Abstract
The article, part of a project to publish the diary of Metropolitan Isidor (chairperson of the Holy Synod), demonstrates the impact of aging on Church administration: as in the secular domain, top administrators remained in service well beyond their prime, with many subject to disease, disability, even dementia. A gerontocracy thus came to prevail in the Church as it attempted to grapple with enormous challenges; the old regime was, in fact, really old and incapable of solving the plethora of critical problems facing the Church on the eve of revolution.