Florensky Pavel

Florensky Pavel  (1883-1937), Theologian, expert on scholasticism and natural sciences, engineer. He was born to the aristocratic Tbilisian family of railway engineer Aleksandr Florensky and Salome (Olga) Safarova (Sapareli) in the town of Yevlakh, Elizavetpolsk Province (territory of presentday Azerbaijan). Several months after Pavel’s birth, the Florensky family returned to Tbilisi (in Yevlakh, Aleksandr Florensky was working on the construction of a railway branch). In 1899 P. Florensky graduated from Tbilisi Classical School No. 2 and in 1900, he entered the Department of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. After graduation, he was invited to give lectures at the university but P. Florensky, being a devoted religious person, chose to continue his studies at the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy. His spiritual mentors were Episcope Anton Kartveli and Monk Isidore (Bagration-Gruzinsky). P. Florensky dedicated to them his work The Salt of the Earth. In 1908 – 19 he wrote a number of compositions on the topics of philosophy, culture and religion. His work The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: an Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters is considered the masterpiece of Orthodox theology; in Europe, it was viewed as an achievement in the field of existential philosophy. P. Florensky was recognized  as the greatest religious thinker. Reared in Georgia and acquainted with Georgian culture, P. Florensky wrote compositions on the medieval Georgian culture, architecture, iconography and philosophy of religious worship.

In 1911 P. Florensky was ordained firsta deacon, then – a priest. In 1914, he was granted the degree of the Master of Theology and was assigned to the position of the Professor of Moscow Ecclesiastic Academy. In 1918, the Moscow Ecclesiastic Academy was closed. Being deprived of religious service, P. Florensky dived into the scientific work; in 1928 he was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod; in 1933 he was arrested again and sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment. Finally, they substituted his 10-year imprisonment by execution. On December 8, 1937, P. Florensky was executed by shooting.