The Nizhny Novgorod Theological Seminary was an Orthodox educational institution that operated in Nizhny Novgorod. The seminary building, constructed in 1831, stood on a square that subsequently came to be known as Seminary Square). In the pre-revolutionary period, the seminary was one of the principal centers of religious education in the region, producing a number of notable figures in Nizhny Novgorod public life.
The Building and Its Location
The seminary occupied a building erected in 1831, which gave its name to Seminarskaya Square — a small open space in front of its main façade, later merged with the Blagoveshchenskaya Square. A church stood within the seminary's courtyard. At various times the institution received imperial visits from Emperor Alexander II and Nicholas II. After the Revolution the theological school was closed; the building was taken over by the Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy, which occupies it to this day.
Graduates and Faculty
The seminary was graduated by educator and local historian Vasily Ivanovich Vinogradov (1856–1902) — "among the top students"; upon finishing his studies he chose a post as a village schoolteacher over continuing his education at a theological academy or university. Archpriest Fyodor Vladimirsky (1843–1932), one of the well-known figures of Arzamas at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, also completed the seminary's course of study, after which he taught the Law of God at a primary school and subsequently became dean of the First Arzamas Church District. Philosophy and psychology at the seminary were taught by Nikolay Mikhaylovich Bogolyubov, a Master of Theology — the father of mathematician and theoretical physicist Nikolay Nikolaevich Bogolyubov (1909–1992), who later became a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Sources
Based on materials from articles (3)
Fyodor Vladimirsky, Bogolyubov Nikolai Nikolaevich, Vinogradov Vasily Ivanovich