The museum houses a photograph of Vladyka Arseny (Bryantsev). The saint was holding the honorary office of Archbishop of Kazan and Sviyazhsk for about six years: from October 1897 to February 1903.

He paid special attention to the conversion of the Chuvash, baptized Tatar, Mari, and Udmurt peoples to the Orthodox faith. At the same time, in his speeches, he emphasized respect for the native culture and language of each nation. The archbishop said that missionaries should not seek to “Russify” their parishioners, and that the main goal of priests was to bring people to God.

Regarding the study of the Russian language, he expressed the following opinion:

Working in a multinational region, Vladyka supported the system of Professor Nikolai Ilminsky, a famous teacher and intellectual who spoke Tatar, Chuvash, Mari, Udmurt and other languages. The essence of Ilminsky’s system was that he adapted church books and the structure of educational institutions to the national characteristics of each nation.

When translating into Tatar, Ilminsky did not use the Tatar literary language with Arabic graphics: it was completely incomprehensible to the inhabitants of remote villages. The teacher translated the books of Holy Scripture into the colloquial Kryashen dialect, using the Russian alphabet.

In the middle of the 19th century, he helped open a school for baptized Tatar children: baptized boys were taught Orthodox prayers in their native language and read from an alphabet book that had been specially written for them. Later, the children returned to their villages and preached the Word of God by singing prayers that were understandable for their fellow villagers.

This school became the model for similar establishments in other places. Teachers tried to hire people of the same nationality as their students, while Russian teachers were required to know the children’s native language. Ilminsky also tried to adapt the educational system to the idiosyncrasy of the nation: two years of training in the native language and two years in Russian, mobile schools for nomadic peoples, boarding schools for the Kazakh population.

Archbishop Arseny supported these ideas and helped spread them after the death of Ilminsky. In addition, he completed the initiative of his predecessor, Vladyka Vladimir (Petrov): he transformed the missionary courses at the Kazan Theological Academy. About 15 clergymen, who could speak Tatar or Chuvash, graduated from the Academy each year. Until 1907, it was the only educational institution in Russia, where a person, who did not come from a clergy background but had secondary education, could become a priest.