BULGAKOV, MAKARII

BULGAKOV, MAKARII, Metropolitan of Moscow, historian, dogmatician (1816–1882). Mikhail Bulgakov studied at the Belgorod Seminary and the Kiev Theological Academy where he received his master’s degree for the book, The History of the Kiev Theological Academy (1843), during which time he was tonsured Makarii and accepted the chair in Russian and Church history. He was made professor at the Petersburg Theological Academy and received his doctorate of theology for his published lectures, Introduction to Orthodox Theology (1847), soon followed by a five-volume Dogmatic Theology (1851–53). A member of the Academy of Sciences (1854), he was consecrated Bishop of Tambov (1857), transferred to Kharkov (1859), to Vilna and Lithuania (1868), and finally to the metropolitanate of Moscow (1879). He wrote a condemnatory History of the Russian Schism of Old Belief (see Old Believers) in 1854, but changed his opinion of the controversy in volume six of his monumental history. That work, The History of the Russian Church (1857–82), was left unfinished in the thirteenth volume, and covered the period from 992 to 1667 as the first major history of the Russian Church. The appendixes to the volumes reveal important historical documents discovered by the Metropolitan in his research. Makarii is a good representative of 19th-c. Russian theologians, relying on Scripture and Holy Tradition (q.v.), but his history has been criticized for reflecting the official government position of Ober-Procurator Protasov (see Russian Orthodox Church).