Background
Aleksey Pavlovich Khrapovitsky was born in Russia on 17 March 1863 in Vatagino (near Novgorod), the son of a landowner.
Aleksey Pavlovich Khrapovitsky was born in Russia on 17 March 1863 in Vatagino (near Novgorod), the son of a landowner.
He studied theology at Saint St. Petersburg Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1885. He taught briefly at the Academy where he had studied, and then at the Moscow Theological Academy (1890-1894) and as Rector of the Kazan Theological Academy (1894-1900).
In that year he became a monk and took the name Antony in honor of Saint Antony the Roman of Novgorod. During the latter period he was appointed vicar-bishop of Kazan (1897). In 1900 Antony was made bishop of Ufa, and in 1902 bishop of Volhynia and Zhitomir.
By 1911, Father Grigory Petrov called Bishop Antony, "a defender of courts-martial and executions, a hater of foreigners and non-Orthodox, and a collaborator of Pobedonostsev."
Two years later he became bishop of Kharkov, with the title of arch-bishop.
After the February revolution of 1917 he was among those who argued successfully for the restoration of the Moscow Patriarchate. After Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized.
He became known as a polemicist who argued against papal supremacy. In the 1920s and 1930s he published in Russian many books on theology and literature.
Bishop Antony died on 10 August 1936.
A nine-volume Russian biography by bishop Nicon (Rklitsky) was published in New York, 1956-1962.