The Parish of the Three Holy Hierarchs and the Icon

Saint-Photius Brotherhood

The Brotherhood was founded by Alexis Stavrowsky probably in 1923 ... The young Vladimir Lossky took an active part on his arrival in Paris in 1924 ... Apparently from 1925 some students of the new Saint Sergius Institute joined them, among whom were Nicolas Sakharov, Vsevolod Palachkowsky as well as Eugraph Kovalevsky who also attracted his two brothers Maxime and Pierre. They were convinced of the providential aspect of the dispersion of Orthodox people throughout Europe that was caused by the revolution: "God wanted the Orthodox emigration to Europe so that it could bring the light of Orthodoxy, which had lost interest in the West a thousand years. earlier". Orthodoxy can alone "draw out the tradition of the undivided Church from ever-living latent local sources, buried since the schism under historic misunderstandings" « … Very soon, the Members of the Brotherhood (...) found that, to build on the tradition inherited from the Apostles, the only possible attitude was an acute awareness of canons, not because of blind rigour, but for greater discernment, a clear-sightedness with no compromises of any kind. This is why on the basis of common agreement, in 1931, the Saint-Photius Brotherhood refused to leave the Russian Church, not wishing to involve in its decision any political or even merely human consideration, such as the impossibility of communicating with the Patriarchate at that time ».

Here is the manifesto of the Brotherhood

« We proclaim and confess that the Orthodox Church is the one true Church of Christ;
That She is not solely Eastern, but She is the Church of all the peoples of the earth - that of the East, the West, the North and the South;
That each people, each nation has its personal right in the Orthodox Church, in her autocephalous, canonical constitution, in the preservation of her customs, rites, and liturgical language. United in canonical dogmas and principles, the Churches espouse the people of each locality.
Nous nous opposons et nous condamnons toute tentative :
1) to limit the Orthodox Church;
2) to separate the Churches one from another;
3) to submit one Church to another more powerful Church.
We confess unity in multiplicity and freedom, in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. »

This is what Vladimir Lossky had to say at the time on the patronage of Saint Photius: « The aim of the Brotherhood is defined in paragraph one of its statutes as serving the universal triumph of Orthodoxy… It was not by chance that the name of Saint Photius, this great defender of Orthodoxy, became for us the symbol of our service to the Church. In the face of the heterodox world and dogmatic uncertainty of many Orthodox people, it has to firmly confess Orthodoxy - the unique universal Truth, from which the Roman patriarchate has separated… Christian unity can be achieved only by confessing Orthodoxy which must be reborn in the West. Time has passed and in the new historical perspective, the great Photius, so unjustly forgotten by the Orthodox, appears again, in his crucial policy, at the crossroads of the historical destiny of the Church and of the world. »

The Brotherhood has thus two main objectives: "to revive the ecclesial conscience of Orthodox emigrants and bring the West back to the Orthodox Tradition while respecting its underlying identity, in a word, to give rise in France to genuine Western Orthodoxy ". Let Vladimir Lossky speak again, in a statement to the Brotherhood on 18 June 1937, when he gives an outline of the history of the movement:

« In 1926, the Brotherhood acknowledged the necessity for Orthodox people residing in the West to study and venerate the orthodox traditions of the soil on which, by Divine Providence, we have to live. The maxim "everything that is prior to 1054 is ours" was proclaimed. People studied the lives of saints, pilgrimages were organised and a calendar of the Orthodox Saints of France was started.

« In 1927, when Evgraph Kovalevsky became the head of the Saint Irenaeus section, he formulated the major goal of this subdivision of the Brotherhood as an effort aimed at the emergence of Western Orthodoxy. From then on, the necessity of restoring the Western rite in Orthodoxy became manifest.