and if he had to go anywhere, he always measured out his time in such a way that he would without fail serve on a feastday.

When he was already quite old, he still served zealously. Once in winter he was going to serve some sick people. It was a long journey. He had to go along some railway lines. Completely exhausted, he sat down and would probably have frozen to death if someone passing by had not noticed him, taken him into a booth and warmed him up with some boiled potatoes.

"Tell me," asked the passer-by, "where can I drop you off?"

But Vladyka replied: "Thank you! I must be on my way."

And he set off towards the people who were waiting for him.

When, as a very old man, Vladyka visited his catacomb flock in Byelorussia, he could move only with difficulty. So some young girls hitched themselves onto a sledge and carried him in it.

"I've been pulled along by horses, deer and dogs in my life," he joked, "and now I'm being pulled by people!"

Vladyka Anthony considered that one should not impose heavy penanceson people in our time because, as he said, life itself for a True Orthodox Christian in the Soviet land is a penance. He said that according to the sayings of the Holy Fathers, people in our times are saving themselves, and will continue to do so, largely through standing firm in the True Faith. So he gave a penance if he learned that any of his spiritual children had entered into communion of prayer with the Moscow Patriarchate.

In connection with this, Metropolitan E. has recounted the following

story. There was a Mordovian woman from Vladyka Anthony's flock who went to Leningrad and there, on going into a patriarchal church, was present at the service at the moment when a hierarch of the Moscow Patriarchate was being vested.

"Well, how was your trip?" Vladyka Anthony asked her when she returned home.

She told him of her impressions from going into the church of the Moscow Patriarchate, and especially from the ceremony of the vesting of the hierarch.

"O, how beautiful it was!" she said at the end of her story.

"I excommunicate you for half a year. Now you'll learn what it's like to go there!" replied Archbishop Anthony.

Three of Vladyka Anthony's priests came from Vyatka province: Fr. Nicetas (Ignatiev), Fr. Athanasius and Fr. Gurias. Fr. Gurias was killed for the faith in a hospital in the middle of the 1980s. At the time of his death 15 hieromonks and several very large parishes were under his omophorion, all of whom were blessed to continue serving by Metropolitan Philaret, first-hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, in December, 1977. On August

2/15, 1990 a document of the ROCA signed by Bishop Hilarion reversed this

act, declaring that Archbishop Anthony was not a canonical hierarch. However, Bishop Hilarion later declared that he regretted participating in this decision, which was made on the basis of incorrect information provided by the ROCA Archbishop Lazarus (Zhurbenko) of Odessa.

The explanation for this false information is perhaps to be found inthe fact that Vladyka Anthony refused to ordain the future Archbishop Lazarus

when he was still only a monk. Metropolitan E. writes: "He three times asked to meet Vladyka and receive the rank of hieromonk from him. But Vladyka Antony three times refused. Then he went to Vladyka Seraphim (Pozdeyev), who received him, gave him hospitality and sent him away with nothing. Then Lazarus, knowing all the unrighteousness of renovationism [the Soviet Moscow Patriarchate], went to the town of Irkutsk, where he received the rank of

hieromonk from Bishop Benjamin. After this he served for a time in the patriarchate, and then went into hiding. When the KGB came upon him with the people, Lazarus came out and showed them his documents, after which the KGB said: 'This is our man.' But when the KGB came upon our people and priests, they put them in prisons and camps."

Archbishop Anthony reposed in the Lord on March 31, 1976 in Kiev. He

once said to a nun:

"My whole life has been a martyrdom".

And even his burial was carried out only with difficulty. The coffin

would not go through the doors, and they had to drag it out through the window. During the burial it was raining and they had to carry the coffin

closed. Vladyka lay in it vested in his hierarchical vestments. He was buried in the cemetery at Buchi, near Kiev. His remains rest there to this day.

Above the grave, which is surrounded by an iron fence, stands a beautiful cross. When his spiritual children come to it, they feel peace and signs of the spiritual presence of Vladyka Anthony.

His prophecies continue to be fulfilled in the lives of his spiritual

children. They understand their hidden meaning in their own experience only after Vladyka's death. His spiritual children express their gratitude and

spiritual devotion to Vladyka Anthony in verses which they themselves compose and which contain spiritual power and unfeigned love for their archpastor.

Metropolitan E. writes: "In our difficult times he was a good shepherd for the Orthodox Christians. He did not abandon his sheep, but comforted them, fed them and taught them. He always said to us that we must not fear death, if we are required to die for our Orthodox Faith. His labours were

boundless, and he served as a model of the Christian life. He completely gave himself to the service of God and the people. When Archbishop Anthony was

released from the camps, he did not go to the parishes of the official Church, but chose the catacombs and lived in them with his people to the very end of his life."

(Sources: Priest Basil Redechkin, from the witness of Metropolitan E., Igumen E., Protopriest I., Deaconess A., Schema-Nun M., servant of God Tatyana, V. Leonichev; Schema-Monk Epiphanius (Chernov), manuscript; R. Nikitin, personal communication; Bishop Ambrose (von Sievers), personal communication and "Istoki i svyazi katakombnoj Tserkvi v Leningradye i oblasti (1922-92 g.g.)", a report read at the conference entitled "Istoricheskij put' pravoslaviyav Rossii poslye 1917g.", held in St. Petersburg on June 1-3, 1993; "Katakombnaya Tserkov': Tainij Sobor 1948g.", Russkoye Pravoslaviye, N 5 (9), 1997, pp. 17, 23; "Pis'ma katakombnogo episkopa A. k F.M.", Russkoye Pravoslaviye, NN 1-4, 1995-96; I. Osipova, "Khotelos' by vsyekh poimenno nazvat'", Moscow, 1992, pp. 161, 193; Za Khrista Postradavshiye, Moscow: St. Tikhon's Theological Institute, 1997, p. 327; I.I. Osipova, "Skvoz' Ogn' Muchenij i Vody Slyoz", Moscow: Serebryanniye Niti, 1998, p. 257; "I Vrata Adova nye Odoleyut yeya", Suzdal'skiye Eparkhial'niye Vedomosti,N 5, September-November, 1998, pp. 39-40, N 6, December, 1998 - February, 1999, pp. 37-40; Bishop A.; Bishop Hilarion of Manhattan)