Johann von Gardner

Who was Johann von Gardner?

Johann von Gardner or in Russian Ivan Alekseevich Gardner Иван Алексеевич Гарднер was a Russian-born Slavic musicologist, best known in the English language for his published work on Russian church singing.

Von Gardner was born into a family of Scottish ancestry on the family estate near Sevastopol, Crimea. He graduated Orthodox Theology at the University of Belgrade, after that he worked for a while as teacher in the Seminary of Cetinje and later on he took monastic vows and was given the name Filipp. In 1931 he was ordained priest serving in the Eastern part of Slovakia, between 1934 and 1938 he was the head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem. After his return he served a few years as parish priest in Berlin before he was consecrated bishop for the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile in June 1942. On this occasion he was given the title "Bishop of Potsdam" thus being mainly responsible for the Russian Orthodox parishes of Berlin and Vienna. Yet in 1944 he had to leave holy orders and married shortly after - the exact circumstances how all this happened are not quite clear.