Agapit biography

In that is the spiritual spirit, the spirit of folk, that heart is a Russian man. The system of upbringing and education created by K. May provides for the mutual respect and trust of teachers and students, constant interaction with the family, the desire of teachers to take into account and develop the individual abilities of each student, and teach them how to think on their own.

All this, combined with high quality education, allowed a year after year to release highly moral, versatile young men from the walls of the school, ready for work, useful for society1. At the end of the school, Mikhail Mikhailovich enters the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. In the year was mobilized into the army. Having passed the accelerated officer courses, he served as an assistant to the battery commander in the Life Guards of the 1st Mortile Artillery Division, first in the rank of warrant officer, then-in the rank of lieutenant.

In July, during the July Office of the Russian Army, he was seriously wounded in the head and was sent to a hospital in Petrograd. In the year, Mikhail Taube returns to study at the university, however, in the year again at the front - at the headquarters of the Western Front of the Red Army. This circumstance should not surprise - during the Civil War, a lot of royal officers served in the Red Army.

It is difficult to determine when Mikhail Mikhailovich felt the need for spiritual life, however, without a doubt, we can say that Christianity was organically woven into his life from an early age. In the year, he enters a volunteer at the Petrograd Theological Institute - an Orthodox educational institution created instead of the abolished Petrograd Theological Academy.

At the same time, the father of Mikhail, Mikhail Ferdinandovich creates a circle of the Orthodox intelligentsia "Sunday", which lasted up to a year. Absolutely, Mikhail Mikhailovich took part in the activities of this circle. According to other sources in the year, Mikhail Taube came to Optina Deserts and received the position of keeper of the monastery library. At this time, the Optina seniority, under the repressions of a godless state, experienced its sunset.

But as in the XIX century, when the Russian intelligentsia, which discovered Orthodoxy for itself, sought to join the spiritual wisdom of the Optina old age, the godless 20th century was no exception. The brilliantly educated Russian intellectual Mikhail Taube also searched in the Optinsky olderness of what he did not get in ordinary life. In Optina Puskoye, Mikhail Mikhailovich becomes the spiritual child of the elder Nectaria, who secretly tonsures him into monasticism with the name Agapit1.

According to other sources, the monastic tonsure of Mikhail Tauba was performed by the Monk Elder Nikon Belyaev. The exact date of tonsure, unfortunately, is still unknown. In the year, the monastery finally closes in its place on the initiative of Lidia Vasilievna Vyshchuk, the future new martyr Schimonakhini Augusta is organized by the Optina Desert Museum. Mikhail Taube becomes an employee of this museum.

Almost immediately, the Soviet government begins to interfere with the activities of the Museum. In January of the year, the labor protection commission on far -fetched prosecution conducts an audit in the monastery. In April, Mikhail Taube was arrested for the first time and leaves free after a few days. The existence of the Optina Museum was not included in the plans of the Soviet regime and in the year it was closed.

After dismissal, he lived in his homeland in Petrograd, then near Optina. He earned a living by teaching foreign languages, from which he knew the French, German, English, Italian and Latin. The very attitude of Father Agapit to his arrest is characterized by an extract from the investigative case, which read that “the monk Agapit Taube went in secular clothes, and when they came to arrest him, he happily put on a cassock and went to prison with a Christian confessor, as if he were waiting for this moment” 1.

Subsequently, one of the Solovita camps left a description of the monk Agapit: I recently received the news of the death of the Optina confessor Hieromonk Nikon. I met him on the way to Solovki ...

Then there was another monk with him, also of the Optina desert ... Someone Mikhail Taube. A relatively young man, an intellectual ... with a higher secular education. They both were ... a very good monastic mood - these were people, so to speak, of the Optina spiritual culture .... Mikhail Agapit was in the appearance of a tall, thin, young intelligent man, a brunette, in a monastic robe ...

Always intelligent, aged, always bright in spirit, they were true Orthodox monks ”1. At the end of the camp period, a special meeting at the collegium of the OGPU was sentenced to expulsion to the Northern Territory, where he lived in the village of Anisimovo. After returning from the conclusion of Fr. Agapit settled in the city of Oryol, where at that time there lived many exile and served imprisonment in the camps.

Sometimes he came to Moscow, where he met with acquaintances on the Optina Desert. At the beginning of the year about. Agapit fell ill: he had a tumor in his tongue, and his friends offered to go to the hospital.He went to Moscow, the operation was done, but the doctors warned that there could be consequences, and after a while he discovered a new tumor, it was too late to do the operation.

Before the last departure to the eagle, he forever said goodbye to all his acquaintances - he said goodbye simply, calmly, as if only leaving everyone, so that if God blesses, to meet, but in a different life1. Suffering about. Agapit, during the disease, increasingly increased, he could no longer say nor to speak, but at the same time he did not lose his vigor and, while there were strength, went to the temple.

When about. Agapita needed something, he wrote a note to the old lady-hostess who lived on the other half of the house, through the wall from him. He warned her that when he became very bad, he would knock her. Agapit lies, not taking his eyes off the icon of the Mother of God. Neither pain nor fear distorted him. He did not moan, only his breath became less and less ... ".

Subsequently, she said: "He endured his suffering so light that she prays for him as a saint." The monk Agapit died on July 18 according to the definition of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of December 27, the name of Agapit Optinsky is included in the Cathedral of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russian111. Baron Baron Mikhail Alexandrovich Taube.

Petersburg school of Karl May. There. Orthodox St. Tikhonovsky Theological Institute. Brotherhood in the name of the All -Missary Savior. Article by Jer. Plato Rozhkov. If you find.