CHAPTER II
The case of the heretics was investigated by the newly established Holy Synod.
The runaway Cossack, Averian Bespaly, and his sister, Akoulína, were condemned to suffer death on the wheel. The rest, after being flogged and having their nostrils torn, were condemned, the men to forced labour, and the women to weaving-workshops and prison-cloisters.
Tichon, who nearly died of his wound in the prison hospital, was saved by his former protector, James Vilimovitch Bruce. Bruce took him to his house to recover, and interceded with the Bishop of Novgorod, Feofan Prokopovitch, on his behalf. Feofan became interested in Tichon; he wanted to display towards him that pastoral mercy for erring sheep which he was always preaching: “Opponents of the Church ought to be met with kindness and reason, and not as they are nowadays with hard words and alienation.” At the same time he hoped that Tichon’s abjuration of the heresy and his return to the fold of the Orthodox Church would serve as an example to other heretics and Raskolniks.
Bishop Feofan exempted Tichon from flogging and exile, and took him to Petersburg to do penance in his house.
The bishop’s residence was situated on the Aptekarski Island in a dense pine wood. The library was on the ground floor. Noticing Tichon’s love for books, Feofan gave him permission to put his library in order. It was summer and the days were hot. The windows, which looked straight into the wood, were often left open. The peace of the wood mingled with the peace of the library, the rustle of leaves with the rustle of pages. The woodpecker and cuckoo could be heard. A couple of elks were visible in the clearing of the wood; they had been brought here from the Petrovosky Island, which was wild country at that time. A green twilight filled the room. It was cool and pleasant within. Tichon spent whole days rummaging among the books. He felt as if he had returned to the library of James Bruce, and his four years of wanderings were but a dream.
Bishop Feofan was kind to him. He did not press him to return to the Church. There being no Russian catechism, he chose for Tichon’s reading some German theologians; when he was free he would talk with him about what he had read and correct the Protestant teaching according to the Greco-Russian Church. Otherwise Tichon had entire freedom to do what he liked.
Tichon gave himself up to mathematics. In the calm, cold atmosphere of reason he sought repose from those fires of madness; and the nightmares of the Red and the White Death.
He re-read the philosopher Descartes, Leibnitz and Spinoza. And the words of Pastor Glück, would often come back to him: “True philosophy, when read superficially leads away from God; when studied deeply, leads to Him.”