Abstract
The year 1855 marked the beginning of the Great Reforms, not only in the Russian state and society, but also in the Orthodox church. To many contemporaries, lay and clerical, conservative and liberal, it seemed that the church, like other institutions of imperial Russia, needed radical reform. Its problems were legion, its resources meager, its influence waning. Diocesan administration suffered from venality, malfeasance, and arbitrariness; the seminaries were a shambles, afflicted with poverty and pedagogical disarray; the parish clergy had become a virtual caste, impoverished, isolated, and disparaged.