Autocephalist Movement
In the 1900s, during the heated debates concerning the status of the Georgian church, he emerged as one of the leaders of the Georgian autocephalist movement, calling for the restoration of the autocephalous (independent) Orthodox Church of Georgia abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811. Waged for the most part in the press and church committees, the struggle peaked during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and occasionally evolved into violent clashes. The Georgian bishops pointed out that under the Russian exarches sent down from St. Petersburg to run Georgia’s ecclesiastic affairs, the Georgian church lost some 140 million rubles’ worth of property and estates; Church schools had been closed down, and the use of Georgian in the liturgy discouraged; twenty episcopal sees lay vacant and seven hundred and forty parishes were without pastors. The Georgians sent an appeal to the tsar, but nothing came of this. Autocephaly was denied. The conference of Georgian clergy which met at Tbilisi in 1905 was dispersed by police and several "autocephalists" were arrested. Ambrosius was banned from celebrating the liturgy and confined in the Troitsky Monastery at Ryazan. The struggle culminated in 1908, when the Russian Exarch of Georgia, Archbishop Nikon, was murdered on 28 May at his residence in Tbilisi by unidentified assassins, allegedly by a Georgian nationalist. No one was ever tried or convicted for the murder, and although the links of the Georgian autocephalists to the crime remained unclear, the initial police investigation concluded they had been behind the murder of Nikon, and the Russian authorities used the situation as a pretext for removing Georgian bishops from their posts. Ambrosius was also suspended from serving and deported to Russia. He was acquitted in 1910, but it was not until the 1917 events when he was allowed to return to Georgia. Although the Georgian autocephalist movement earned worldwide sympathies, the dispute dragged on indecisively for years, until the outbreak of World War I relegated it temporarily to the background.
The 1917 February Revolution in the Russian Empire and the ensuing turmoil in both church and state gave an opportunity to the Georgian Church to reassert its autocephalous status. On March 12, 1917, a group of Georgian clergymen proclaimed the autocephaly of their Church and elected Bishop Kyrion as Catholicos Patriarch. The Most Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize the move, and the result was a break in communion between the two Churches. Ambrosius was soon consecrated Metropolitan of Chkondidi, western Georgia, and then transferred to Abkhazia.
Read more about this topic: Ambrosius Of Georgia
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