Sunday marked the 45th anniversary of the falling asleep of Alexander Bogolepov (+Aug. 31, 1980), longtime Professor of Canon Law at St. Vladimir's Seminary, and about whom Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote “He remains forever one of the school’s founding fathers.”
Born on January 16, 1886, Prof. Bogolepov graduated from the Riazan Theological Seminary and in 1910 from the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, where he then taught from 1915 until 1922. That year, he was arrested and expelled from Russia by the Communist state. After teaching for several years in Berlin and Prague he was elected Professor of Canon Law at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in 1951, where he also taught Russian and Church Slavonic. He retired from the Seminary twenty years later, in 1971, at the age of 85.
Prof. Bogolepov's legacy endures not only at the Seminary, but throughout the Orthodox Church in North America, as noted by Fr. Alexander in a tribute he penned following Bogolepov's repose.
For all of us at St. Vladimir’s, Alexander Bogolepov was a living link with the traditions and the spirit of the prerevolutionary Russian academic world. His sense of duty, his total dedication to his academic vocation and his exquisite politeness all contributed to creating at the Seminary a climate of mutual respect and cooperation. For him, everything pertaining to teaching was not only important but sacred, and the Seminary was not an ivory tower but, above everything else, a way of serving the Church.
As a member of the Canonical Commission he played an important role in the preparation of the Church Statutes adopted by the All-American Sobor in 1955. His book Toward an American Orthodox Church [1963] had an important impact on the long and difficult process that led to the establishment of the Orthodox Church in America. He also wrote on the liturgical life of the Church and the Orthodox canonical tradition. While in retirement, as Professor emeritus, he remained in close contact with the Seminary, interested in all the details and the progress of the school to which he contributed so much of his work, his heart, and his vision.
For the Seminary community he remains forever one of the school’s founding fathers.
(Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, “In Memoriam,” St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly, Vol. 25, no. 3 [1981].)
This week, the Seminary community served a memorial for Prof. Bogolepov at Three Hierarchs Chapel.
May his memory be eternal!
St. Vladimir's Seminary Faculty in 1958 at Union Theological Seminary in New York: back row (left to right): Boris Ledkovsky, Fr. Paul Schneirla, Veselin Kesich, Archimandrite Firmilian (Ocokoljić), Nicholas Ozerov; front row: Sophie Koulomzin, Alexander Bogolepov, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Nicholas Arseniev, Serge Verhovskoy.
