Continuing confusion on the issue of succession and spiritual kinship: [Answer from Prof. Berdnikov] [on his book: “On adoption at baptism and on spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage”]

[Answer from Prof. Berdnikov on his book: “On adoption at baptism and on spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage”] See also: About adoption at baptism and about spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage I.S. Berdnikov Our article entitled: “Concerning some perplexities in the science of Orthodox church law,” published in the 5th book of Readings in the Society of Lovers of Spiritual Enlightenment for 1891 and as a separate brochure, in which we gave an answer to Prof. in the most respectful and harmless terms. Berdnikov's polemic against the historical-dogmatic 1 construction of the church institution of succession and the spiritual kinship arising from it, proposed by us in the study on the 50th chapter of Kormcha, gave rise, almost a year after its appearance, to a new, this time already quite passionate and in literary terms not always decent polemic against us by the same author, published in the April Orthodox book Interlocutor for the past 1892 and in separate prints under the title: “On adoption at baptism and on spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage” 2. The indicated literary qualities of the new polemical article by Prof. Berdnikov, due to the fact that, apart from a perky type and various petty quibbles with our words, sometimes reaching the point of unceremoniously distorting our thoughts, she does not represent anything new in comparison with his previous article, and does not refute any of our justificatory arguments, led us to the decision to stop further explanations with the Kazan learned canonist, who had obviously lost the balance of spirit necessary when solving any scientific question. But yielding to the urgent requests of the venerable Fr. the editor of a real spiritual magazine, in which, as noted above, our first response to Prof. was published. Berdnikov, we take up the pen, although with extreme reluctance, to give this new and, in any case, the last rebuke to our opponent 3 . He begins a new polemic against us by repeating his previous objections to the position we expressed in the study about the 50th chapter of the Helmsman, that the institution of adoption “was created not by church legislation, but by the life of ancient Christian (Roman) society, mainly under the influence of civil laws on adoption, and is an institution of ordinary church law in the proper sense of the word” (p. 176). In view of what Prof. has done to us. Berdnikov’s objections that we apparently recognize succession as a product of social, and not church life of Roman society, in our response article we were forced to state the meaning of the above provision in this way: “Wasn’t Christian Roman society also ecclesiastical and, as such, did not implement church views in its life, i.e. did not create the customary law of the church? Could an institution that we directly call the institution of church law (albeit ordinary) be recognized by an attentive and understanding reader as secular or purely social? (page 8). 4 Prof. Berdnikov recognizes these explanations as nothing more than “phrases” with which we try to “cover up our genuine (i.e., imposed on us) thought about the “origin of adoption from the civil institution of adoption” (p. 8; cf. p. 11) 5 and raises two objections against us - of course, with full conviction of their crushing effect on our “phrases.” The first objection: “If in the above words we were talking about ancient Christian society in the proper sense, i.e. about the Church of Christ, then why did the author explain the expression “ancient Christian” society with the expression “Roman”? After all, in the church, according to the apostle, there is neither Jew nor Greek (p. 7). Here, in addition to forgetting the well-known historical fact that initially the entire, or almost the entire, Church of Christ was within the boundaries of one Roman empire, we see another new example of the author’s confusion of concepts from two different areas of knowledge that have the church as their subject: from the field of church dogmatics and the field of church law 6. From the point of view of church dogma, of course, there can be no talk of differences in the Church of Christ between Jews, Greeks, Romans and other peoples, for the fruits of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, or, in the words of the Apostle, access to the “throne of grace” are equally open to all believers, no matter what nationality they belong to. The position of believers of different nationalities in the field of church law is a different matter. Here, the already well-known apostolic council in Jerusalem had to take into account the difference between the church of Jews and pagans and give special decrees for both (Acts 16). Likewise, in all subsequent periods of its history, the one Ecumenical Church of Christ appears to us to be divided into different national or local churches, and each of these churches, according to the conditions of place and time, creates for itself, on the unchanging basis of general church law, some special legal norms necessary for its local life. This especially needs to be said about the norms of customary church law. A custom, no matter in what society it arises, civil or ecclesiastical, always bears a national or local coloring, even if it expresses a universal human or church conviction in the reasonableness or necessity of one or another legal norm created by the life of a given society itself. Hence the diversity of church customs, especially in the first centuries of Christianity, when the number of legislative norms of church life was still extremely limited and when, therefore, representatives of church consciousness clearly and decisively expressed the idea of ​​the need to observe local customs in cases not determined by the general church canon 7 . Second objection: “If our author recognized adoption, in its origin and meaning, as a purely ecclesiastical institution, then why did he need to say that it was created (we add the words missed by our critic: “the life of ancient Christian Roman society”) under the influence of civil laws on adoption?” (page 8). Of course, we did not say this in order to provoke an unexpected, in its strangeness, argument from the professor of church law: “After all, the Roman civil laws of the ancient period were not baptized into the Christian faith.” To this we will say: our Russian Truth, too, “was never baptized into the Christian faith,” and, however, the barbaric system of virtues and sales adopted in it, as evidenced by one of the most ancient and most important monuments of Russian church law - the charter of Yaroslav, was almost entirely transferred to the sphere of church court. What then? Should a historian of Russian church law therefore ask prof. Berdnikov's permission to talk about the influence of the Russian Truth on the origin and formation of the initial institutions of the Russian church, attested to by the aforementioned church charter - church not only in its scope of action, but also in the participation in its publication of the “Metropolitan of All Rus'”? From the height of his abstract theological principles, Prof. Berdnikov, apparently, imagines the matter of the initial planting of Christianity among different peoples in such a way that wherever preachers of the Gospel appeared and found followers, the entire previous cultural life of the converts immediately turned into a tabulam rasam, on which the new religion wrote its divine laws, and these laws immediately entered into the flesh and blood of the newly baptized people. The divinely inspired preachers of the Gospel themselves did not look at this matter this way: they compared the converts from paganism to a wild olive tree, which, having been grafted into the spiritual life-giving tree of the church, did not lose its natural nature, but was only nourished and ennobled by its grace-filled juices (Rom. 11:17). Not to mention the fact that the history of the church does not know and, according to the necessary laws of human life, could not know such examples of people newly converted to Christianity immediately renouncing their former culture and not bringing its best fruits to the service of the new religion. The least can be said about the highly cultured Roman people. His right (ratio scripta), with the assistance of the church itself (especially in the West), became the common law of all Christian peoples; in many respects it served as a model and, in part, even a direct source for the church’s own law, since its life came into contact with the life of civil society (ecclesia jure romano vivit). Prof. himself Berdnikov, despite his fundamental rejection not only of reality, but also of the possibility of influence of Roman civil laws on church legal formation (since these laws “were not baptized into the Christian faith”), had to admit that “in church practice (IV century) customs were tolerated that arose from the views and laws of the Roman people (understood not in the ecclesiastical sense) and were not even approved from the church point of view (Vasily V. rights. 9.21). Such customs, the author adds, represent a direct parallel to the custom of succession, as portrayed by Prof. Pavlov" (p. 6). These words are remarkable not only as an example of the contradiction of which our critic is capable, but also for their apparently tendentious edition. The author did not find it necessary to state, at least in brief words, the meaning and content of the two rules of Basil the Great that he quoted, but preferred to enclose them in silent parentheses. Having opened these brackets, we will see that in the 9th and 21st rules of Basil the Great we are talking about church custom (ἡ συνήθεια ἡ ἐκκλησιαστική), according to which the husband had the right to divorce his adulterous wife, and the wife She was obliged to continue cohabiting with her unfaithful husband. If a husband entered into a carnal relationship with a stranger who was free from marriage, then, according to church custom, he was subject to penance only as a fornicator, and only for cohabitation with someone else’s wife or for formally entering into marriage with a living wife who was innocent of adultery, he was judged by the church as an adulterer. “The reason for this (the difference between husband and wife), notes St. the father at the end of the 21st rule is not easy to find, but this is the custom.” There is no doubt that the custom referred to here was established in Roman Christian society under the influence of old (pagan) Roman laws on divorce due to the wife's adultery. These laws were motivated by the moral and legal view (characteristic, however, not only of the Romans, but of all peoples of antiquity) that a wife, by her infidelity to her husband, commits a more serious crime than a husband who enters into a relationship with an unmarried stranger. A wife sharing a marital bed with a stranger gives birth to her husband's children, whom he must raise as his own and leave them, along with his legitimate children, a corresponding share of his inheritance. In a word: de jure he is the father of his wife’s adulterous children, according to the rule: pater est, quem nuptiae demonstrant. On the contrary, a husband, entering into a love affair with a stranger (unmarried) woman, according to the view of antiquity, committed only a morally bad act (stuprum), but did not violate anyone’s rights: he did not burden his wife with caring for children who were not the fruit of her womb, and did not give his legitimate children illegitimate co-heirs. Children born outside of marriage, by law, had only a mother, but not a father. These moral and legal views of the ancient world, as can be seen from the rules of Basil the Great that occupy us, found full application in Christian marriage law, especially since they were partly directly justified by some passages of St. scriptures, mainly the Old Testament. Basil the Great himself, although at the beginning of his 9th canon says that “The Lord’s saying that it is not permissible to leave marriage unless the word is adulterous, according to his mind, is equally befitting for both husbands and wives,” but then he cites other sayings of St. scriptures from which it is clear that the law of God judges an adulterous wife more strictly than a husband who is unfaithful to his wife. The husband, according to the exact meaning of these sayings, not only has the right, but even the obligation to divorce his “defiled” wife, no matter how she gives her body to another (Roman civil laws also demanded the same thing; 8 on the contrary, a wife, according to the teaching of the Savior Himself on divorce, is permitted from a union with her husband only if he, having released her without the guilt of adultery, marries another woman and through this (only through this) he himself will “commit adultery” from his wife (Matthew 19:9). As is known, the two rules of Basil the Great forever became the canon of divorce law of the Eastern (Greek) Church. This shows how right Prof. Berdnikov was in trying to show his readers that these rules speak of such a custom of ancient Christians, “arising from the views and laws of the Roman people,” which was only. we tolerate, but do not approve of the church; it is also clear how inappropriately our critic drew a “direct parallel” between the now described custom and the custom of succession among the ancient Christians: the latter was never erected by the ancient church in the canons, i.e. the church never said in its rules that everyone who is baptized must certainly have a recipient or recipients; its rules did not relate to the custom of adoption itself, but to the spiritual kinship arising from it, as an obstacle to marriage. Anyone who is more or less familiar with the history of church law during the period of ecumenical councils will, of course, not, together with the Kazan learned canonist, reject the influence on church legal formation of all those Roman laws of the “ancient period”, which had their source in the natural moral law, as described in the letter of St. Paul to the believers from the same Romans: “The pagans, not having the law (revealed by God), create the law by nature; These, having no law, are a law unto themselves. Those who demonstrate the law are written in their hearts, with a conscience that listens to them (Rom. 2:14–15). Some of these laws were almost literally repeated in the ancient church canons: for example, in the same Basil the Great, who canonized, as we have just seen, a church custom based on the Roman law on divorce due to the wife’s adultery, we find two rules on the invalidity of the marriage of persons under power (alieni juris), directly motivated by the exact words of the sources of Roman civil law: “for the contracts of subjects have nothing solid” (rights 40 and 42). Other similar laws were part of special legal collections assigned exclusively for church practice: for example, the second part of the collection, known in science under the name Collectio constitutionum ecclesiasticarum, contains quite numerous extracts from the Degest and Institutes, presenting to us (with a few exceptions in the Institutes) only ancient (pre-Christian) Roman law. The same extracts with various additions from the same legal books were subsequently adopted into the famous nomocanon in the XIV titles, usually adopted by Patriarch Photius. Finally, if prof. Berdnikov does not completely reject our book about the 50th chapter of the Helmsman or mentally not include it, following his companion Mr. Lashkarev, in the index librorum prohibitorum, then he could find in it one Roman law, about which, perhaps, it is permissible to say that he “was baptized into the Christian faith.” This is precisely the law that contains the definition of marriage. This law, as shown in detail in our mentioned book (p. 42–43), not only was part of various editions of the nomocanon of the Eastern Church, but was also repeated in later Greek confessional books, in which marriage was considered, of course, as one of the church sacraments. But perhaps it was the Roman civil laws on adoption, although they did not include prof. Berdnikov does not indicate anything contrary to Christian morality in relation to church doctrine, yet they were left without any influence on the church institution of succession? Speaking about this influence as a fact that does not require proof, we assumed that the following similarities between civil adoption and church adoption were generally known: 1) As a legal act of adoption, the paternal authority of one person over another was established, which by nature, i.e. by birth he was not his son or daughter: just so, the religious act of receiving from the font of baptism, according to the general Christian view, placed the recipient in the relationship of a spiritual father to what was received or received. 2) Just as, according to Roman law, legal kinship arising from adoption was recognized within certain limits as an obstacle to marriage: so the ancient Christians, even before any laws on spiritual kinship, as an obstacle to marriage, at the request of one moral and religious feeling, which in the general consciousness received the force of a legally binding rule, could not allow marriages between persons who stood in relation to each other in relation to a spiritual father and a spiritual daughter. Anyone who has in mind only these two well-known features of the similarity of a church institution with a civil one, and, moreover, remembers that the latter is older than the first, and that the Romans, turning to Christianity, still remained Romans and lived together with their pagan fellow citizens (meaning the first three centuries of the Christian era 9), will naturally come to the idea that the church institution of succession, created not by church legislation, but by the life of the Christian Roman society, was formed under the influence of Roman civil laws on adoption. But does Prof. Berdnikov admit the reality of these two analogies of the civil institution with the church one and does he see in them evidence of the influence of the former on the formation of the latter? Having carefully read the new critical article of our opponent, we could not find in it data for one definite, i.e. negative answer to these questions. And, firstly, as for the similarity of the civil institution of adoption with the church institution of adoption in the sense that both of them served as sources of two special types of legal kinship, then about this subject Prof. Berdnikov is judged in two. On the one hand, he recognizes that “civil adoption serves as a way to acquire children through a legal act instead of natural birth” (p. 9), and that “following the example of this civil adoption, adoption is classified in the category of legal kinship” (p. 15); on the other hand, it decisively rejects the idea that succession is a way to acquire spiritual children by spiritual birth (instead of physical), i.e. by receiving them from the baptismal font. This idea seems to the author to be contrary to church dogma, according to which “the church itself gives birth to its spiritual children through the power of grace in the sacrament of baptism, and entrusts them to its recipients for guidance in spiritual life.” To our remark that this dogmatic principle has no application in the field of positive church law (namely marriage law), that the church in this area itself places in the relationship of spiritual kinship to the baptized not the priest, the active celebrant of the sacrament of baptism, but the recipient, Prof. Berdnikov did not give and, of course, could not give any answer. However, he attempts to weaken the force of this argument on two fronts and in two ways. First of all, he rebels against our explanation of why the above dogmatic principle has no application to succession as an institution of positive church law. “This principle,” we wrote in our apology, in no way prevents the church, in the sphere of its right, insofar as it regulates the ordinary relations of human life 10 , from sharing its maternal care for the spiritual children it gives birth to with those who assist it in the birth of these children, i.e. who brings her unbaptized children for baptism and then receives them into his arms from the baptismal font.” By placing its spiritually newborn children in the arms of their adoptive parents, the church thereby adopts them to the latter. Thus, each newly baptized person receives from the church a special spiritual father, who, in relation to his spiritual one, is, as it were, a delegate of the general maternal rights of the church in relation to all believers and serves as her assistant in the religious education of the newly baptized, as far as this is done in ordinary circumstances and in ordinary conditions of human life, which are not easily and cannot always be subject to the direct and immediate influence of the church hierarchy” (pp. 12-13). Prof. Berdnikov, in his new polemical article against us, twice takes up criticism of this explanation - of course, with the goal of destroying the analogy between church adoption and civil adoption. In the first, as if preparatory criticism, he confines himself to only a general remark that “the entrustment by a mother (in this case, the church) of her children to others for the purpose of teaching and upbringing, obviously, is not at all what is called adoption in civil life” (p. 9). And we do not say anywhere that this is “absolutely the same,” but we only find that natural parents, when giving a child for adoption to someone, do this, of course, with the goal that the adoptive parent will raise and generally, as they say, bring the adopted child into the world as his own child. This means, from the point of view of our critic on adoption, the analogy of this church relationship with civil adoption is not destroyed. – The second criticism, detailed, is directed by the author against the entire content of the above extract from our apology, namely against the position that the recipient mediates the church in the birth of her spiritual children, that he receives these children from her for adoption and, thus, is a delegate of the maternal rights of the church in relation to the received one. The author objects to the first position in a rather minor tone: “it seems to us,” he says, that the recipient cannot be called an intermediary in the birth of spiritual children by the church. Baptism is performed by the church hierarchy; consequently, the hierarchy serves as a mediator of the spiritual birth of the children of the church, along with other cases of the communication of divine grace” (pp. 17–18). This, as the reader sees, is a new and, it must be admitted, significantly worse version of the dogmatic principle that the church itself gives birth to its spiritual children in the sacrament of baptism. The deterioration lies precisely in the fact that now the author no longer sees the church as giving birth to its spiritual children, but only as an intermediary in their birth. Apparently, the mind of our critic is presented with the following idea: just as natural parents cannot be called in the proper sense the authors of the existence of their children, but only as instruments of the Creative word: grow and multiply: so the church itself does not give spiritual life to those who are baptized and does not itself bring them back in this life, but is in both matters only a mediator of divine grace or, in the words of the Apostle, a builder of the mysteries of God. But what will we do with these mental ideas in the order of earthly human life, determined by positive law on the one hand - civil, on the other - church? Civil law defines the relationship of parents and children simply by the natural fact of birth; and all church law, as an expression of the spiritual powers of the church over believers, is based on the dogmatic position that the church is the spiritual mother of all believers, giving birth to them in the sacrament of baptism. In this capacity, she, of course, has the right to share her maternal care for her newborn spiritual children with their adopters, with those who bring her baptized children for baptism and thus mediate their spiritual birth by the church. But the church itself turns this medium into a spiritually paternal attitude of the recipient to the received, with known consequences in the field of its positive law. In a word: the religious act of reception from the baptismal font, both in its manner of execution (as a two-sided act, as a matter between the church and the recipient) and in its significance in the sphere of church law, is completely similar to the legal act of adoption: the church - the spiritual mother of the newly baptized - gives him up for adoption to the recipient, and this latter adopts him, as a result of which a spiritual relationship is established between the recipient and the recipient, similar to a civil relationship. But we must admit that in our apology we did not express this simple thought entirely successfully, although not in such a way that anyone could misunderstand our words. Precisely, when speaking about the church as the spiritual mother of the newly baptized, giving him to his adoptive for adoption, we expressed it: “adopts” (instead of giving for adoption). Prof. Berdnikov, obviously, understood our idea correctly, for as an objection to it he says the following: “As for the adoption by the recipient of the meaning of the adoptive parent of the children of the church (so the action of adoption - “to adopt” - is correctly attributed to the recipient, and not to the church giving the adoption), then, we admit, in such a combination it seems to us that there is a lot of expediency from a legal point of view, on which the author himself wants to stand.” But at the same time, our critic, carried away by the desire to show readers that he knows how to “stand on a legal point of view” no worse than others, took advantage of our indicated mistake (which is called lapsus calami) to speak out against us and together against his correct understanding of our thought with the following objection: “Prof. Pavlov says that the church itself adopts its spiritual children to the recipient. Does it ever happen that a mother herself adopts her natural children to another? The mother can give consent, and adoption is usually carried out by the adoptive parent by agreement with the adoptees” (p. 18). Let us confess once again: our “brother” in science in this case correctly “saw the knot in our hair”; but if we, with the permission of the readers, now take this bitch out of our own eye, we will see a large “log” in the eye of our brother-accuser. It is made up partly from the now indicated contradiction in the understanding of the word “adopt”, and even more from the author’s unheard-of “legal” reasoning about how adoption is “usually” accomplished. “A mother or a parent in general can (only can!) give consent”... to what? The author does not directly express this, but from his further words it is clear that he means the parents’ consent to someone adopting their natural child, for example, a six-month-old child, by agreement with the latter.” There is nothing to say - the legal design of the institution of adoption is good! According to Roman law, with which we are exclusively dealing in this case (we mean Roman law from the time of the empire), adoption was “usually” carried out in such a way that young children (impuberes) were a simple object of a transaction between the natural father and the adoptive father. (pater adoptivus), and when adopting older children (puberes), it was only required that they not openly contradict this transaction. In a word: here the transfer (delegatio) of paternal power from one person to another took place. With this we answer the further objection of Prof. Berdnikov, directed against the name we used for the recipients by the delegates of the maternal rights of the church in relation to the recipients. “Does it happen in legal life,” writes our opponent regarding this name, that the adoptive parent, who, as a result of the act of adoption, received paternal power over the adopted child (as was the case among classical peoples), thinks of himself in his paternal powers as a delegate of the rights of the natural parents of the adopted child? (page 18). One must think that with this figure of questioning, Prof. Berdnikov wants to say that among classical peoples, from the moment of adoption, the adoptive parent no longer thinks of himself as an adoptive parent, but as the natural father of the adopted child. In turn, we ask the author: is this possible in the mental life of any people or individual? So prof. Berdnikov polemicizes against us in defense of his unsuccessful experience of founding the canonical institution of spiritual kinship on the dogmatic principle: “the church itself gives birth to its spiritual children in the sacrament of baptism.” But he conducts this debate not only in word, but, one might say, in deed. To prove that the church itself, in the sphere of its law, establishes an analogy of adoption, on the one hand, with civil adoption, on the other, with the natural birth of a person, as a common basis for both analogies, we referred, among other things, to direct evidence of this contained in the works of church writers and in the sources of church law. In both of them, the analogy of adoption with adoption was very strongly expressed by their common name; it was the Greek verb ἀναδέχεσθαι (to perceive) that was often replaced by the verbs υἱοποιεῖσθαι, υἱοθετεῖσθαι, τεκνῶσθαι (to adopt), and the Latins spoke and wrote instead of susсipere adoptare 11. As for the analogy of perception from the font of baptism with carnal birth, it is directly indicated by the following expressions from the sources of church law about recipients: “spiritually begotten,” “reborn through holy baptism,” “father born in the spirit” (see our first brochure, p. 15). To the first argument of Prof. Berdnikov objects that “two disparate relationships cannot be arbitrarily related by one common name” (p. 9). But we ourselves did not create examples that “related” adoption to adoption, but found them ready-made in our sources. We think that the authors of these examples did not “arbitrarily relate” both attitudes, but for the good reason that this was required by modern current law, ecclesiastical and civil. Meanwhile, Prof. In the present case, Berdnikov completely “arbitrarily” replaces our thought with his own, turns the analogy we draw, based on sources, between adoption and adoption into “internal affinity” and retells our words as if we insist on the “origin” of the church institution from the civil one (p. 10). He treated our second argument even more unceremoniously. The expressions cited there from the sources of church law about the recipients as the spiritual parents of the received one greatly confused the contemplative theological mind of our canonist. They clearly showed that the church, in the area of ​​its law, knows the spiritual relationship only between the recipient and the recipient, and not between the performer of the sacrament of baptism itself and the baptized (as Prof. Berdikov came out of the dogmatic position: “the church itself gives birth to its spiritual children in the sacrament of baptism”). Having adopted this canonical point of view, we convinced our critic, who agreed to call the recipient a spiritual father, but not the spiritual parent of the perceived one, not to be indignant at this last name, since it, obviously, is the same metaphor as the name “spiritual father” (p. 16). What does Prof. do now with this argument of ours? Berdnikov? He does something that most of all kept us from further explanations with him. We write out his words literally not in order to refute them, but to show the reader what critical techniques our enemy is sometimes capable of resorting to out of a desire to gain a visible upper hand over us and in what language and tone he speaks at the same time. "Prof. Pavlov, he writes here, understands this name (the recipient of the spiritual parent received) in the same meaning (emphasis added) in which it belongs to the carnal father - the author of the existence of his children. The responsibilities of spiritual leadership are already part of the powers of the father - the producer, which naturally follows from this provision 12. From this understanding of adoptiveness, Prof. Pavlov draws the conclusion that it is most natural for every Christian to have two recipients at the baptism - a man and a woman - “for a complete analogy of spiritual birth with carnal birth.” (Since we do not identify the recipient with the natural parents or the “producer” of the perceived, it goes without saying that we could not draw any conclusions from this identification. The conclusion drawn by Prof. Berdnikov from the premise he composed belongs not to us, but to the very history of the institution of perception, which undoubtedly created the above-mentioned pair of recipients. And we, as a thinking historian of this pair, indicated only the only conceivable motive for its origin - the church a view of the recipients in general, that is, without regard to their number, as the spiritual parents of the perceived one, from which it was natural to arise the popular idea of ​​the need for two recipients of different sexes at baptism) ... “We pointed out,” continues Prof. Berdnikov, that the birth of spiritual children (whose?) is carried out by the church itself, and not by the recipients, even if there are a couple of them (yes, this is indicated, but, as we have seen, it is not appropriate) - that the recipients are called the spiritual fathers of the adopted children not because they gave birth to them (implying: as Prof. Pavlov thinks), but because they took on the responsibilities of educators and leaders in the matter of Christian faith and piety, which means they are called not in their own, but in a figurative sense. Prof. Pavlov in his response brochure (pp. 10–17: we ask the reader to remember this quote) says that this is a dispute about words, and not about deeds, - that there is no difference between the names “father” and “parent”, - that if someone is a father, then he must also be called a parent, - that the church did not believe any difference between one and the other name. We leave it to the reader to judge how true and serious the matter is in these contradictory arguments of Prof. Pavlova” (Berdn., pp. 18–19). It’s time for us to invite the reader to be a judge and ask him to compare the following extract from Prof.’s brochure. Berdnikov with our above-stated argumentation. From the comparison, it turns out that Mr. Berdnikov, conveying our “counter reasoning” about calling the perceived recipients “spiritual fathers” or “spiritual parents”, removed from the text of our speech a direct indication that these names are given to recipients only as “unambiguous metaphors”, i.e. in a figurative sense, he appropriated the last expression to himself: these are no longer words that distort our thought, but an action. accomplished, of course, with a “serious, i.e., conscious attitude to one’s work,” which in this case could only consist in showing readers that we really call the recipient “father” or “parent” perceived not in a figurative, but in the proper sense, “in the same sense in which this name belongs to the carnal father - the author of existence or the producer of children”... We leave it to the reader to choose a suitable name for this act of Mr. Berdnikova 13. To prove the influence of Roman civil laws on adoption on the church institution of adoption, we also referred to the fact that even in the 6th and 7th centuries, the adoptees of children were usually men (Justinian speaks about male adoptees in his law on spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage, and the Council of Trulle in its 53rd rule, supplementing this law). And it is known that according to ancient Roman law, only men could be adoptive parents, since they alone owned the potestas patria over all family members (not including the wife). Prof. Berdnikov objects to this that “the custom of inviting men to be adoptees was not of an exclusive nature, that women were never formally excluded from receiving children from the baptismal font, and the Romans during the empire extended the right of active (emphasis added) adoption to women (p. 16). The fallacy of our critic’s last testimony significantly weakens the evidential power of the first two, which in themselves are correct. Among the Romans, the right of active adoption was never extended to women. Not every woman could adopt, but only one whose natural children had died (in solatium liberorum omissorum), and in this case she did not adopt actively, but according to a special rescript of the sovereign, who gave her only an heir in the person of the adopted person, but not potestatem patriam over him. 14 This was established during the time of Diocletian (in 291), when the church institution of succession had already received a fairly definite outline. Historians of this institution probably believe that it developed mainly during times of persecution, when family Christians, fearing for their lives and for the fate of their children who, having become orphans, could fall into the hands of the pagans and thus perish spiritually, were concerned that the children at baptism would receive another father - a spiritual one in the person of their successor, who, in the event of the martyrdom of the natural parent of the adopted one, would stand for the latter in place of the father 15. The same was, of course, in those cases when one of the Christians, captured by the persecutors, left in his house children who had not yet been baptized: they became, at the dying request of the father-confessor, the children of those who baptized them. If we take into account the moral spirit of the ancient Christians, the selfless and ready-to-sacrifice love that they had for each other, the power of religious inspiration that they showed during times of persecution - the reverent honor that they paid to the memory of the heroes of the faith who were crowned with martyrdom - if we take all this into account, then there will be nothing incredible in the assumption that the mentioned cases of Christians adopting their godchildren were not uncommon. Who were these adoptive adoptive parents? Undoubtedly, men, Roman householders (paterfamilias), and, perhaps only in rare, exceptional cases, when the baptized baby was a foundling, women (widows and sacred virgins who belonged to the church service personnel). Only from the point of view of that initial era of the formation of the institution of succession will it be clear why later monuments of church law and the testimonies of church writers until the end of the 7th century usually talk about men as successors. This reflected the strength of the ancient Christian custom, formed under the influence of the old Roman laws on adoption, according to which, as shown above, only men could be adoptive parents. Even in the 12th century, the view of succession as a matter primarily characteristic of men rather than women was expressed quite decisively by Greek church writers. Thus, around 1100, Patriarchal Chartophylax Peter wrote in one of his canonical answers: “Since the successors do not sufficiently know the duties of succession, defined by the great Dionysius (the Areopagite), we see every day that women are indifferently called to accept the yoke of the successors. However, in accordance with the established custom here, nothing prevents if, in the absence of a husband who has adopted someone’s first-born child, his wife, at the invitation of the parents, accepts another child in the same family.” The latest increase is quite significant. She shows that even in the 12th century, church custom demanded that women should not be indifferently admitted to succession, but that preference should be given to married women, and, moreover, only in those cases when they were invited to become successors in families in which their husbands had already adopted children, so that in these cases, wives were only substitutes for their absent husbands, and husbands remained active performers of successor duties in relation to both their own and theirs. the wife's godchildren. Until now, our explanations with prof. Berdnikov related to the question of the analogy between adoption and adoption in the sense of sources for two special types of legal kinship. But the above shows another point of contact between the church and civil institutions - namely, that the types of kinship that arose from them were recognized, within certain limits, as an obstacle to marriage. Let's listen to how our critic judges this. He does not directly reject our position that, as a general rule, adoption established through reception from the baptismal font coincides with civil adoption (adoptio in the proper sense) only in the sense of an obstacle to marriage; but at the same time, he surrounds his agreement with us with reservations that turn out to be logically incompatible with this agreement. So in one place he says: and in this case (that is, in the sense of an obstacle to marriage), the comparison (of both types of kinship) received its basis only in the case (bis in idem) when the adoption was accomplished through church prayer (p. 10). From here, of course, it follows that as long as there was no adoption “accomplished with church prayer” (and this, as we will see, did not come before the end of the 9th or the beginning of the 10th century), until then the kinship established by the civil act of adoption did not coincide with spiritual kinship in the sense of an obstacle to marriage - a conclusion that is logically necessary is just as historically false. Elsewhere in his article, Prof. Berdnikov speaks out on this issue somewhat more coherently, but then entangles himself even more tightly in the networks of his own argumentation. Namely: he points out one fact that “characterizes,” in his terminology, the point of contact between adoption and civil adoption” - the fact that “subsequently, the rules about spiritual kinship, which comes from the perception of the baptismal font as an obstacle to marriage, began to be applied in the same sense to civil adoption, performed with church prayers. But this fact, the author further argues, should serve as evidence in favor of the influence of church adoption on the legal significance of civil adoption as an obstacle to marriage, and not vice versa” (p. 15). Apparently, a thought is directly expressed here, which is only implicitly contained in the above extract from another place in the author’s article, namely, that not only in the Christian, but also in the pagan period of Roman history, civil adoption did not serve as a source of any obstacles to marriage and, therefore, could not be in this regard a model for Christian marriage law with its institution of spiritual kinship 16. But all this is only apparently; for the author then adds: “Civil adoption in this case (again!) had only the meaning that, following his example (emphasis added), adoption was classified as a legal kinship” (ibid.). What kind of civil adoption is the author talking about here? According to the generally binding rules of logic, which require that in one coherent speech the same term should not be used in two different senses, one should think that here we are talking about the same civil adoption, which, according to the previous words of the author, “was accomplished with church prayer.” But this cannot be allowed (assuming, of course, that Prof. Berdnikov has not completely emancipated himself from the rules of logic), because this last adoption is also spoken of there as a later phenomenon, having already arisen under the influence of the rules about spiritual kinship, as an obstacle to marriage. So, one thing remains: to accept that “civil adoption, following the example of which adoption is classified as a legal kinship” that prevents marriage, is the same thing that we are talking about as a factor that influenced the formation of the church institution of adoption and spiritual kinship. It goes without saying that such an unexpected transition by Prof. Berdnikov from the role of our adversary to the role of our ally is a pleasant surprise for us. Whether to attribute this surprise to the author’s “amazing flexibility of thought” - a quality that he kindly attributes to us (p. 10), but which, as can be seen from the present case, he himself possesses to a degree unattainable for us, or to something else, let the reader judge. And we need to note one more curious feature in the above-mentioned historical and canonical testimony of our critic: this is the inconvenient institution of civil adoption, invented by him, but in reality never existed, even inconceivable, performed with church prayer 17. Until now, two special types of adoptions were known from the history of Byzantine and Old Russian law: civil, which was performed by civil order, and church, “performed with church prayers.” The latter, as was proven in our first answer to Prof. Berdnikov (against him and Chizhman), was never known in the West, but in the East it was first formally recognized at the end of the 9th or beginning of the 10th centuries in two (24th and 89th) short stories by Leo the Wise (pp. 19–20). It was not a complete replacement or abolition of the previous civil adoption. The latter, as can be seen from Balsamon’s interpretation of the 53rd rule of the Council of Trullo, continued to remain in all its force, which was given to him in civil life by the current laws of the Byzantine Empire (Basilica). Only in the field of marriage law has it apparently lost its former meaning, giving way here to church adoption, which, along with reception from the baptismal font, is recognized as a source of obstacles to marriage to the same extent as blood kinship. The rules about this last relationship were equally applied in practice to kinship by reception from the baptismal font and to kinship by church adoption. Therefore prof. Berdnikov is not entirely right when, referring to the above-mentioned interpretation of Balsamon, he claims that the rules about kinship by adoption from baptism were transferred to kinship by baptismal adoption: Balsamon himself actually makes an attempt at such a transfer; but from the synodal decree of Patriarch Nicholas cited in his interpretation (on spiritual kinship), in comparison with the old scholia of Epanagoge (on kinship by church adoption 18), it turns out that the rules on blood kinship served as a model for church practice in both respects. We do not hope that all the facts we have cited so far and the considerations accompanying them will change the “scientific convictions” of our opponent: he, apparently, will persist in denying any influence of the civil institution of adoption on the church institution of adoption - even in the field of marriage law. But since we are not dealing with just one prof. Berdnikov, and for the future we completely refuse any explanations with him (at least on the present issue): then, in addition and confirmation of all of the above, we consider it useful to cite here in full Russian translation the first law on spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage, issued in 530 by Emperor Justinian. This law is important for us in two respects. Firstly, from the wording itself it is clear that in Christian Roman society, spiritual kinship, stemming from the reception of the baptismal font, was already recognized long before Justinian as an obstacle to marriage: the legislator speaks about this kinship only as if in passing, regarding the decision on the marriage of a teacher with a pupil (alumna), and speaks already as a matter of common knowledge. Secondly, the law directly and clearly compares civil adoption and church adoption as two acts, although belonging to two different spheres of public life, but analogous in their meaning in marriage law, and thereby indicates a historical, i.e., vital connection between them. Here is the full text of the law: “If someone, having granted freedom to his pupil 19, then entered into marriage with her, then the ancients doubted whether to consider such a marriage legal or not? Resolving this old doubt, we decide that this marriage is not prohibited. For if every marriage is concluded by arrangement, and we do not see anything wicked or contrary to the laws in such a union, then why should we recognize the above-mentioned marriage (with a pupil who has been released) as prohibited? For there is not such a wicked person who would decide to marry the one whom he took as his daughter from the very beginning (obviously we are talking about civil adoption as an obstacle to marriage), but we mean the one who from the very beginning raised her not as a daughter, and then, having granted her freedom, considered her worthy of his marriage. It goes without saying that no one is allowed to marry the woman whom he received from St. baptism, whether she will be his pupil or not, since nothing can so much arouse paternal love (a parallel with the above-mentioned adoptive father) and establish a legitimate obstacle to marriage, as this union, through which, through God’s mediation, their souls are united 20. The above law is illustrated in many respects by the modern story of the Byzantine historian Procopius about the famous commander of Justinian Belasaria and his wife Antonina. Belisarius had a pupil (alumnus), the Thracian youth Theodosius, who came from parents who belonged to the heretical sect of Eunomians, who, according to the 7th rule of the 2nd Ecumenical Council, were accepted by the church as pagans. Before leaving for Africa to fight the Vandals, Belisarius, intending to take Theodosius with him, baptized him and - we will speak further in the historian’s own words - “receiving the newly baptized man from the font with his own hands (καὶ χερσὶν ἀνελόμενος ἐνθένδε οἰκείαις), adopted him together with his wife παῖδα), as it became the law of Christians to make adoptions (ᾗπερ εἰσποιεῖσθαι χριστιανοῖς νόμος), as a result of which Antonina fell in love with Theodosius, as he became her son for a sacred reason, (ἅτε παῖδα ὄντα ἱερῷ λόγῳ). The historical meaning of this story in relation to the institution of adoption and the spiritual kinship arising from it is expressed by us, by the way, in the following position: from this it is clear that in the 6th century there were examples of the perception of one baptized by two persons, a man and a woman, and, moreover, by spouses, which, in all likelihood, took place in those cases when the baptized was an orphan or the child of unknown or non-Christian parents, and when therefore adoption was, as if by necessity, combined with the perception perceived 21 . Prof. Berdnikov, in his first brochure, recognized this interpretation as inaccurate and proposed his own - the following: “Belisarius first baptized Theodosius himself and received him from the font with his own hands, and then took the newly baptized one to his upbringing (!?) and adopted him together with his wife according to the rite and custom of adoption used by Christians,” that is, “through church prayer” (Berdnikov in brochure: regarding reviews, etc. p. 28). When, in our first apology, we proved to Prof. Berdnikov that in the time of Justinian (and Belisarius) there was no special rite of church adoption, that Justinian himself, in abolishing the previous methods of civil adoption, issued a new law on the same subject, and that the evidence given by Chizhman from previous laws, allegedly speaking about church adoption, was misunderstood by him: then our opponent was forced to renounce his interpretation, and in his new article he confines himself to only unsubstantiated statement that, in contrast to our “free understanding of the historian’s speech,” he prefers to adhere to “the grammatical construction of the Procopial text 22. In fact, it turns out that Prof. Berdnikov was closer to the grammatical structure of this text when he found in it an indication of a special rite of adoption, performed with church prayer, than now, when he was deprived of the opportunity to talk about this adoption. In the first case, he still took into account the historian’s words about Antonina, that she became the mother of her husband’s godson ἱερῷ λόγῳ - for a sacred reason (although he interpreted them erroneously), and now he is forced to silence these words and count on the blind trust of readers in his self-praising statement that he really strictly adheres to the literal meaning of Procopius’s speech. For our critic, if he wants to be faithful to this method of interpretation not only in words, but in fact, there is nothing more left to do than to admit that according to the church views of the 6th century, the wives of the godparents, through the mediation of their husbands, became the spiritual mothers of their godchildren. But since prof. Berdnikov does not risk directly expressing such an opinion, we remain convinced that our (and generally accepted) understanding of the above story by Procopius is the only correct one, i.e., consistent with grammar, logic, and history. In this story, we repeat, a case is described of the spouses receiving their adopted son (alumnus) from the baptismal font, and the reception was at the same time a sacred way (ἱερὸς λόγος) of adoption of the adopted one, as (the historian notes) was included in the law of Christians 23. It is possible to think that Procopius in his story makes an allusion to Justinian’s law of 530, already known to us, about spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage 24. This law, as we have seen, also provides for cases of Christians accepting their pupils, which the legislator placed in parallel with similar cases among the ancient (pagan Romans), who also often adopted their adopted children, but at the same time doubted whether a teacher could marry his released pupil, whom he from the very beginning raised not as his daughter, i.e. without formal adoption? If the civil act of adoption, according to the laws of the ancient Romans and Justinian himself, turned the pupil into the daughter of the teacher and destroyed the possibility of a legal marriage between them: then why could Christian law give less legal significance to the religious act of Christians receiving their adopted children from the baptismal font, i.e. recognize this last act (in the indicated cases) only as an obstacle to marriage, but not see in it a real method of adoption, the same according to its legal consequences with civil adoption? Just as for the validity of a marriage in a civil sense, in the time of Justinian and after (before Leo the Wise) only a public form of its conclusion was absolutely required, no matter whether before a secular official or before a minister of the church: so, in the same way, adoption, with all its civil consequences, could be accomplished not only by a civil act, but also by church reception, especially in such cases as Procopius spoke about. In these (and only in these) cases, as we noted in our book in the 50th chapter of the Helmsman (pp. 177–178) and in its apology (p. 21), adoption in the civil sense of the word was, as if by necessity, combined with adoption. It is in these ingenuous words of Prof. Berdnikov noticed the “amazing flexibility of thought” characteristic of us, and he himself showed this quality in himself in our following objections: “What does the esteemed (sic) professor want to say with these words? If the fact that godfathers and mothers often, together with the spiritual guidance of the adopted children, took care of their everyday upbringing, then this is factually true (of course!). But nothing follows from this to prove his thoughts about the origin of adoption from the civil institution of adoption (again “origin” instead of “influence”!). If he wants to say (of course, he wants to say this, but he covers his thought with an evasive expression) that the everyday upbringing of newly baptized orphans was the direct responsibility of godfathers and mothers, closely connected with the institution of adoption, and that in this case the act of receiving the newly baptized was at the same time an act of adoption in the civil sense, then this will not be true. Caring for the everyday upbringing of newly baptized children who did not have a family shelter was a matter of good will of the adopter, not connected in essence with the institution of adoption. The reception from the baptismal font served as an external reason to give a homeless child home shelter and education in the name of Christian love” (p. 11 and elsewhere: pp. 14–15). But why - we ask the author of these arguments - the good will and Christian love of the ancient successors in relation to their homeless godchildren certainly and in any case should have been expressed only in the form that he, Prof. Berdnikov, attributes for her? Why didn’t the ancient Christians, during times of persecution, along with the adoption of orphans, the children of their brothers in faith, also combine their adoption, i.e. did not do what, according to the undoubted testimony of Procopius, Belisarius did with his pupil Theodosius, and why were there apological examples even in the life of the ancient (pagan) Romans, who turned alluminate into adoption? Adoption, according to the view of ancient Christians, so beautifully expressed in the above-mentioned law of Justinian on spiritual kinship, establishes, with the assistance of divine grace, such a strong spiritual connection between the recipient and the adopted, with which neither the natural union between parents and children, nor the legal one between the adoptive parent and the adopted can be compared. Due to this view, the Christian love of the ancient recipients for their spiritual children, who did not have natural parents, undoubtedly and in many cases had to do something more than what Prof. points out to it. Berdnikov. For the ancient Christian, moral duty was higher and stronger than any legal obligations. This is the simple sense in which we said that in cases similar to those told by Procopius, in the first centuries of Christianity, as if by necessity (of course, moral), along with the reception from the baptismal font, the adoption of what was received in the proper, i.e., in the civil sense of the word was combined: the adopted orphan, especially the son of a martyr, became not only a co-educator, but also a co-heir of the natural children of his adopter. And it is difficult to allow the closest legal heirs of a deceased Christian, his sui, to decide to challenge in court the rights of their spiritual brother to the corresponding share of their father’s inheritance simply because this brother was not adopted by their father through civil adoption. If a dispute arose between such co-heirs, then, according to the injunction of the Apostle (1 Cor. 6:1 et seq.), they brought their case for decision not to a secular (pagan) magistrate, but to their bishop, who, of course, had enough authority to resolve the dispute in the spirit of Christian love. The example of Belisarius and his wife, who received their pupil from the baptismal font and thereby adopted him, served for us as elders as historical proof of the position that in cases such as this, it was most natural for two adoptees, a husband and a wife, to appear at the baptismal font, since the care of the physical education and spiritual education of the adopted and adopted orphan lay equally on both spouses. Fully recognizing the reality of the fact that in ordinary cases, when adoption was not connected with the recipient and when, therefore, there was no need for a pair of recipients - spouses, the ancient church custom (but not the positive canon of the church) required the presence of only one recipient (a man) at baptism, we at the same time indicated already in the 8th century examples of the operation of the opposite custom, according to which parents were invited, and the spiritual hierarchy were allowed to the perception of the same baptized person by many recipients. Thus, according to the testimony of Byzantine historians of this era, all the highest ranks of the Senate were sometimes called upon to adopt the imperial children. The aristocracy was not slow to follow the example of the court, and the rest of the classes of Byzantine society began to imitate this latter. The custom of plurality spread among the Greeks, especially where they most often came into contact or even constantly cohabited with Western peoples - on the islands of the Mediterranean Sea and in southern Italy (Magna Graecia). Here this custom became so general that even the Greek Euchologions, written in Italy, began to talk about recipients, in the rite of baptism, in the plural. Once the plurality of receivers became a custom, it was natural for a pair of receivers to arise from it, that is, the most common number of them. We think that this particular pair is, of course, in the Greek and Italian Euchologions. The motive of its origin is indicated in the following words of our book about the 50th chapter of the Helmsman: “Of course, under the influence of the church view of recipients as the spiritual parents of the baptized, the current usual number of them was established - two, a man and a woman, representing a complete parallel with the carnal parents of the recipient” (p. 170). At the same time, we directly stipulated that in the east (as opposed to the west) the spiritual hierarchy is never formal (i.e. in some legislative act similar to the resolution of the Western Council of Trent) did not put up with either a plurality of recipients or this usual pair of them, but at the same time (let us now add) she never expressed such a view that in the case of many or two recipients, only one of them should be recognized as a valid recipient, and only this one enters into a spiritual relationship with both those received and with his parents. It seems that in these reasoning there is nothing unclear, ambiguous or giving rise to any misunderstandings. However, our critic managed to present the matter in his own way here too. First of all, he distorts the meaning of our (more precisely, the well-known canonical) position that recipients in general, that is, without regard to their number, are recognized by the church as the spiritual parents of the baptized person, and wants to assure readers that we mean here exactly the usual pair of recipients and attribute to the church hierarchy, so to speak, the fundamental approval of this pair, the idea of ​​​​its canonical “necessity” (pp. 31-32). How was it possible to come to such a distortion of our thought when we directly say that this couple was formed “under the influence” of the general church view of the recipients as the spiritual parents of the received one? Isn't it true that Prof. Was Berdnikov attached to the plural word “receiver” we used here and saw in this an indication of an ordinary pair of receivers? But the Council of Trula, in its 53rd canon, speaking about recipients in general, as those who were received by spiritual kinship with their parents, also expressed them in the plural (“we have learned that some recipients ...”), although it is more likely to believe that he meant only one recipient, and not many or a couple of them. But prof. In the present case, Berdnikov not only distorts our thought, but also attributes to us words that we never said, namely: prof. Pavlov... “says that they (the charters of the 16th century Patriarchs of Constantinople) prohibit inviting many recipients to baptism, but it is not prohibited for a pair of recipients to be a male and a female” (p. 36). In the passage of our book quoted here by the author, we say literally the following: “The spiritual hierarchy could not look favorably on this custom (a lot of adoption), since, on the one hand, it destroyed the analogy of spiritual birth with carnal birth, on the other, it led to an excessively expanded circle of spiritual kinship and thus unnecessarily increased the already considerable number of canonical obstacles to marriage” (p. 170). Where do we “say” that the Patriarchs of Constantinople “did not forbid a pair of recipients at baptism – a man and a woman”? If, according to us, the spiritual hierarchy did not approve of the custom of multiple succession because, among other things, it destroyed the analogy of spiritual birth with carnal birth, this does not mean that we attribute to the spiritual hierarchy itself the view of an ordinary pair of successors as something necessary to maintain this analogy. The spiritual hierarchy, even with one recipient, which it demanded, saw full compliance with the analogy of spiritual birth with carnal birth, for each person has only one father. But the popular sense went further in this regard: from the general church view of the recipients, as the spiritual parents of the received one, the people derived and practiced in life the conclusion that every baptized baby, in parallel with his carnal parents, should have a spiritual father and a spiritual mother. We repeat: the Greek church hierarchy never formally reconciled itself with that usual pair of successors. But there is no doubt that of the two later forms of custom, which determined the number of recipients in contrast to the ancient custom of individual succession, the church hierarchy had to be more reconciled with a pair of recipients than with a multitude of them: for in the first case the apology of spiritual birth with carnal birth is not violated and the circle of spiritual kinship does not expand to the same extent as in the second. Now, if only Prof. Berdnikov understood our words this way, then we would not have the slightest reason to reproach him for distorting our thoughts or attributing to us what we did not say. For we remain convinced that the view we have now outlined on an ordinary pair of successors does not contain anything contrary to either the canons of the universal church, which do not determine anything about the number of successors, or the purpose of the institution of succession, which, of course, can be achieved with no less (if not more) convenience with two receivers, as with one, nor - finally - the very history of this institution, which knows it precisely as an institution of ordinary church law, not amenable to legislative regulation, at least in relation to the number of recipients. But let us now turn to this story, or, more precisely, to its continuation. After the evidence we have given about the existence of the custom of multiple reception among the Greeks already in the 8th century and after pointing out the Greco-Italian Euchologions (13th century), speaking about recipients in the plural, in all likelihood - about a pair, we do not find any traces of this pair until the beginning of the 15th century. Some indication or, more precisely, a hint of it is found in the following words of Simeon of Thessalonica: “Divine baptism is performed in this way: if a baby is baptized, then he is offered by a woman, accompanied by a recipient. Why is there a mention here, along with the receiver, of a woman bringing the baptized baby to the font? “Because,” Prof. answers resourcefully. Berdnikov that “an infant is not able to come to baptism on his own, like an adult, and by natural necessity must be brought by someone” (p. 29). But why couldn't it have been brought by the receiver himself? – some less savvy reader will ask the author. After all, the ancient rites of baptism do not mention this woman, but simply say; “the one being baptized is brought” (προσφέρεται ὁ βαπτιζόμενος), meaning here, of course, the recipients, who, due to this action, were called by ancient church writers “bringing children to baptism” προσφέροντες τὰ βρέφη τῷ βαπτίσματι, among the Latins - offerentes). 25 All this suggests that the woman mentioned by Simeon of Thessalonica in the description of the modern rite of baptism appears at this rite not because “the baby himself is not able to come to baptism,” but for some other reason. This reason, according to our explanation, was in the folk custom, which already substituted a woman as a successor. How did the spiritual hierarchy now relate to this custom? From the quoted words of Simeon of Thessalonica, it is clear that in the ritual practice of baptism, she still knew only one recipient (although, in all likelihood, she allowed the woman who was there to perform the same ritual actions that in our printed Missals and Breviaries of the first half of the 16th century are attributed to “women” - the midwives of the baptized person along with his recipients); but in the practice of marriage law, the hierarchy shared the popular view, according to which a man and a woman, in the event of a joint reception of the same baby from the baptismal font, could not marry either the recipient and his parents, or with each other, which means that both were recognized as actual recipients and, as a result, bound to each other by ties of spiritual kinship. This view, already in the form of a positive church rule, is very clearly expressed in article 211 of the Greek nomocanon, which occurred approximately during the time of Simeon of Thessalonica and was published in a Slavic translation as an appendix to our Great Trebnik. It says: “If a husband and wife baptize a child for one person, we command that one not to mix with each other, since the godfather is charged with ἐπειδὴ σύτεκνοι λογίζονται). If they copulate, they are prohibited for 17 years...; forgive these be damned" 26. In the above article of the nomocanon, we again meet the same pair of successors that the Byzantine historian Procopius showed us in the 6th century in the story about Belisarius and his wife Antonina, i.e., a married couple. How to explain this coincidence of such different times? The nomocanon itself defines only the legal consequences of such cases, which did not yet occur in the 6th century (Belisarius and his wife remained in marital cohabitation even after they adopted their pet), but does not indicate the reasons for the occurrence of the cases themselves. Perhaps these were cases completely identical to the example of Belisarius and Antonina (i.e., cases of spouses adopting orphans and other people’s children in general) by receiving them from the baptismal font, or, as can be guessed from the meaning of one rule, which will be discussed later, such cases were caused by the custom of inviting spouses to be the adoptive parents of twin children. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the cited article of the nomocanon speaks of the joint perception of the same baby by spouses. On the contrary, Prof. Berdnikov, with tenacity that deserves a better cause, insists that the article provides for another case - the case of spouses, each separately, accepting children in the same family. We proved the incorrectness of this understanding with the original Greek text of the article, in which the subject ἀνδρόγυνον (husband and wife, more precisely, a married couple) is accompanied by the numeral οἱ δύο, which in this form, i.e. with a member, always means both and therefore indicates the combined action of two persons and generally two factors 27. Prof. Berdnikov, not being able to refute the examples we gave of the use of the word οἱ δύο in the indicated sense, this time limited himself to only inspiring us to always adhere to this, i.e., grammatical technique in interpreting the text of sources and use it correctly (i.e., we must think as in the present case); but he himself does not constrain himself from observing this rule and prefers to interpret the article of the nomocanon e suo cerebro that concerns us, inviting his readers to participate in this matter. He admits for a moment that the grammatical meaning of the article can be stated in the following form: “If a husband and wife (both know) take children from the same person, then they should not continue marital cohabitation with each other, for in this case they become congenial with each other,” but then he gives it the following intricate interpretation: “the reader sees that the addition of the words “both together” is not decisive in understanding the text of the rule, as without the addition and with the addition, the meaning of the text is the same” (p. 25). No, not a single sane reader will “see” what the Kazan professor wants to show him - he will not see identity in contradiction. Everyone understands that if spouses do something “both together,” then they do not do it separately, and vice versa: if they do something separately, then it cannot be said that they do it “both together.” So, Professor Berdnikov is left with one of two things: either read Article 211 of the nomocanon with the addition of the words “both together” - and in this case, abandon his interpretation of the meaning of this article and admit that it deals with the joint perception of children in someone’s family by both spouses 28; or completely delete from the text of the article (and not just put in brackets) the indicated addition - and in this case, turn around the suggestion made to us about the need for a correct grammatical interpretation of the text of the sources and, in addition, take into account all the canonical absurdities that logically necessarily follow from such an encroachment on the integrity of the text of the article. In fact, if the meaning of the article is this: “spouses become σύντεκνοι, that is, spiritually connected with each other even if they separately take in different children in the same family: then on what basis, in this case, is this spiritual compassion between them established? On the essence of the marital union itself? But if so, then every godson of the husband should have been considered the godson of the wife, although she herself did not perceive him together with her husband, and vice versa - which, as noted above, the Eastern Church never allowed and could not even allow; Otherwise, it would turn out that every church act performed by one spouse is eo ipso adopted by the other: the husband confessed, and in his person the wife received permission from her sins, etc. On the unity of the family, in which the husband and wife (strangers) perceived children separately? But in this case, all the successors and successors of children in one given family would become spiritually related to each other, and this relationship would constitute an obstacle to marriage between them - which again we do not see either in practice or in the legislation of the Eastern Church. But perhaps the article of nomocanon, even with the addition οἱ δύο, really has that absurd grammatical and canonical meaning that Prof. is trying to impose on it. Berdnikov? It must be admitted that among the highest Greek clergy there were people inclined to think that between spouses who had children separately in the same family, a relationship of spiritual complicity necessarily arose, preventing their further cohabitation. In 1698, one archimandrite presented such a case as perplexed to the decision of the Patriarch of Constantinople Callinicus. The Patriarch, as one would expect, answered, based on the canonical answer of Chartophylax Peter (12th century), already known to us, in the sense that no spiritual relationship between spouses in this case is established 29. But the idea that spouses cannot, without the danger of separation from their cohabitation, accept children in the same family even separately, obviously could only arise on the basis of an already existing and well-known rule about the impossibility of them being together the recipients of the same baptized person. We find such a rule in Article 211 of the nomocanon, if we do not remove from it the expression about spouses “both together” and do not allow, according to the suggestion of Prof. Berdnikov, the impossible thought that both with and without this expression the meaning of the article will remain the same, i.e., what is desired by our critic. He finds, however, another basis for his interpretation, namely the following: in the Greek list of the nomocanon we published (rather late and not always correct), it is said in the plural about children received by spouses from baptism: παιδία, which corresponds to the reading of the two Serbian lists we saw: dģtsou (children). It is in this multiplicity of perceived children that Prof. Berdnikov sees evidence of the separate perception of their spouses. Regarding the reading of παιδία, we noted to our opponent that it, with the indicated numeral οἱ δύο, referring to spouses with adoptive parents, cannot give the article the meaning that Prof. gives it. Berdnikov: the plural could be used in the nomocanon either instead of the singular (which in both Greek and Russian is possible with a general indication of the very fact of the adoption of children in someone’s family, without an exact definition of the number of those adopted), or to give the rule the meaning that spouses cannot together perceive other people’s children - twins (as is prohibited in another later Greek rule, given by us in the original and translation (p. 28). Against the first argument, our critic objects to us from the point of view of grammar: “It is impossible in any language to allow the use of the singular and the plural indifferently. Why then should there be two numbers if they can be used one instead of the other indifferently? It seems to us that with such methods of interpreting the text, a sample of which we have in this case before our eyes, everything can be interpreted in favor of a preconceived idea” (p. 26). when he studied etymology at the theological school, but was poorly understood by him when studying syntax. Examples of using the plural instead of the singular (and especially vice versa) are quite common in all languages. Let's start with Russian. A person who does not have children and has adopted one other person’s child will certainly say many things about the adopted child. including: “I took him as my son or daughter.” While in rhetoric class, our critic, of course, taught Derzhavin’s ode “God.” And it contains the following verses: Finally, when he was a student or already a professor at the Theological Academy, Mr. Berdnikov could read in Greek the following words in the Gospel of Matthew: ἐποίησε γάμους τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ, which is translated in the Slavic Bible: “make marriages for your son” (chap. 22, art. 2). If prof. If Berdnikov thinks about the matter calmly, he will find quite a few other similar examples, perhaps even more instructive for him. On the second, our argument about the meaning of sets, παιδία prof. Berdnikov notes that the explanation of this word in the sense of twins is “a possible thing” (p. 26), but after that he adds: “from such an understanding of the text we are analyzing (i.e., Article 211 of the nomocanon) there is little benefit for prof. Pavlov and the opinion he defends. If the husband received from the font one of the twins - Ivan, and his wife - the other twin - Peter, then it does not mean that each of those baptized had a pair of recipients: a whole pair is missing. As the reader can see, here again the expression that our critic dislikes about spouses - recipients “both together” is thrown out of the article of the nomocanon, although he assured his readers that the meaning of the article would be the same with or without the addition of this expression. But this is not enough: here violence is also done to the meaning of that later rule of the Greek Church, which we compared with the explained article of the nomocanon to prove that it may be talking about the perception of twin children by spouses. In our Russian translation, the correctness of which is not objected to by Prof. Berdnikov, the mentioned rule, placed in the recently published manual for church practice by Bishop Theophilos, reads literally like this: “Spouses are not allowed to baptize brothers at the same time (ταυτοχρόνως); but let either one or the other of them do it. For if the spiritual father who baptized is said to be co-parent with the carnal father of the godson, much more so if spouses baptize brothers, they should be called co-fathers.” It is clear that the rule speaks of cases of not only simultaneous, but also cumulative perception by a husband and wife of two twin brothers, and for the future it is prescribed to do this separately (“let either one or the other do it”), so that, otherwise, the spouses do not become “receivers.” Without decisively eliminating the reading παιδία, since it, in comparison with the expression about the spouses of the recipients “both together,” does not change the meaning of the article, precisely and clearly defined by this expression, we at the same time found it not superfluous to point out Prof. Berdnikov on the older and better Greek lists of the nomocanon, in which instead of the plural παιδία there is a single παιδίον. Prof. Berdnikov does not really trust these lists. He admits the possibility of the existence of other lists, even more ancient, “from which the text contained in the lists now considered younger could have originated” (p. 27). Having not seen a single Greek or Slavic copy of the nomocanon, one can make any assumptions about their comparative serviceability and antiquity. However, in our edition of the nomocanon of Prof. Berdnikov found something positive in favor of his supposed originality of reading παιδία. In the versions of the Slavic text of Article 211 published in Russian Trebniks, we cited readings from two Serbian lists (Pogodinsky and Prof. Bogishich), in which, instead of the nomocanon child accepted in all Russian printed publications, there is detsou - children. This gave our critic a reason to speak not about the Serbian lists, but about the Serbian translation of the nomocanon itself, and to speak in such a categorical tone as if he, Prof. Berdnikov, saw (was it in a dream?) the original of this translation: “The translator of the nomocanon into Serbian, the author tells us, read in Greek παιδία, and not παιδίον.” Then, having lowered this confident tone somewhat, our critic continues: “one must assume that the translator had at hand the text of the nomocanon, which at that time (at the beginning of the 16th century) was considered generally accepted” (p. 27). But after all, all Russian printed editions of the nomocanon also originate from the Serbian original, and in them, as already noted, it is not children who are read, but a child. The eldest of these editions, the Kiev edition of 1620 (Pamva Berynda), was printed from a manuscript brought by the publisher from Athos (probably from the local Serbian monastery of Hilandar), and bears clear traces of Serbian writing and dialect. On what basis should we give preference to the two mentioned Serbian copies of the nomocanon, written undoubtedly in the 15th century, perhaps even after the publication of Berynda, over the original of this edition, the reading of which is justified by the older and better copies of the Greek original? 30 In general, it should be noted that prof. Berdnikov in vain invaded this little-explored area of ​​positive data to solve the question that occupies us - an area in which he rather vaguely understands the difference between translation lists and translation itself. It is much more convenient for him to rely on evidence “from his own mind.” And “his mind” dictates to him this on the present issue: “if we pay attention to the construction of the rule under consideration, then the reading παιδία is more suitable to it than παιδίον. If we read according to the mentioned lists, which Prof. Pavlov considers the best: “Ἐὰν ἀνδρόγυνον τυχὸν ποτὲ βαπτίσωσι καὶ οἱ δύο ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου παιδίον, then the expression ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου will be meaningless. When reading παιδίον there is no need to add ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου, but rather one would expect to read ἓν παιδίον. The expression ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου acquires meaning only when reading παιδία: if a husband and wife receive children from the same person” (οἱ δύο - disappeared again). The conclusion follows, as usual, expressed in the form of an appeal to the reader: he “sees that the recommended prof. Pavlov’s version of the text of the rule in question does not inspire confidence.” What if the reader turns out to be not only a reasonable person, but also more knowledgeable in the Greek language than Prof. himself? Berdnikov? A sensible reader will understand that even when reading παιδίον, the definitive ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου is not at all superfluous, on the contrary, it is necessary to show that we are talking about the spouses’ acceptance of someone else’s, and not their own, child from the baptismal font; and someone knowledgeable in Greek will prove to Mr. Professor that the numeral εἷς is not always used in the sense of a definite count (one), but very often in the sense of an indefinite pronoun τὶς - any, some. Examples of such word usage are found both among secular (classical) Greek writers and among ecclesiastical writers, of whom the latter, in all likelihood, followed the examples found in St. scriptures, which are: εἷς γραμματεύς (=one scribe, Matthew 8:19), μία παιδίσκη, (=one slave, chapter 26, art. 69), παιδάριον ἕν (=one youth, John 6:9), etc. In view of these examples, we can in the present case with great right say what was said by prof. Berdnikov regarding the unpleasant expression of the article of the nomocanon about the spouses of the recipients “both together”: the meaning of the article will remain the same, whether we read in it παιδία, or παιδίον. The point is not in the number of children perceived by spouses in someone’s family (ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου), but in the joint perception of them by husband and wife. The arguments we have presented, restoring the true meaning of Article 211 of the nomocanon against the interpretations of Prof. Berdnikov, the latter found it possible to call “intricate twists” (p. 27). Having now appreciated all the reasons on which our arrogant critic allowed himself this curse, we would have every right to answer him with no less strong words. But this is not to our taste and not to the taste of the editors of this venerable spiritual magazine. A serious scientific word should be “dissolved with salt”, and not seasoned with curses. Having sprinkled this salt on the abusive words of our heated critic, we return them to their proper place in a more decent form; we only allow ourselves to say that all the objections of Prof. Berdnikov, directed against our interpretation of this article of the nomocanon, “are not woven cunningly, not very cunningly.” To resolve the question of whether the pair of successors now common in the Russian Church was accepted in Greek church practice and folk custom of the 15th and subsequent centuries, of course, it was not superfluous to deal with the current state of this matter in the Orthodox East. Our inquiries have given the result that in the Greek Church, both before and now, there is no uniformity in this regard. The spiritual hierarchy still requires one successor or one successor, but folk custom does not always and not always agree with this requirement, but it knows many and a couple of successors. We offered to make the same certificates to Prof. Berdnikov. He followed our invitation and received essentially the same information. One correspondent (the late Archimandrite Neophytos, rector of the Greek Church in St. Petersburg) told him the following: 1) “A pair of receivers is not required at all (it is not required by law either, but is accepted by him as part of the general custom); For the most part (that is, not always) there is one recipient or recipient for both boys and girls, it makes no difference. A pair of receivers is very rare - only among the rich (the rich, as far as we know from other equally reliable information, have not one, but several pairs of receivers). 2) When there is a pair of recipients, they hold the baptized person alternately; at least the existence of such a ritual in Constantinople is confirmed by Fr. Archimandrite Arseny, treasurer of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, who was for several years assistant to the rector of the Russian embassy church in Constantinople. 3) With a pair of receivers, both are remembered, just like with us. 4) When there is a pair of successors, the relationship between them that prevents marriage is considered. From another correspondent (A.A. Dmitrievsky, associate professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy, who more than once traveled for scientific purposes to the east and lived there for a long time), prof. Berdnikov received the following information: 1) I do not know direct regulations regarding the number of recipients for infant baptism and have reason to doubt their existence (the correspondent probably means the regulations of the ancient universal church, and in this sense he is right). 2) In fact, in practice, only one receiver is allowed to the baptismal font (this testimony of the correspondent is based not on personal observations made in different places in the east, but on two extraneous testimonies: one belongs to the Russian Archimandrite A., if we are not mistaken, and now lives in the east, and the late Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret, known for his critical comments on him 31. Without any doubt in the reliability of this evidence, we think, however, that the observation area about. Archimandrite was not very extensive at that time; in any case, these observations are not entirely consistent with the information received by Prof. Berdnikov from his first correspondent and which we once collected in Odessa. Another testimony of A.A. Dmitrievsky drew from a Greek book that describes the customs of the inhabitants of the island of Patmos, but subsequently supplemented this evidence with his own personal observation, which sufficiently explains why on Patmos the rule of unity of successor is observed more strictly than anywhere else: the successors of the children of lay Patmosians are usually the monks of the local St. John the Theological Monastery, to which the entire lay population of the island is subordinate 32 . The next two paragraphs of A.A. Dmitrievsky are not relevant: they talk about recipients in marriages (in our opinion, best men). The last (5th) paragraph says: “To avoid confusion in spiritual family relationships, in the modern life of the Orthodox East, the rule is strictly observed that only one family member, husband or wife, is allowed to the baptismal font as a recipient. Therefore, if a husband was invited to a well-known family to baptize the first child, then he then perceives the subsequent children of this family of any gender with indifference. The wife does the same.” Having provided this information (pp. 39–41), prof. Berdnikov had to admit that “a certain incompleteness and insufficiency is noticeable in them,” and that “on the basis of them it is impossible to formulate a completely clear concept of the current practice of the Greek Church, which would exclude all questions and resolve all perplexities.” In other words: the information obtained by our critic speaks as much in his favor as in ours. Only the last paragraph of A.A.’s message gave him particular pleasure. Dmitrievsky. Here is Prof. Berdnikov saw for himself “a direct commentary on article 211 of the Athonite nomocanon,” i.e. published under our Great Trebnik, and for us - nothing more than an “instructive surprise” (p. 42). We have already seen that there can be only one commentary on the specified article of the nomocanon, if we do not encroach on the integrity of its text - the one proposed by us. As for the “surprise” in our “teaching”, prof. Berdnikov was a little late with him. Long before A.A.’s message. We knew from Dmitrievsky, and from us also to the author with whom we are explaining (see his first brochure against us, p. 30), that among the Greeks, among the clergy and the people, there is a view, expressed even in the form of a positive church rule, according to which spouses cannot, even separately, conceive children in the same family. This view is quite old, and has been refuted more than once by church authorities. Thus, we have already seen that in the 12th century the Patriarchal Chartophylax Peter spoke out against him, and in the 17th century the Patriarch Callinicus spoke out against him, and yet, as A.A. Dmitrievsky, retains its power in the folk life of the Orthodox East to the present day. This vitality of the people’s view, contrary to the view of the spiritual hierarchy, is truly “instructive” - only not for us, but for prof. Berdnikova. Taking this fact into account, he would have to be convinced that Christian society, in addition to the authority of the spiritual hierarchy, can create norms for its church life, which, in the end, the spiritual hierarchy must take into account, so as not to confuse the people's conscience by denying what it considers obligatory for itself and which does not contradict either the law of God or the fundamental norms of positive church law. But isn’t this exactly the whole institution of adoption, about which we said that it was “created not by church legislation, but by the life of ancient Christian Roman society under the influence of civil laws on adoption”? We could not possibly expect these innocent words to disturb the contemplative theological spirit of Prof. Berdnikov and led his prolific pen into an uncontrollable polemical movement against us, which wrote almost two hundred pages in the Orthodox Interlocutor without benefit to science and to direct detriment to the scientific honor of the author, about which we still had a better opinion, which we had the opportunity to express officially, at the request of the highest authorities... But let’s continue the interrupted speech about “instructive surprises.” And we were not left without them. We received one surprise from the same A.A. Dmitrievsky, the other - from prof. Berdnikova. The first, when meeting with us during the past Christmas holidays in Moscow, told us that he had in his hands an extract from the metric book of the Thessaloniki Metropolis for 1873, and he remembers well that in this extract there are two recipients - a man and a woman, but he just does not remember whether this certificate, along with the others stated above, was sent to Kazan by Prof. Berdnikov... From the latter we received new confirmation of what we already knew about the custom of nepotism among the southern Slavs belonging to the Orthodox Church. About this nepotism, our critic recently published in the “Orthodox Interlocutor” the following information, reported to him by the Russian consul in Thessaloniki: “In all Slavic lands, at baptism there is one “godfather” ... He “is the godfather of the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (of his godson), if he had lived to see that time. He is replaced by his sons; if there are none, then his closest relatives in the male line, and sometimes in the female line (we are obviously talking about the heredity of nepotism, about its transfer from the original godfather, after his death, to the eldest in his family)... The godfather himself, that is, the man who owns the right of nepotism, is sometimes not present at the font; but this does not mean that he deprives himself of the right to consider himself a godfather. He sends in his place either a wife, or a son, or a grandson from his clan (this, obviously, is not a “replacement” of the godfather, after his death, by the eldest in his clan, but only a temporary substitution, so that in these cases the godfather still remains godfather)... At baptism, the godfather’s wife, or sister, or mother is usually present, according to his instructions.” Prof. Berdnikov finds in this message - firstly, “undoubted” evidence that the southern Slavs “use only one receiver”, and secondly, the key to the “correct understanding of Procopius’ story about the baptism of Theodosius by Belisarius”; for de “from the practice of the Orthodox Slavs it is clear that although the reception from the font is performed by one member, mainly the head of the family, nevertheless, the newly baptized is considered his own, relatives, and among his household, and of course ἱερῷ λόγῳ 33. The above message from the Solunsky consul undoubtedly speaks more in our favor than in favor of prof. Berdnikova. True, the correspondent of our critic decisively declares that among the Southern Slavs there is only one godfather at baptism, but at the same time he supplements this statement with the news that “at baptism the wife, or sister, or mother of the godfather is usually present” - all females. In what capacity are they present with the godfather? The Solunsk message is silent about this. But we find a direct answer to the proposed question in another no less reliable source - in the work of Kraus (Slav): Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven nach heimischen gedrucktem und ungedruckten Quellen (Wien, 1885). This work, published by the Vienna Anthropological Society, is compiled mainly from the well-known capital work of Prof. Bogišić – his collection of legal customs among the southern Slavs (Austria and the Balkan Peninsula); but Kraus critically checked all the news contained in this collection, and gives the following testimony on our question: Nur bei der Taufpathenschaft ist neben dem Kumauch eine Kita oder Kumica (S. 607), that is, “only with nepotism by baptism is there a godfather or godfather next to the godfather 34 . It is very likely that the city consul of Thessaloniki wanted to say the same thing to the Kazan learned canonist, but the latter did not understand his correspondent properly. As for the special use of the Thessalonica news as a key to the above-explained story of Procopius about Belisarius, here our critic lost sight of a simple question: in what sense do the godfather’s household consider his godson “their own, relatives”? If the latter is recognized as the common godson of all members of the godfather’s family, as Theodosius, according to Procopius, was the common spiritual son of Belisarius and his wife: then this will contradict the view of the southern Slavs on the right of nepotism as exclusively belonging to the head of the family or clan. If the godfather’s godson is recognized as “his” by each of the latter’s household in the sense that they all stand to him in one degree or another of spiritual kinship (the godfather’s sons are in the second, grandchildren are in the third, etc.): then there was no need to consult the customs of the southern Slavs about this, but it would be enough to look at least in the same 50th chapter of the Helmsman’s Book, where all the degrees of spiritual kinship coming from the godfather are described in detail and received to their descendants. It goes without saying that this relationship in all its degrees is established by ἱερῷ λόγῳ, i.e., by the fact that the head of a given family was the recipient of the baptism of children in another family. But neither in the written sources of church law, nor in the customs of the peoples belonging to the Orthodox Church, is there any basis for the idea that a wife who did not participate with her husband in the reception of the same baby should be considered the spiritual mother of her husband’s godson ἱερῷ λόγῳ. It’s a different matter if the South Slavs usually have their wife, as a godfather or godmother, with their husband-ascendant: in this case, the South Slavic custom will directly speak in favor of our interpretation of Procopius’s story. We still have to consider the objections of Prof. Berdnikov against our testimony about a pair of recipients in the practice and legislation of the Russian Church. He agrees with us that, starting from the 14th century until the beginning of the 18th century, there is parallel evidence of a pair of successors accepted by our custom and of the struggle of the spiritual hierarchy against this custom. Evidence of the first category is found even in several Trebniks of the 14th–16th centuries. in the very rite of the sacrament of baptism, where the godfather and godfather of each baptized person are spoken of as something well-known and generally accepted at the place where the said books were written; and evidence of the second category is found in the epistles of Metropolitans Cyprian and Photius (XIV-XV centuries) and in the decrees of the so-called Council of the Hundred Heads (1551) 35 . But the very fact that the spiritual hierarchy so often repeated its demand that at baptism there should be only one godfather or one godfather proves that the opposite custom was not only maintained among the people, but also gradually became common from the well-known. Metropolitan Cyprian still knows this custom only as accepted in Novgorod and Pskov, and Cyprian’s successor, Photius, rebels against it already in his teaching to “the entire priestly and monastic rank” of Orthodox Rus'. The resolution of the Stoglavy Council on this subject was drawn up in the same sense. But the authority of the council did not break the power of popular custom: the latter found formal recognition and expression in the following rule of the patriarchal printed Trebniks of the first half of the 17th century: “one who is baptized by many is not worthy of being a recipient of one, but only as a custom is accepted for both male and female: multiplying by that, no way.” So far our opponent agrees with us. The controversy begins with the question: How long did this rule remain in effect? Prof. Berdnikov, in his first polemical article against us, limited its action to “a short period of time in the first half” or even the “beginning” of the 17th century (p. 33). When we pointed out to him what was given in our book from the acts of the Great Moscow Council of 1666. a decree that speaks of the same pair of recipients and, moreover, orders for the future to record the names of this pair in metric books: then our opponent was forced to resort to various, truly “intricate twists” in order, so to speak, to “cover up the traces” of his previous chronological testimony and together justify himself to the readers in keeping silent about the mentioned conciliar decree. He makes an amendment to his chronology in this way: “the short period of time of the first half of the 17th century”, measured by him for the operation of the above rule, the Patriarchal Trebniks, stretches for him until the beginning of the last quarter of the same century, precisely until 1677, 36 when, with the blessing of Patriarch Joachim, the Trebnik was published with the following (still remaining in our Trebniks) rule about recipients: “It is appropriate to edati, for in holy baptism there is only one recipient, even if the male sex is the one being baptized; or even female, only a successor.” And his silence about the cathedral resolution of 1666 by Prof. Berdnikov justifies this by saying that he “did not intend to present details, but tried to indicate only the main points in the history of the issue” (the resolution of the greatest of the councils of ancient Rus' is an unimportant “detail”, and the later rule of the Trebnik, published on behalf of the Russian patriarch alone, is the “main moment” in the history of the issue of the number of successors!). But the most surprising thing is that our critic has the courage to assure his readers that in the present case he presented the matter “according to our book” (pp. 42–43). As proof of this “agreement”, Prof. Berdnikov retells his presentation of the case, with no mention of the Great Moscow Council, and ours, in which its resolution on the successors is conveyed in detail and partly in the original words of the council. As a result of this retelling, of course, it turns out that there is and cannot be any “agreement” between mentioning and keeping silent about something. But if the reader, whom our author usually calls to his aid when not everything “is going well” with him, agrees to insert into his previous article what he now says about the reason for his silence about the conciliar resolution of 1666: then, perhaps, the matter can be somewhat corrected: the previous disagreement will seem like a tacit “agreement” and there will be a reason for a new already open disagreement. But let the author himself show all his moves and approaches. “It seems to us,” he writes here, that our brief (i.e., with a certain silence) presentation of the matter is in all respects (?!) consistent with the more extensive presentation of Prof. Pavlov (implied: speaking about the council of 1666), with the exception of only a glance at the meaning of the resolution of the council of 1666 and the rule in the Trebnik of 1677” (one should add: what we are talking about now, when it is no longer possible to remain silent about the council of 1666). So “agreement” turned into disagreement, and the author now had the opportunity to speak against us about what he had previously supposedly tacitly “agreed” with us! With ordinary logic it is difficult to follow these not “intricate twists”! What is our disagreement with Prof. now? Berdnikov? He finds that we exaggerate the significance of the cathedral resolution of 1666 to the same extent as we diminish the significance of the rule of Joachim's Trebnik of 1677. “The cathedral resolution of 1666,” he now writes, does not contain anything new compared to the previous one, but only confirms the previous order of observance” (p. 45). Aren't we saying the same thing? Judging by the author’s further reasoning, it turns out that this is not entirely true. Vaguely imagining the difference between an administrative order and the law, which every decent first-year student of the Faculty of Law knows well, our learned canonist tries to belittle the significance of the cathedral decree of 1666 on the recipients of such quasi legal reasoning: “After the trial of the schism teachers, the cathedral of 1666, in view of various violations of church discipline, found it expedient at the end of its meetings to draw up an “instruction of the deanery.” church" to the guidance of parish priests, so that they copy copies from it and strictly follow the rules contained in them. This instruction, in its content and in the nature of the instructions, fully corresponds to the current instructions to deans of churches. Among the rules of deanery there is, among other things, the rule about recipients. Is there any reason to see in the council’s order of an administrative nature a special confirmation of the practiced custom? (page 45). Any sensible reader will marvel here, first of all, at the logic of the author, who managed in one short speech to express two directly contradictory judgments about the same subject: on the one hand, he says that the cathedral resolution of 1666 “confirms the previous order of observance,” and on the other, that in this resolution “one cannot see any special confirmation of the practiced custom.” And the reader who has become more or less familiar with legal concepts will, of course, notice that in the above tirade of the author there is no clear idea of ​​either the law or the administrative order. Any prescription emanating from the legislative power in the church or state and defining church or civil legal relations, no matter in what form it is issued, is certainly a law for those whom it concerns, i.e. to whom it is given for “steadfast” execution. Thus, the current instructions to church deans issued by St. The Synod, the legislative body in the Russian Church, has a law both for the deans themselves and for the parish clergy. And our basic laws (Article 53) directly say that “laws are issued, among other things, in the form of orders (instructions).” In the same way, the “instruction of church deanery”, issued by the council of 1666 for “steady observance by parish priests”, both in content, and in nature, and in the form itself, was a purely legislative act, and not just an administrative order. It concerned various aspects of church life and partly confirmed the previous rules of church discipline, partly gave new ones, caused by the sad fact of the appearance of a schism among the Old Believers in our country. Like any formally “perfect” law (lex perfecta), it has its own sanction at the end, and a rather formidable one: “If anyone in you does not listen, even in one single order, to what is commanded from us, or begins to contradict, you (the priest’s elders) tell us about such, and we will punish them spiritually; If they begin to despise our spiritual punishment, we will also inflict physical bitterness on them. If you yourself begin to despise our command, and do not learn to be zealous and look after the churches, or do not notify disobedient and disorderly persons, and besides yours, I will inform you where in the church of which some day of your forty some non-correction, or disorganization against this conciliar scripture of ours will be found, at least one thing, but we know that it will happen: and for that you, the elder and to be a tenth in church execution, without any mercy.” The act ends with words that clearly show that the cathedral itself looked at it as its own code, as a law for the entire Russian church: “For the sake of confirmation, this conciliar proclamation of ours is signed by us bishops with our own hands and deposited in the house of the Most Holy Theotokos of the Patriarchate of the reigning city of Moscow.” In particular, the cathedral decree on recipients, both in content and in wording, is undoubtedly not an administrative order, but a constituent rule: it for the first time ordered the creation of registry books in all churches to record in them, among other things, cases of baptism with such and such a recipient and such and such a recipient. And since there already existed a positive rule about the same pair of receivers 37, it goes without saying that the new council resolution was at the same time a confirmation of this rule. Together with the attempt to reduce the cathedral decree of 1666 on successors to the level of a simple administrative order, which not only every diocesan bishop, but also any priestly elder of ancient Rus', could make within his department, prof. Berdnikov is trying to belittle the significance of this legislative act from the other side. In our first response to our critic, we wrote, among other things: “It is known that the Greek patriarchs were also present at the council of 1666; This means that the council’s decree (on two successors) serves as proof of the validity of the same rule in the modern practice of the Greek Church: the conclusion is all the more likely because in other cases the council quite sharply contrasted the Greek church orders with the Russian ones, for example, on issues of widowed priests, the rebaptism of Catholics and Lutherans, etc.” (page 30). To this prof. Berdnikov objects: “the acts of the council of 1666 do not confirm such an assurance: they directly state that the instructions for church deanery (which also contains the rule about two successors) were compiled by a council of bishops of the entire Russian state. This act was also signed by Russian bishops alone. Prof. Pavlov says that the council of 1666 contrasted the Greek church orders with the Russian ones... We also do not find this in the acts of the said council. It turns out that Prof. Pavlov confused the council of 1666 with the council of 1667, which is really called the great Moscow council and which was attended, along with Russian shepherds, by the Eastern patriarchs” (pp. 55–56). We answer: we do not “confuse” the council of 1666 with the council of the following year; only two different things can be confused, and the councils of 1666 and 1667 undoubtedly constitute one continuing council (1666–1667), which can be marked by both its initial and its final moment. The Eastern patriarchs arrived in Moscow back in 1666, and in the same year (November 7) conciliar meetings of Russian bishops began together with the Greek patriarchs 38 . Thus, the Moscow Cathedral of 1666 turned into the “Bolshoi” this year. Prof. Berdnikov correctly points out (not indicated by us) the reason why we attributed to the Eastern patriarchs the approval of the “instructions on church deanery” compiled by Russian bishops in 1666 and in it the rules about two successors. In the introduction to the conciliar book of 1667 it is said that the Eastern patriarchs (and the newly installed All-Russian Joasaph) “with their great pastoral blessing approved all the previous councils, deeds and reasoning” of the Russian bishops. But our critic interprets it incorrectly, but only “cunningly,” that “the Eastern patriarchs approved with their consent mainly the orders of the Russian shepherds on matters of schism” (p. 66). So, there was something approved by the patriarchs and not “mainly?” Undoubtedly it was. One was approved by them directly on special issues of Russian bishops, often coinciding in content with the “instruction of the church deanery” of 1666 (compare, for example, the 7th chapter of the cathedral book of 1667 with this “instruction”; the other (including the rule on patrons and metric books) was approved by the tacit consent of the Eastern patriarchs when “all councils (i.e. e. minutes of previous conciliar meetings), the affairs and reasoning" of Russian bishops. It is all the more possible to assume such agreement since in other cases the Eastern patriarchs were embarrassed to condemn Russian church orders, if the latter differed sharply from the Greek ones. Prof. Berdnikov does not find a single point in the conciliar acts of 1666 (more precisely, in the “instructions for church deanery”). proof that the eastern patriarchs “opposed the Greek church orders to the Russian ones.” Meanwhile, in the conciliar “instruction” of 1666, there is undoubtedly one such point, namely the following: “The mighty (i.e. strong people) began to keep widowed priests in their homes without the blessing and without the testimony of the bishop.” This could serve as a direct reason for raising the issue of widow priests in one of the cathedral meetings of 1667, which was resolved by the Eastern patriarchs in a sense contrary to both the now cited point of the collected “instruction” of 1666 and the definitions of previous Russian councils. But - repeats Prof. Berdnikov wrote his old learned song - “the custom of dual succession, recognized by the council of 1666, could not be approved by the Eastern patriarchs, since this custom did not correspond to the then practice of the Greek Church” (p. 66). What was the practice of the Greek Church at that time in relation to the number of recipients, we talked a lot about this above. We shouldn’t repeat the same thing in different ways, following the unenviable example of our critic. Therefore, let’s move on to the question: how does the corresponding rule of Joachim’s Trebnik of 1677 relate to the cathedral decree of 1666 on recipients? Prof. Berdnikov, who is more comfortable with words than with concepts (especially legal ones), answers this question by pointing out that the cathedral decree speaks of two successors, and the later Patriarchal Trebnik speaks of one, and draws from the difference in these numerals the conclusion that the patriarch abolished the rule decreed by the council (p. 46). And here we have to regret that Prof. Berdnikov is not familiar enough with the legal encyclopedia. There a distinction is made between laws that permit something to be done or not to be done (lex permissiva), and laws that unconditionally prescribe or prohibit something (lex cogens). The Council decree of 1666 on recipients was undoubtedly a law of the first kind: it did not prescribe unconditional execution that in each individual case of baptism there would certainly be two recipients. Meanwhile, the parish priests of the 17th century, as strong in jurisprudence as Prof. Berdnikov, adhering to the literal meaning of the cathedral resolution (“stretch the gaps firmly for you, so that at baptism... the receiver was one and the receiver was one"), they could, when first establishing the metric books, look at their new business in such a way that in each baptismal record it is necessary to enter the name of not only the godfather, but also the godmother, which means demanding that in each case of baptism both receivers should be present. The instruction of Joachim’s Trebnik is directed against this understanding of the conciliar decree of 1666, and not in any way to “cancel” it, explaining that during baptism “there must be either one recipient or one recipient, and that if necessary, baptism can be performed without a recipient at all.” It is clear that the rule of the Trebnik did not necessarily require that in each case of baptism there be only one recipient or one recipient. Now, if it had been edited in this latter sense, then one could see in it the abolition of the cathedral decree on a pair of successors. But it could not be edited like that, because Patriarch Joachim was well aware that he did not have the powers that Prof. vested him with. Berdnikov, and cannot single-handedly cancel the resolution of an entire council of the Russian Church, which, moreover, was approved by the Eastern patriarchs. Much to our surprise, Prof. Berdnikov makes a reservation: “of course, the rule of the Trebnik does not prohibit admitting two successors to succession, and this makes it possible to adhere in practice to the ingrained custom of two successors” (p. 46). In view of these hesitations of the author “ours and ours,” you involuntarily ask yourself: what is the difference between his and our views on the meaning of the cathedral decree of 1666 and the rule of Joachim’s Trebnik of 1677? If we do not take into account the inconvenient schemes of legal thinking of Prof. Berdnikov, then, perhaps, there will be no difference between our views. There is, however, a difference, and a very important one, but it does not concern the question of the relationship of the rule of Joachim's Trebnik to the cathedral resolution of 1666; and two other questions: firstly, about the general point of view on the formation of the institution of succession and the origin of an ordinary pair of successors, and, secondly, about the duration of the custom of dual succession in our country within the 17th and subsequent centuries to the present day. Recognizing that with the decree of the Russian church authorities against (?) dual succession in the 17th century (i.e., since 1677), the same thing happened as had happened before with similar orders of Russian pastors and councils, i.e., that the mentioned “decrees did not result in the destruction of the very custom of a pair of successors” (p. 46), Prof. Berdnikov explains the motive for his policy against our historical views on this couple by the fact that he “in presenting the history of the issue had in mind to trace the official view of the church hierarchy, the direction of legislation, and not church custom” (ibid. 39). This was a major flaw in our enemy's basic point of view. Without this shortcoming, his entire philippic against us for recognizing the historical and canonical rights to the existence of an ordinary pair of successors would not have taken up even a quarter of the number of pages in the Orthodox Interlocutor that it now stretches to. No matter how much prof. Berdnikov was against folk custom, as the main factor in the formation of the institution of succession in general, and in the end had to recognize the power of this factor even in the form of the custom of dual succession. Thus, the author’s consciousness that “in presenting the history of the issue he meant to trace the official view of the church authorities, the direction of legislation, and not church custom,” in essence, is nothing more than a recognition of the one-sidedness of his adopted point of view on the matter and an indirect justification of our main view, according to which “two factors participated in the history of the formation of the church institution of succession: the authority of the spiritual hierarchy, which demanded, for the above reasons, one successor, or one successor, and the power folk custom, which placed the recipient, as the spiritual father of the baptized, and the recipient, as his spiritual mother” (pp. 25–26). The mutual relationship of these factors, in our opinion, was such that custom preceded legislation and partly directly determined its direction and content in its favor. The ancient universal church, as noted above, in its legislation dealt with succession only to the extent that in the consciousness of the hierarchy and the entire church society it served as a source of obstacles to marriage; the number of recipients (one, many, pair) was still determined by custom. But in later times, the spiritual hierarchy, also for reasons that had their basis in the field of marriage law, began to insist on the necessity, or, more precisely, the sufficiency of having one recipient at baptism. In the East, as we have seen, this requirement of the spiritual hierarchy has never been fully realized and is now not realized in the life of the people. With us, on the contrary, the usual pair of receivers has become the general rule. But for how long has it enjoyed the recognition of our church legislation? This is the second question on which we significantly disagree with Prof. Berdnikov. The latter, as we have already seen, limits the effect of the rule of two successors, adopted in the Patriarchal Trebniks of the first half of the 17th century. and confirmed by the council of 1666, only for a "small period of time", namely from 1625 to 1677. And we find that this testimony is erroneous in both of its parts, that is, in relation to both the initial and final chronological term noted by our critic. The genealogy of an ordinary pair of successors, as generally recognized in Russian church practice, begins not with the Trebnik of 1625, but much earlier - with the Missal of Patriarch Job of 1602. In the 23rd chapter of this Service Book (the leaves in it are not numbered), in the “statute on holy baptism”, recipients are already spoken of in the plural, namely: “if there is a baby being baptized, the priest turns the woman with the baby and the recipients to the west, facing west, and asks the baby: have you denied Satan (sic)? And instead of the baby, the words are answered by the woman and his successors,” etc. throughout the ritual. The same is read verbatim in the Service Book of 1616 (the sheets are not numbered here either). Then, starting from 1625, there are Missals not only with the now indicated ritual details, but also with an exact designation of the number of recipients, “as custom is accepted,” that is, as was the case when baptism was performed according to the previous Missals, which silently speak of recipients in the plural. These data are important not only in relation to the chronological point from which it is necessary to begin the recognition by the spiritual hierarchy of an ordinary pair of recipients, but also in relation to the woman, who in all the indicated editions of the Service Books and Trebniks appears along with the recipients, performs the same ritual actions with them, and in whom, therefore, one cannot help but see the double of the woman mentioned by Simeon of Thessalonica in the description of baptismal rites - also along with the recipient. If the “baba” of the Russian Trebniks of the 17th century, in her participation in the baptismal rite, was no different from the pair of recipients accepted in the then church practice, then the Greek woman who brought the baptized baby to the font, “accompanied by the recipient,” did not remain an idle spectator of the sacred rites of the sacrament, but had to take a certain part in them; otherwise - we repeat - there was no need to deliberately mention it in the description of these rituals. If so, then in the eyes of the people this woman, with one male successor, naturally was no longer just a nanny or grandmother of the child being baptized, but together with her successor. As for the final chronological term that determines the duration of action of the rule about a pair of receivers adopted in our country in the 17th century, we decisively affirm that this term did not arrive even before the present year of 1893. All objections of Prof. Berdnikov's opposition to this statement, based on the practice of the Holy Synod on Marriage Affairs, stems from a simple misunderstanding. He loses sight of the difference in the relationship of our spiritual authority to an ordinary pair of recipients - from the point of view of the ritual practice of baptism, and from the point of view of marriage law - a difference similar to that established in Greek church practice, only in the opposite sense: there, as we have seen, during the rite of baptism, only one recipient is formally required and in fact for the most part; but in the case of the same person being baptized by two persons of different sexes, both of these persons are recognized as valid recipients and, as a result, are placed in a spiritual relationship that prevents their marriage not only with the person received and his parents, but also with each other (although, as we will see later, church practice in this last respect in Greece was not always consistent). In our country, it is the other way around: in the ritual practice of baptism, a pair of recipients is accepted, and the practice of marriage law presents many examples of fluctuations either in the direction of Article 211 of the nomocanon, which recognizes this couple as spiritually “congenial” with the carnal parents of the recipient and among themselves, or in the direction of the rule of Joachim’s Trebnik, which speaks of the sufficiency of one recipient or one recipient for baptism. What is most remarkable (and regrettable) is the fact that these fluctuations, so to speak, were legitimized by the famous decree of the Holy Synod on January 19, 1810. Comparing this decree with the basic rule of the universal church on spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage, we wrote in our study about the 50th chapter of the Helmsman’s Book: “The 53rd rule of the 6th Ecumenical Council, prohibiting adoptees from marrying the widowed mothers of adopted children, obviously means male adoptees; the perceived children are indifferently designated by the name παῖδες, which equally befits children of both sexes. From a historical point of view, this rule was a confirmation and, at the same time, a further development of the law issued by Emperor Justinian, by which spiritual kinship, resulting from reception from the baptismal font, was for the first time (formally) recognized as an obstacle to marriage, namely, between the recipient and the recipient” (pp. 165 – 166). Meanwhile, the decree of 1810, “on the one hand, recognizes, on the basis of the 53rd rule of the 6th Ecumenical Council, the spiritual relationship between the recipient (man), the female infant he received (“he already has a daughter”) and the mother of this infant; on the other hand, in contrast to the general custom of inviting two persons of different sexes to accept baptized children as the spiritual parents of the baptized person, he refers to the rule in the Trebnik about the sufficiency of only one recipient or one recipient during baptism and makes it clear that, within the meaning of this rule, a recipient of a different sex from the person being baptized is not a valid recipient.” But in order not to come into direct contradiction with oneself, i.e. with its previous decree prohibiting the successor from marrying his goddaughter and her mother, “the decree of 1810 uses the rule of the Trebnik, or more precisely, its interpretation of this rule, only in order to remove the obstacle to marriage between the successor and the successor of the same baby. But the later practice of the Holy Synod, attested to by several of its decrees (presumably, separate ones), was not slow to draw from the position that a recipient of a different sex than the person being baptized is not a valid recipient, and other consequences that flow from it with logical necessity), which turn out to be a direct contradiction to the literal meaning of both the decree of 1810 and the 53rd rule of the 6th Ecumenical Council. Thus, by one decree (April 16, 1874, No. 932 - addressed to the Archbishop of Podolsk), the marriage of the adopted girl’s mother with the adopted mother was allowed; others (October 31, 1875 for No. 2861) - to the successor of the boy with the father of the adopted... Here are the actual words of these decrees: “the general provision set out in the 58th rule of the Holy Ecumenical Council of Trulla on the meaning of spiritual kinship, which prohibits marital cohabitation between those who receive children at baptism and the widowed mothers of the latter, does not determine that at the baptism of one baby there should be more than one recipient (the rule does not determine that at baptism there must certainly be one recipient) 40 ; and as it is explained in the Trebnik before the subsequent baptism (follows the text of the well-known rule about the sufficiency at baptism of one recipient or one recipient, depending on the gender of the baptized), then the spiritual means should be recognized only between the parents of the baptized baby and the recipients of the same sex, and the prohibition of marriages between widowed parents contained in the 53rd rule of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and the successors of their children should refer only to the successors of their sons, and the successors of their daughters 41 . The whole force of this argument obviously lies in the artificial comparison of two rules, unequal in merit and completely different in content. The 53rd rule of the 6th Ecumenical Council speaks of spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage; and the nameless rule of the Trebnik is about the number and gender of recipients at baptism, and in itself has nothing to do with marriage law. If, having been put in connection with the indicated conciliar canon, it leads to a conclusion that does not agree with the literal meaning of this latter, then it is self-evident that in order to establish a true canonical dogma about spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage, one must deal with the canon alone (pp. 164 – 165). Otherwise, using the argumentation of the above separate decrees, i.e. on the basis of a position completely unknown to the legislation of the universal church: “a recipient of a different sex from the baptized person is not a valid recipient, the practice of marriage law can come to the conclusion that there is no canonical obstacle to the marriage of a recipient with his goddaughter, and a recipient with his godson 42. In view of all that has been said, it is not difficult to understand that Prof. Berdnikov exaggerates the importance of the rule of Joachim's Breviary in the field of marriage law as much as in the ritual practice of baptism. Based on this rule, the separate decrees of the Holy Synod, which directly allowed recipients of a different sex from the baptized person to marry the widowed parents of the latter and implicitly allowed the possibility of marriage between the recipient and the recipient himself, cannot in any way be considered an expression of the canonical dogma of Russian marriage law, for they directly contradict the true meaning of the 53rd rule of the 6th Ecumenical Council, which prohibits recipients in general (i.e., whether they will be of the same or different sex as the one being baptized) marry the parents of the one being baptized. Yes, in essence, these decrees do not agree with the rule of the Trebnik. The latter, as noted above, does not contain the idea that during baptism there must necessarily be only one recipient - a person of the same sex as the person being baptized, nor the idea that, in the case of the reception of the same baby by a man and a woman, only a person of the same sex as the person being baptized should be recognized as the actual recipient. This means that neither in this rule, nor in the separate decrees of the Holy Synod based on it, one can see what Prof. wants to see in them. Berdnikov - a direct abolition of the rule accepted in our ritual practice of baptism, according to which, in accordance with the age-old custom, formally recognized by church laws, two persons of different sexes are allowed to receive the same baptism. This practice and the legislation related to it still remain in agreement with the resolution of the Great Moscow Council of 1666, already known to us. We will not repeat the laws in which, starting with the spiritual regulations and ending with the synodal decrees of the first half of the last century, the cathedral decree of 1666 on the establishment of metric books in churches is confirmed, and in which forms are given for recording cases of baptism in these books with an indication of who the recipient and recipient of the baptized person were 43. Prof. Berdnikov, of course, could not deny the fact of the existence of these laws; but apparently he is inclined to see in them no more than what he found in their common source - the cathedral resolution of 1666, i.e. administrative orders. At least with obvious irony, he calls the forms of keeping registers of parishes attached to these laws and, therefore, legalized forms “forms” and does not want to recognize them as evidence of the position we are defending, that an ordinary pair of recipients “still finds support in our church laws” (pp. 51–52). To prove the contrary, he cites in full text one of the above-mentioned separate decrees of St. Synod, allowing adoptees to marry the parents of their adopted children (precisely the decree of April 16, 1874), forgetting that no matter how many similar decrees there are, they cannot formulate a general current law or a general canonical dogma of Russian marriage law, and that, despite these decrees, metric books are still kept in the once accepted form, which, as legalized, is published as an appendix to 1035 Article IX of volume of the code of laws (on conditions). In view of these laws, will any of the Russian canonists and lawyers decide to share the opinion of Prof. Berdnikov, that the usual pair of recipients accepted in our ritual practice of baptism does not find “support in the current church laws”? Another question is: what significance does this couple have in the field of marriage law? In other words: what combinations of spiritual kinship that prevent marriage arise from the fact that, according to the general rule we accept, those baptized from the font are performed by two persons of different sexes? This question, as can be seen from the entire previous presentation, is one of the most difficult and confusing issues in the science of church law. The basic canons of the universal church do not give any answer to it, but not because “at the time of drawing up these canons they did not yet know dual succession,” as Prof. Berdnikov (p. 53), but simply because the church practice and people’s life at that time did not know any general rule about the number of recipients in each case of baptism. If in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite and in the most ancient rites of the sacrament of baptism, recipients were spoken of in the singular, this does not mean that in those days the rule was universally and invariably observed that there should be only one recipient at baptism 44 . On the contrary, we have already seen that even during the period of ecumenical councils there were examples of the perception of the same baptized person by two persons (the example of the Belisarius spouses - from the 6th century), and by many (examples that took place in the 8th century during the baptism of children of Byzantine emperors), and it is not clear from anywhere that these examples, as something contrary to the nature and purpose of succession, caused open disapproval or protest from the church hierarchy. Then, in the sources of later times, we found some indications that the set of recipients that was part of the custom among the Greeks in most cases was reduced to a couple - a man and a woman. How should the spiritual hierarchy look at these many or two recipients when the question arose about their marriage with the recipient, his parents and among themselves? Since spiritual kinship is established by the very act of reception from the baptismal font, it necessarily follows that, no matter how many persons actively participate in the reception of the same baptized person, all of them must be recognized as actual recipients, i.e., spiritual fathers and mothers of the person received and, in this capacity, “contributors” (σύντεκνοι) to the carnal parents him, in accordance with the 53rd rule of the sixth ecumenical council. Thus, in this rule, the spiritual hierarchy found, on the one hand, a direct basis for prohibiting marriage to each of the many successors of the same baptized person, both with himself and with his parents, on the other hand, a sufficiently strong motive for rebelling against the custom of multiple succession, since, thanks to it, the number of canonical obstacles to marriage arising from spiritual kinship increased unnecessarily. As for the question of marriage between the recipients of the same person being baptized, the church hierarchy, not having any positive (canonical) basis for resolving it, had to be guided in this matter by the views of the people themselves, who, by way of custom, accepted the rule of having not one, but several or at least two recipients at the baptism of children. As long as the people's conscience or the moral sense of a given society recognizes such a marriage to be as unlawful as the marriage of the recipient with the recipient and his parents, prohibited by the 53rd rule of the Council of Trula, until then the spiritual hierarchy cannot adhere to a different view. This exact moment in the development of church and public views on marriage between co-parents is indicated in the already known 211th article of the Greek nomocanon, published under our Great Trebnik. But the effect of the rule set forth in this article was far from constant either in Greek or Russian church practice and folk life. And among the people there were often people who asked the spiritual hierarchy for permission to marry their co-parents, or even entered into such marriages without hierarchical permission, and the spiritual hierarchy did not find any canonical basis to prohibit such marriages, or to dissolve them if they had already been concluded without its permission. Thus, in 1727, the Patriarch of Constantinople Paisius, in a letter addressed to the Moldovlahian bishops, gave permission to the Nizhyn Greek Georgiy (Yuri) Likanorov to marry the girl Anna, with whom before marriage he had adopted a child in the same family (probably Greek; at least the successor was also a “foreigner”) 45. On the basis of this letter, the marriage was celebrated, but not in Moldo-Vlahia, but here in Russia (in Kozelets). This circumstance served as the reason for initiating a case about Likanorov’s marriage in the Kiev diocesan court, and then in the Holy Synod, for consideration of which this case, on appeal from the defendant, was raised three times and was decided here in two opposite senses. First (July 17, 1728) St. The Synod, out of respect for the authorization letter of the Ecumenical Patriarch and in consideration of the fact that Lycanorov, as a foreigner, might not know Russian church laws and orders, decided to leave his marriage without dissolution; Then (January 9, 1729) an opposite definition was made, on the basis of article 211 of the nomocanon: “to separate the spouses without delay, so that from such incorrectly occurring causes of the holy Eastern Christian Church there would be no opposition and on the spiritual government for neglect and failure to keep the rules there would not be God’s wrath and from Orthodox Christians popular suspicion.” Finally (March 20, 1730) the now stated decree was canceled and the first one was restored, and for the first time by St. The Synod expressed the following judgment about the canonical dignity of article 211 of the nomocanon, which was repeated several times, in the same form, and in later synodal definitions on matters of this kind: “And that the nomocanon, paragraph 211 (follows the text of the article), is printed in the Trebnik, and that paragraph is very doubtful because from whom it was stated and in which year, it was not printed and is very unknown 46. But not recognizing in the 211th article of the nomocanon a sufficient basis for the dissolution of an existing marriage, the Holy Synod, in its definitions on cases of this kind, has repeatedly stated that henceforth marriages between the recipient and the recipient of the same baptized person should not be allowed. This is exactly the definition that took place in St. Synod, for example, in 1768, according to a report from the Kyiv Metropolitan Arseny, motivated by the consideration that “in these countries (in Little Russia), since ancient times, the custom has been maintained at baptism to have two recipients, male and female, and such persons have never been married, and this has always been sacredly and inviolably maintained and is maintained to this day 47 . But if in cases of such marriages there were no such motives for prohibiting them, then the Holy Synod, guided only by the consideration that Article 211 of the nomoconon is “very dubious”, and there is no other, completely reliable and sufficiently authoritative rule prohibiting such marriages, freely gave its permission to them. Without a doubt, as a result of frequent requests for permission for such marriages, a general decree was made in the decree of January 19, 1810: “As for the recipient and recipient of children from baptism, then understand them in the same sense as shown in the Breviary under the rules of holy baptism,” i.e. That is, as they later began to interpret this point of the decree and the very rule of the Trebnik, that between the recipient and the recipient of the same baby there is no spiritual relationship that would prevent their marriage. However, this resolution was not the final resolution of the issue. Since in the ritual baptism there were still two recipients, in the person of the godfather and godfather, whose presence, on the basis of the laws, was documented each time in the metric books: then the view of this couple as actual recipients, that is, as persons connected by spiritual kinship not only with the recipient and his parents, but also with each other, did not lose its force before the decrees based on the rule of the Trebnik about the sufficiency of being with baptism to one recipient or one recipient. This rule, in relation to the ritual practice of baptism, obviously remained (and remains) a dead letter, and the custom opposite to it received new and decisive confirmation in the circular decree of the Holy Synod on June 18, 1834. This decree is also remarkable in that it attempts to permanently eliminate from the practice of marriage law the rule of the Trebnik in the sense given to it by the decree of 1810. It was in the decree of 1834, in resolving the issue of marriage between persons who were in the second pair the adopters of the same baby, that it was decreed: “The adopter, as the holy Greek-Russian Church teaches, is called the father by birth by the spirit and, by virtue of this meaning, being called the brother of the father and mother by the flesh of the one adopted by him, is with them in the second degree of kinship (see Helmsman's Book, Chapter. 50). According to the 53rd rule of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the marriage of the recipient with the mother of the recipient is not allowed; if this is done, those who have combined are declared fornicators. But since, whether in the flesh or in the spirit, there must be one father, then on the basis of this understanding of St. The fathers, having decided that at baptism there should be one recipient and one recipient, defined in detail their relationship both among themselves and towards the parents and carnal relatives of the person born by baptism. But in order for two or more recipients or recipients to participate in baptism, there is nothing contained in the teaching handed down to us by the Fathers, and there is not the slightest indication of what kind of relationship these persons should have with each other. Therefore, in accordance with the teachings of the church and in order to avoid difficulties in the investigation of spiritual kinship arising from the creeping custom of inviting more than one recipient and more than one recipient to baptism, the following should be decided: when baptizing one person, there should be one recipient and one recipient; and for this, the priests performing this sacrament are obliged to: 1. in the case of many persons invited to receive from the font, to allow one couple, mainly appointed for this purpose by the parents or relatives of the person being baptized, to participate in the ritual action, remembering it in prayers; 2. enter the current pair into the registers of births, without recording the others; and 3. to this only couple, as actual recipients, spiritual kinship is also attributed, as determined by the rules of the church 48. By virtue of this decree, St. In its further practice, the Synod not only refused to permit a marriage between a successor and a successor, 49 but also decided to dissolve such marriages if they had already been concluded. Such a resolution was passed in the Holy Synod in 1836 in the case of the marriage of the Ginterferwalter of the Perm state-owned factories Permyakov with the girl Tudvaseva, with whom he had one child before marriage. But by the Highest command, this marriage, from which the spouses already had a child, was restored, and the diocesan bishops were ordered by a secret decree on January 31, 1838, that “when considering and resolving requests from those wishing to enter into marriages who encounter obstacles due to spiritual kinship, as well as when considering and deciding cases of such marriages that have taken place, be guided by the literal meaning of the decree of 1810, without extending to marriages penalties not provided for in that decree 50. “Of course,” we wrote in our book about the 50th chapter of the Helmsman, “it is very disappointing to see such fluctuations in our church legislation and practice. It would be possible to put an end to them only through a formal and decisive abolition of the custom, by virtue of which it is recognized as necessary to invite not one person, but two, to receive from the baptismal font - a man and a woman, who are then considered as the spiritual parents of the person received. But how to achieve this cancellation? The issuance of an opposite law with an order that henceforth it would be allowed to receive from baptism and then enter into the metric book of baptism only one recipient, or one recipient, depending on the gender of the baptized person - this measure would be too drastic and hardly advisable (i.e. - let us now add - it could arouse temptation and even open resistance among the people, accustomed to seeing their godfather and godfather at christenings). godfather, as the spiritual father and mother of the baptized). Centuries-old customs are abolished for centuries until the popular views on which their binding force rests change. In particular, the custom we are talking about does not contain anything that would require its forced abolition. True, it arose in addition to and next to the general rule (also usual), which called only one recipient, but it arose from the same source, to which the entire institution of succession owes its origin and development” (pp. 175–176), namely, from the general church view of recipients as the spiritual parents of the received. Therefore, we do not find either historical or canonical meaning in our critic’s strict response to the custom of dual succession: “this is a folk custom, alien to the tradition of the ancient church, which has relegated succession from its exalted Church point of view to the category of everyday relations” (p. 62) in the letter we regret that the author, resolving with this loud and not quite intelligently constructed phrase 51, delayed in the recesses of your mind are the grounds by which one could judge its real meaning. If, according to his definition, the “exalted church point of view on succession” was that the church looked at the recipient as “the guarantor before her for the faith and life of faith of the baptized and as his trusted leader in this regard” (p. 64), then it remains unclear why this meaning of succession can be carried out by only one recipient, and not two or many? What is more reliable: the “guarantee” of one, or two and many? When you speak two or three, every verb becomes - this is the rule that has always guided the church when it needed evidence of something or a guarantee of something. If one successor died, or changed his place of permanent residence during the early childhood of his godson, another remains with the latter with the same spiritual powers and responsibilities in relation to the perceived one as his spiritual son. And why, with one recipient, succession remains at the height of its ecclesiastical purpose, but with two or many “relegated to the category of everyday relationships”? It seems to us that the work of recipients in general, that is, no matter how many there are, is limited exclusively to the “everyday relationships” of what is received, insofar as these relationships should bear the stamp of the holy Christian faith. In the sphere of purely church relations, both the recipients and those perceived by them are equally disciples and spiritual children of the common Mother - the Church of Christ. This is how it seemed to Prof. himself before. Berdnikov, while he still maintained the proper balance of spirit in his polemics against us. “The recipient,” he wrote in the first critical article on our book, serves as an assistant for church pastors in implementing the home (whose? – of course, perceived) principles of Christian morality in implementing the rules of church discipline” (p. 20). So, from a fundamental point of view, contained in the very concept of succession and its purpose, nothing is revealed that would require a forced immediate abolition of the custom of dual succession that exists among us. But isn’t this abolition required in the interests of the practice of marriage law - so that in the future there will be no reason to raise the question of marriage between co-recipients of the same baptized person? Bearing in mind that the custom of dual succession has existed among us for several centuries, that it is formally recognized by our church laws, that it does not contain anything contrary to the church view of the essence and purpose of succession, and that, finally, there is no positive church rule prohibiting co-parents from marrying each other, we did not dare to give any categorical answer to the proposed question, but limited ourselves to only a general remark, which the whole world inspired us with. the previous history of this issue in the practice of marriage law, namely: “Centuries-old customs are abolished for centuries until the popular views on which their binding force rests change.” We left it to the church legislator himself to decide: does the custom that has occupied us until now retain its original force among the people and does public conscience allow the marriage between an ordinary pair of successors? If life still gives an affirmative answer to these questions, then the legislator, of necessity, will have to take the point of view of the above-stated Synodal decree of 1834, especially since the later separate decrees of the Holy Synod, contrary to this legislative act, for the reasons explained above, cannot in any way be recognized as a formal abolition of it 52. In this case, all further permission for marriages between co-parents can be given only on the condition that those married clear their consciences with church penance, just as is required by church rules in relation to second and third marriages. If the legislator does not see in modern life strong enough obstacles to, in order to simplify the practice of marriage law, formally abolish the usual pair of successors and put in its place one successor or one successor: then, of course, this change will be both timely and expedient. Prof. didn't like it very much. Berdnikov is our compassionate attitude towards a custom that undoubtedly still exists in all its strength. He insists on the need for the immediate abolition of this custom and proposes a draft law opposite to it, taken entirely from our own book (see his page 63). What is the need, he reflects in the introduction to this project, to wait, perhaps for centuries, until the people themselves lag behind their customs and why not now take the last decisive step along the path opened by the decree of 1810? To this, in view of all of the above, we can answer with a counter question: what is the need for the immediate abolition of a long-standing and general custom, which does not contain anything contrary to either the dogmas or canons of the church and, in addition, does not pose any irreparable difficulties for the very practice of marriage law? But the ancient church, Prof. tells us. Berdnikov, did you know only one recipient? – Correct: only the ancient church never formally canonized this sole successor, i.e. did not elevate it to a general and unchangeable rule, but on the contrary, as we have seen, allowed many persons, or two, to be recipients of one and the same baptized person, and in this latter case, all the less could she see something anti-canonical or contrary to the essence and purpose of succession, since the custom of presenting a pair of recipients flowed from the same view, by virtue of which only one recipient was previously recognized as necessary. We still have to answer one objection from Prof. Berdnikov – of theoretical nature. We called succession an institution of ordinary church law in the proper sense, and thus gave our opponent a reason to come out against us with the whole theory of customary law of his own work, which we present in full: “It is difficult to understand, he writes, what is ordinary church law in the proper sense, and what is ordinary church law in an improper sense? Now in the response brochure of Prof. Pavlov explained that by ordinary church law in the proper sense he meant ordinary law in the sense in which this expression is usually used in jurisprudence. It seems to us that if prof. Pavlov began to explain his dark phrase (“dark”, of course, only for such a co-questionnaire as Prof. Berdnikov): it would not hurt him to explain it in such a way that there would no longer be any doubt left for the reader (that is, again for Prof. Berdnikov) about its meaning. And the explanation he gave is evasive and will give room for new questions and doubts. It is known that common law does not have the same meaning everywhere and not every jurisprudence understands it in the same meaning. In our canonical area, the teaching about church custom, contained in the church rules and in the nomocanon, has primary significance. From the point of view of this teaching, it turns out to be inappropriate to oppose succession and spiritual kinship, as an institution of customary church law, to other institutions regulated by formal decrees of church authority. In contrast to this prof. Pavlov wants to say that succession, as an institution of customary church law, does not have in its character the stability and positivity inherent in the institutions of positive church law; on the contrary, by its very nature, it allows for changes without compromising its dignity. Meanwhile, according to the teaching about church custom contained in the rules and nomocanon, and church custom worthy of this name, consistent with the teachings of the church and church rules, has a force equal to the law or church rule. So, when prof. Pavlov says about succession that this is an institution of customary church law in the proper sense, he means church custom not in the indicated sense in which it should be understood, but in another, not real sense... Genuine church custom must be recognized and approved in church practice. Meanwhile, the custom “in the proper sense” among Prof. Pavlova is called a folk custom, stemming from the views of the people, a custom against which the church hierarchy fought, as against a custom inappropriate from a church point of view” (pp. 59–60). There is a lot of untruth in this theory both against the teaching about church custom contained in the church rules and nomocanon, and against our view of the origin and nature of the institution of succession. By calling succession an institution of customary church law in the proper sense, we only wanted to indicate with this name the source of origin of succession, which undoubtedly was custom, not law. But contrasting custom and law by their origin does not mean contrasting them by strength and duration of action. In any area of ​​positive law, including the church, a custom that is consistent with the natural moral law and the nature of a given legal institution or relationship has the same binding force as is inherent in the law. In the nomocanon that Prof. wants to follow and actually followed. Berdnikov, in his first article written about our book, does not set out any special teaching about common law, but the same one that is contained in the sources of Roman civil law. In particular, about the relationship of custom to law, according to their force and effect, the nomocanon expresses the following position: “just as the publication of a law occurs either through a direct, formal decree, or through an unwritten custom, so its abolition is possible either by direct law or by custom” (Balsamon in the interpretation of tit. I, chapter 3 of the nomocanon). Our critic successfully illustrated this position of the nomocanon with the following example: “It is known that according to the rules of the ancient church it was forbidden to marry second marriages.” But in the 13th century, according to the testimony of Metropolitan Nikita of Irakli, this ἡ ἀκρίβεια - the requirement of strict law - was abandoned, and the custom - συνήθεια - of the Church of Constantinople, which allowed the wedding of second-weds, received force” (Berdn. in the mentioned article, p. 65–66). The question arises: on what basis was the power of this custom established, which abolished the action of the ancient church rule that was directly opposite to it? Without a doubt, based on the views of the entire Byzantine Christian (and therefore church) society, which found expression in modern civil laws, according to which the second marriage was no different from the first. And since already from the end of the 9th or the beginning of the 10th century in the Byzantine Empire, the rule was accepted that only that marriage has legal force, which was concluded with church prayer and wedding: this revealed the vital need to perform a second marriage, as recognized by the laws, in the same form in which the first was performed, i.e. through church prayer and wedding. In a word: the view that flowed from the conditions of civil life led in the field of church law to the formation of a corresponding custom, opposite to the previous rule. It goes without saying that just as custom cancels the effect of the law only through a more or less long-term non-compliance with this latter (desuetudo): so, in the same way, a law directed against an already existing and rooted custom for centuries does not immediately triumph over it, but for a long time acts along with custom or even, not defeating the force of this latter, is identified with it, i.e., turns custom into a written law. We can observe all this in the history of successionism, as an institution of customary church law in the proper sense of the word. Perception in the two main forms of its development (one recipient - a man and two recipients - a man and a woman) was at first an institution of customary church law, filling the gap in the positive legislation of the church (the so-called consuetudo praeter legem), and only from the 16th century, when in the East the spiritual hierarchy began to rebel against the custom of having many or two recipients at baptism, this custom became there a custom contrary to the law (consuetudo contra legem). But we already know that the struggle of the eastern church hierarchy against custom is numerous - and dual succession was and is being waged not from a principled point of view contained in the very concept of succession, but for practical reasons that have their basis in the field of marriage law. Some of these grounds are such that their canonical importance remains unchanged and indisputable, no matter what custom the people adhere to regarding the number of adoptees: everyone knows and everyone observes (at least in the East) the rule of the 6th Ecumenical Council, which prohibits marriage between adoptees, no matter how many there are, with the adopted one and his parents. Here, obviously, there can be no conflict between the views of the people and the spiritual hierarchy. On the other hand, the hierarchy cannot attach unconditional significance to the popular view according to which spiritual kinship, which prevents marriage, is also recognized between co-recipients of the same baptized person: for, as noted above, there is no direct and reliable rule prohibiting such marriages, and even the most popular views on this matter were not expressed in one strictly defined and universally binding custom. Thus, in the East, the practice of marriage law can easily coexist with folk custom, which requires that each baptized person have not one recipient, but several, or at least two. Hence it is clear why this custom, despite repeated repetitions and confirmation of the law opposite to it, is still held by the people, retaining, moreover, the character of a church custom (even if only local), for even where a couple or more recipients appear at baptism, this sacrament is still performed in the church by authorized church-hierarchical persons 53. If this is how things stand in the Orthodox East, then we cannot even talk about any conflict between custom and law on the issue of the number of recipients in individual cases of baptism. An ordinary pair of recipients in our country is formally recognized by church laws, which means that they have turned from ordinary to legal. Therefore, all those traits that Prof. Berdnikov characterizes church custom in the proper or “real” sense of the word, even that which, according to the doctrine of common law contained in the nomocanon, cannot be included in the concept of church custom “in the proper sense”: we are talking about the agreement of church customs with church rules, which Prof. Berdnikov puts one of the necessary conditions for custom to receive equal force with the law. Was it then that our critic introduced this feature into his theory of ordinary church law in the proper or real sense, in order to unnoticeably resolve the question that was perplexing him: “what is ordinary church law in the improper sense”? In fact, if a church custom “agrees with church rules” (the so-called. consuetudo secundum legem), then it is obviously nothing more than the conscious fulfillment of a given rule, and at the same time certification that the rule is really observed in life 54; whereas church custom in the proper sense of the word is such an ecclesiastical legal norm that fills a certain gap in church legislation or modifies the application of a legislative norm to life, actions in both cases with the force inherent in the law. Having reworked in his own way the teaching of the nomocanon on church custom, Prof. Berdnikov also gives his own interpretation to our words: “perception is an institution of customary church law in the proper sense of the word.” As we have already seen, he understood these words not in the sense of the opposition of custom to law in their origin, but in the sense of their opposition in force and effect. By this contrast we supposedly “wanted to say that successionism, as an institution of ordinary church law, does not have in its character the stability and positivity characteristic of the institutions of positive church law.” Could we have such a thought when we directly stated that “in the history of the institution of succession, custom, as an educational factor, constantly preceded legislation and determined its direction and, in part, the very content” (especially in Russia) and that “centuries-old customs (such as our custom of dual succession) have been abolished for centuries”? In conclusion of his critical article, Prof. Berdnikov, as usual, addresses the readers with the air of a modestly recognized triumph of his truth over our untruth; he bids farewell to the reading public with these words: “The reader deigns to appreciate the opinions and arguments of both sides (The reader “deigns” on this occasion to recall and “appreciate” the lesson taught to him by the author from Russian grammar, prohibiting the use of the singular instead of the plural). Without claiming not only the infallibility, but also the special authority of our opinions, we, nevertheless, consider it unnecessary to present them to the judgment of the competent reading public. We were guided in our printed opinions by respect for the truth and the desire to be useful to science, expecting, of course, a similar attitude to the matter on the part of others” (p. 67). Including himself among the voluntary readers of Prof. Berdnikov, but unwitting connoisseurs of his “opinions and arguments,” we allow ourselves to respond to his invitation like this: commendable modesty, good intentions, fair expectations, but we have already seen what the author’s work is like! “Respect for the truth and the desire to provide all possible benefit to science” could have kept prof. Berdnikov from any distortion of the thoughts of his fellow scientist, who, no less than others, worked as hard as he could for its benefit and whom no one can blame for a lack of respect for the truth. The reader, of course, has the right to “dare to have his own judgment” about the opinions and arguments of both sides. But we are confident that every impartial reader will give us a fair preference over our adversary, at least in one respect: we did not allow ourselves the slightest encroachment on the true meaning of his “broadcast and noisy” polemic against us. We use the word dogmatic in the sense accepted in jurisprudence, i.e. in the sense of the opposite of the word historical. We will quote this article from a separate copy, necessarily sent to us by the author himself. The indicated motive for compiling and publishing this rebuke frees us from the obligation to apologize to anyone for our slowness. We think that Prof. Berdnikov, without risking any criticism from anyone, could have done without the following footnote to the beginning of his article: “We apologize for the delay in response. The reason for this is the slowness of collecting information regarding the current practice of the Greek Church and some other circumstances, not unknown to the author to whom we are responding.” What circumstances the author is hinting at here is, of course, just as little interesting to the reader as it is little memorable to us. But if he has already found it necessary, judging by the meaning of the above note, to apologize to us, then we can assure him that this apology is completely unnecessary and in vain. It would be much more pleasant for us, and more useful for the cause, if our opponent delayed with his answer to our apology for another year, but would compose an answer that would honor him, and would give us a reason to thank him for his practical pointers to any mistakes and shortcomings in our book (about the 50th chapter of the Helmsman), possible and even inevitable in any matter of the human mind. In vain, therefore, the author attributes to us a “feeling of self-sufficiency” (p. 4), as if depriving him of “the ability to influence our scientific convictions” (p. 22). If he really had this last goal in mind, then he would “manage” to achieve it by two means indicated at the end of the introduction to our book: “knowledge of the matter and a conscientious attitude towards it.” And your article, i.e. apologia against the attacks of prof. We quote Berdnikov from a separate print. In our response article, Prof. We even pointed out to Berdnikov with special emphasis that we were talking about the origin of the church institution of adoption “only under the influence of” civil laws on adoption” (p. 8), and not from these very laws. At the same time, we assumed that it was clear to everyone that the factor that only influences the origin and formation of something is not identical with the factor that produces something. We think that this is clear to Prof. Berdnikov. In any case, we have here the first example of his favorite critical manner - getting attached to other people's words and giving them meaning at his own discretion. This way he receives abundant material for his criticism and thus fulfills our request for a “conscientious attitude to the matter”! One example of such an unsuccessful transfer by the author of church dogmatic teachings into the sphere of positive church morals, namely, the confusion of the concept of the sacrament of baptism, as the spiritual birth of a person, with the concept of the perception of the baptismal font, as the source of the canonical institution of spiritual kinship, was already indicated by us in the first answer of Prof. Berdnikov (pp. 11–12). But now, as we will see below, the author gives us a reason to return to this subject once again. As an example of how one and the same (general church) view can be expressed in the diverse customs of local churches and how ancient church authorities looked at this diversity, let us point out the following words of the canonical letter of Dionysius of Alexandria to Basilides: “You asked me at what hour should the fast break before Easter? For some brethren assert, as you say, that this should be done in the sanctuary, and others, that it should be done in the evening. The brothers, who are in Rome, are said to be awaiting a noose; and about those here you said that they break their fast earlier. You want to set an exact time and a very specific hour, but this is inconvenient and unsafe. For that after the time of the resurrection of our Lord, celebration and rejoicing should begin, and before that, souls should be humbled by fasting, this is all agreed upon.” Wed. Another 1st rule of Basil the Great, which speaks in detail about the different customs of local churches regarding the methods of accepting heretics and schismatics into the church, although all churches agreed that outside the one Ecumenical Church of Christ there is neither valid baptism nor correct priesthood. Here are the passages cited by Basil the Great from the sacred books of the Old Testament: If it happens that a wife is married to another husband, she does not return to her husband, but becomes defiled and becomes defiled (Jer. 3:1), and: keep an adulteress, you are foolish and wicked. (Prov.18:23). It should be noted that the first text is given by St. father in an abbreviated paraphrase. The full text is as follows: If a husband lets his wife go and leaves him, and it is for another husband, will the food that returns return to him again? will the food be undefiled, and that woman undefiled? Prof. himself Berdnikov, in his essay: “The State Position of Religion in the Roman-Byzantine Empire” (Kazan, 1881), paints a fairly complete living picture of the ordinary everyday communication of Roman Christians with their pagan fellow citizens (pp. 610–611). “Christians,” he says from the words of Tertullian, participated in pagan public holidays and amusements, exchanged gifts on New Year’s Day, decorated their houses with wreaths and lamps on pagan holidays, organized games, justified visits to the theater, married pagans, etc.” (p. 665). Regarding this expression, the author, in a footnote to his text, repeating our words, “falls into such bewilderment”: “Ordinary everyday relations of human life (everyday lives!), as far as we know, are regulated not by church law, but by secular law” (p. 17 note). It turns out that the Kazan professor of church law does not know the church rules governing such “ordinary relations of human life” as the relationship of spouses and the relationship of parents and children, completely analogous to the relationship of the recipient to the perceived. But we do not believe this statement of the author, but think that in the heat of polemics against us he forgets a lot, even what he himself wrote in his first review of our book, namely: “The minister serves as an assistant for church pastors in introducing the principles of Christian morality into home life and in implementing the rules of church discipline” (p. 20). So, not long ago, the author’s “rules of church discipline” extended their effect to the “home”, that is, the ordinary life of believers! Aren't we saying the same thing? Examples of such word usage are given in abundance by Dujange in his famous dictionaries of medieval Greek and Latin; This is where we sent our readers. Prof. Berdnikov did not leave this quote without critical comment. He didn’t like that we referred to “lexical, i.e. dictionary “dictionaries”, and not on canonical monuments” (p. 10, note). But Ducange, by the way, also used monuments of church law in his “lexical” or dictionary dictionaries. For us, the examples given in these “lexical” lexicons were completely sufficient. The examples given by Prof. Berdnikov exclusively from the monuments of Greek church law, increase only the quantity (and not the strength) of evidence speaking in our favor, i.e. in support of the idea of ​​​​an analogy between adoption and adoption. Assuring the reader that we do not believe there is any difference between the natural father and the recipient of the baptized person, Prof. Berdnikov was able to add the following note to this assurance: “Let us remind the reader that above the author compared adoption with the institution of civil adoption. Isn’t this a contradiction to what the author will develop and prove here?” Yes, perhaps there would be a contradiction if what was stated in the text belonged to us, and not to Prof. himself. Berdnikov. The very way the author quotes our words about the metaphorical meaning of calling the recipients spiritual fathers or spiritual parents of those perceived is also close to “deed.” These words occupy only seven lines on page 16 of our brochure, and Mr. Berdnikov sends the reader to look for them on seven pages (10–17). Our “counter arguments” fit into the same space in Mr. Berdnikov’s response brochure. 1. 5. 8. S. de adopt. 8.48. =See Volbeding, Thesaurus commentationum selectarum illustrandis antiquitatibus christianis inservientium, t. II, pars 1, p. 108–109. We advise the author to read the title de nuptiis in the Digests and Codex. There he will find many decrees of the ancient and modern (Christian) period of the Roman Empire about kinship by adoption, an obstacle to marriage. In his first brochure, Prof. Berdnikov thought, or at least expressed himself differently: he called adoption, performed with church prayer, “a church-legal relationship or act” (p. 28). Schol. ad Epanag. tit. XVII, o 21. From these words it is clear that according to Roman law, alumni and alumnae in relation to their educator were in mancipio, that is, in a position average between slaves and children who were in potestas patria. This relationship ended in the same way as potestas dominica et patria—emancipation. 1. 26. C. de incest. et inutil. nupt. V.4. Pavlov, 50th chapter of the Pilot, pp. 177–178. The newest and best historian of Byzantine literature, Krumbacher, blames Procopius for “confusion in the construction of sentences” (Verwirrung in der Konstruktion der Präpositionen, s 44). In this case, obvious parallelism is observed in the construction of sentences: the initial sentence: ἔλουσε μὲν ὁ Βελισάριος τὸ θεῖον λουτρὸν corresponds to the following: εἰσποιητὸν ἐποιήσατο ξὺν τῇ γυναικὶ παῖδα. How did he adopt together with his wife? If Belisarius’s reception of Theodosius from the baptismal font was at the same time an act of adoption of the person received, and this last act is attributed by the historian not only to Belisarius, but also to his wife, then it does not seem logical to exclude the latter from active participation in the very reception of Theodosius, especially since the historian further adds about Antoninus: ἅτε παῖδα ὄντα ἱερῷ λόγῳ (in parallel τὸ θεῖον λουτρόν) ἠγάπα. Procopius himself was one of the few pagans who remained among the Christian Byzantine society of the time of Justinian, but he knew well the life and beliefs of Christians, as well as the private life of Belisarius, under whom, by appointment of the emperor, he was an adviser and companion in all military campaigns. The historian's story refers to a later time; see Krumbacher in cit. Op. page 33. This is how (in Greek) the recipients are called in the work: “Questions to the Jews,” which is usually attributed to St. Martyr Justin the Philosopher (question 66). We consider it our duty to admit to our readers that the idea of ​​the relationship of the spiritual hierarchy to the custom of dual succession in the field of marriage law is expressed in our book on Chapter 50. The helmsman was not entirely successful. There we said that the basis of the custom itself (which required a pair of recipients for baptism) was the view that both of these persons are equally necessary at baptism, as the spiritual father and mother of the person being baptized. Then, moving on to the question of the meaning of this pair in marriage law, we added: “This view did not remain alien to the spiritual hierarchy” (p. 171). This addition applies only to the words immediately preceding it: “as the spiritual father and mother of the baptized,” and not to the entire sentence, part of which these last words form, it should be said: “The view of an ordinary pair of recipients as the spiritual parents of the baptized person did not remain alien to the church hierarchy itself, of course, the reader, not obsessed, like Prof. Berdnikov, with the spirit of “conquering love” (φιλονικία), could easily correctly understand the meaning of our words with the help of the 211th article of the nomocanon given after them (and now in the text), which we accompanied with the following final note: “So, in the era of the appearance of this nomocanon, both recipients were considered as connected by spiritual kinship not only with the perceived one and his parents, but also each other." But it goes without saying that Prof. Berdnikov, who, as we have seen, distorted, without any reason on our part, the meaning of our words about recipients in general, as about the spiritual parents of the perceived, i.e. who attributed these words, contrary to their immediate context, exclusively to a pair of receivers, took advantage of a real editorial flaw in our speech to give it a meaning that was pleasing and convenient to him and show the readers that he, Prof. Berdnikov, with his objections, forced us “to deviate from the position that the custom, which required a pair of recipients, was established under the influence of the church view of recipients as the spiritual parents of the recipient (pp. 32–33). Not a single canonist, not even Prof. himself, can deviate from the view of the recipients as the spiritual parents of the received one. Berdnikov, especially if his desire to call the recipients not spiritual parents, but the spiritual father and mother of the perceived one is satisfied, which he recognizes as necessary to avoid a conflict with the dogmatic principle; “The church itself gives birth to its spiritual children in the sacrament of baptism.” And the complete impossibility of explaining the origin of this pair in any other way does not allow us to abandon the position that an ordinary pair of recipients was formed precisely under the influence of the stated church view on recipients in general. Conveying these words of ours, Prof. Berdnikov considered it necessary, in a footnote to his text, to teach us a lesson from Russian etymology, which he probably learned back in the 2nd grade of a theological school (of the old type), but, apparently, is not sufficiently meaningful even now. It is he who finds that the numeral “both” (οἱ δύο) “indicates a set of objects, and not a set of actions. A noun, a numeral... indicates objects, their number, totality, and not an action; the latter is expressed by a verb” (p. 25, note). According to the meaning of this lesson, it turns out that prof. Berdnikov learned from the old theological school only the etymological meaning of parts of speech, and not their syntactic use. And syntax teaches us that with every subject, that is, the subject of speech, there must be a predicate showing what we attribute to this subject of speech. If there are two subjects, as in the present case, then the predicate indicates their combined action or state. In a word: the article of the nomocanon, and behind it we are not talking about the aggregate of two (different) actions performed by two persons, but about the aggregate commission by two persons of the same action. The numeral “both” (οἱ δύο) indicates in the nomocanon not only the duality of the characters, but also the manner in which they perform the action itself, i.e., it plays the role of an adverb, answering the questions how? How do spouses perceive children in someone else's family? - Both together. This is clear to anyone who did not only study grammar lessons in lower school, but also learned them consciously. However, the author could fill in the gaps in teaching in elementary school in his further movement to the professorial department and even in it itself. “Live forever, learn forever,” says the proverb, although – she adds in another version – “you will still die the way you were born.” Prof. Berdnikov in his first brochure, which we must admit, treated with extreme condescension, coexisted side by side with this understanding of the article of the nomocanon, and the opposite, which he exclusively adheres to now. There he also argued that the article speaks of “separate and sequential acceptance by husband and wife of different children in the same family” (p. 30), but a page later he compared the same article as “homogeneous” with the rule of the old printed Trebniks, which will be discussed later and which undoubtedly allows for two recipients (godfather and godfather) at the font of each baptized baby (p. 32). Γεδεών, Κανονικαὶ διατάξεις, vol. 1, pp. 87–88. We mean in particular the Tübingen list of the late 15th century, indicated by Tsakhariye in his famous study of the Greek canonical collections that appeared after the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks. This list will be accepted by us as the main one in the second edition of the nomocanon, if the Lord helps us in this matter. See Collected Opinions and Reviews, vol. IV, p. 406. See his speech about this monastery, page 20. See Rights Interview. 1892. November, pp. 252–253. Among the Southern Slavs, there are four types of nepotism: 1) nepotism of the godfather, 2) nepotism of confirmation (exists only among Catholic Slavs), 3) nepotism of marriage and 4) nepotism of tonsure.” Kraus, op. Op. pp. 606–618. See our study on Ch. 50. Helmsman's Books, pp. 171–172. However, this confusion in the author’s chronological testimony also occurred in his first article. But, we repeat, in our response to it we treated it with extreme condescension. To this prof. Berdnikov can and does object, in his second brochure: “Prof. Pavlov in his book (50th chapter of Kormchay, p. 173) reports that in the Nikon edition of the Trebnik of 1658, corrected according to the printed Greek Euchologion, the rule on the admission of two successors, included in the first printed patriarchal Trebniks, was omitted, of course, in accordance with the practice of the Greek Church (in accordance not with “practice”, but with the Greek original, according to to which our Trebnik was corrected: these are two things that are far from the same). The fact indicated now indicates that even in that short period of time (1625–1677), which we indicated for the official recognition of the custom of dual succession, it did not have a continuous effect, but alternated with another opposite custom (p. 56). It turns out that according to Prof. Berdnikov, that during the 8 years that elapsed from the publication of the Nikon Trebnik to the Great Moscow Cathedral, the usual pair of successors recognized by the previous Trebniks disappeared somewhere from Russian church practice, giving way to one successor or, more precisely, leaving it completely vacant, since the Nikon Trebnik did not adopt any rule about the number of receivers, i.e. neither prohibitive about two, nor imperative about one. Where did the Great Moscow Council get the material and basis for its resolution: “This gap is firmly established, so that at the baptism of a male or female, there should be one recipient and one wife as the recipient,” and why did it even omit the clause of the previous Trebniks: “how is the custom accepted?” Macarius, East. Russian Churches, vol. XII, p. 686. And in the conciliar “instruction” of 1666, isn’t that the official view of the spiritual hierarchy on the number of recipients expressed? From the decree of April 16, 1874 From the decree of October 31, 1876 Indeed, this is the conclusion that the author of the article comes to: “Kinship and property as obstacles to marriage, according to the current legislation,” published in Nos. 46 and 47 of the Church Bulletin for last year and from here reprinted (in abbreviation) in the Addendums to the Church Gazette, the official body of the Holy Synod (No. 52, 1892). In this article (based on its reprint in the now mentioned edition) we find the following practical conclusion from the separate decrees of the Holy Synod cited in our text: “From the above explanation of the Holy Synod on spiritual kinship, it is thus clear that spiritual kinship is recognized and marriages in this kinship are prohibited only between the following persons: a) between the successor and the mother adopted by him and b) between the successor and the father perceived by her." One may fear that our parish pastors, especially rural ones, who poorly distinguish the official part of the Church Gazette from the unofficial one, will accept the stated explanation as the genuine dogma of Russian marriage law and will not find any obstacles to marrying the marriages of godparents with their goddaughters and godmothers with their godsons. The separate decrees of the Holy Synod were issued, of course, not to abolish the 53rd rule of the 6th Ecumenical Council and not even to abolish the decree of 1810, which, on the basis of this very ecumenical canon, decreed: “if he receives from St. baptism, he cannot therefore take her as his wife, since he already has a daughter, lower than her mother.” But will rural pastors understand this when they are confused by pundits who publish articles on marriage law in metropolitan spiritual magazines, which do not deservedly find a place in the pages of a magazine published under the Holy Synod itself? The oldest of these laws are given in our first answer to Prof. Berdnikov (pp. 30–31); the later ones, still in force, are listed under Articles 1034 and 1035. vol. IX St. law. about the condition The Greek Euchologions, without a doubt, spoke of recipients in the singular even when dozens of recipients stood at the baptismal font of the imperial children. It is just as dangerous to draw conclusions about the practice of that time according to the letter of the modern Euchologions, as it is to draw conclusions about current Russian practice according to the letter of the Trebnik. The texts of the ancient Greek Euchologions were rewritten, and the texts of our Trebniks are reprinted stereotypically. The example of the Greek Lycanorov, who was not the sole successor, but in tandem with his fellow tribeswoman Anna, can serve as proof of the existence of the same custom in Greece itself. It is known that in the 18th century Nizhyn was a city that was half Russian and half Greek. The Greek trading colony founded here at the end of the previous century had its own church in the name of the Archangel Michael and its own, that is, Greek, clergy. The Greeks, generally speaking, are quite conservative in their national customs, especially in foreign lands, where they, by right or simply due to their inherent conceit, tend to consider themselves, culturally, superior to the local foreign population. Therefore, it is difficult to admit that, some three or four decades after their settlement in Nezhin, they managed to adopt from the Russians a custom that was completely unknown in Greece itself. In any case, the example of Likanorov was, one might say, an ordinary phenomenon in the home life of the Nizhyn Greeks. This is proven by the mandatory delivery to us by A.A. Dmitrievsky with extracts from the registry book of the named Greek church in Nizhyn with records of cases of baptism of children in Greek families, starting from 1706 to 1739. Our learned Kiev correspondent, reporting to us these extracts, made, in his words, “at random,” that is, without choice, at the end of them gives the following general description of the entire book: “The prevailing custom is to allow two recipients for baptism - a man and a woman, and to record both. Quite often there is only one recipient, mostly a man, and it makes no difference for both boys and girls. Often a woman baptizes a girl, but the baptism of a boy by a woman occurs two or three times” (letter dated January 14). Here are some of the extracts communicated to us” in compliance, following the example of our respected correspondent, with the “spelling of the original”: 1) ᾳφκβ΄ (1722) δεκεμβρίου δ'. Ἐβάπτισεν ὅ τε Ἰωάννης τοῦ Κατεργάρη καὶ ἡ γυναῖκα τοῦ Χρισῆς Μάρκου τὸ παιδίον τοῦ Ἀναστάση Μπαρμπάρη, καὶ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ παιδίου Βαρβάρα (i.e., December 4, 1729, John, the son of Katergari, and the wife of Mark Chrysi baptized the child of Anastasia Barbari. The girl's name is Varvara. 2) 1723 ὀκτωβρίου 28. Ἐβάπτισεν ο Νικόλας Μιχαήλου Μποσινάκης τὸ παιδὶ τοῦ Θεοδώρου Καραπαστούκη χωρὶς κουμπάρα, τὸ ὄνομά του Δημήτρι (i.e. Nikolai Mikhailovich Bosinaki baptized a child named Dimitri from Theodore Karapastuki, without a godfather - an addition showing that cases of baptism with a godfather were more frequent); 3) ᾳφκγ΄ νοεμβρίου κη΄. Ἐβάπτισεν ἡ ἀρχόντισσα τοῦ Μπάσα Ηλία μὲ τὸν Πασχάλην τὸ κορίτζι τοῦ Παναγιότη Μουραήτη, τὸ ὄνομά του Μαρια (i.e. the archontissa was baptized by the wife of Elijah Bas with Paschal (godfather) Panagiota Muranti's girl's name is Maria). 4) 1724 ἀπρηλίου 18. Ἐβάπτίσεν ὁ Ἴαννος Καστοργιανὸς μόνος του τὸ Ian Castorgiano baptized one - again a significant increase - a girl Konstantin Milona's name is Maria). 5) Since 1732, A.A. writes to us. Dmitrievsky, the form of the entries is as follows: Ἀνδρέας, νουνὰ ἡ γυνὴ τοῦ Γεωγρίου Νάνθου, καὶ τὸ ὄνομα του παιδίου θεόδωρος (Baptized by Kozma Babaliari hajn - Andrew a child named Theodora. Kuma was the wife of George Nantes). 6) The following entry is especially remarkable: 1734 ἀπρηλίου ιγ΄. Ἐβάπτισεν ὁ Γεωργάκης Ογλάνης ἕνα παιδίον ἐξ Ἰουδαίων ἕως ?? τὸ Πριάσλαβον· ἦτον δὲ καὶ νουνὰ ἡ γυνὴ τοῦ χατζῆ Πέτρου, Μπαρισνίσκου. Georgaki baptized Oglani a Jewish child about 6 years old, whom he brought from Pereslavl, and named Theodore. There was also a godfather at the baptism, the wife of Haji Peter Baryshnik And Georgaki has the newly baptized as his spiritual son). In our opinion, the last entry represents a very interesting example of combining the ancient with the new. Two persons of different sexes receive from the baptismal font a six-year-old Jewish boy (probably an orphan). But at the end of the recording a special remark is made that the newly baptized became the spiritual son of only one godfather, who took him out of Pereslavl. Does this mean that the Orthodox Greek Georgaki adopted his godson, as was the case in a similar case with the famous Belisarius? For details of this case, see the Complete Collection of Decrees and Orders for the Office of the Orthodox Confession, vol. VI, nos. 2153 and 2209 and vol. VII, no. 2308. See our nomocanon at the Great Trebnik, p. 292, note. 1. See Pavlov's 50th chapter. Helmsman's Book pp. 174–175. In the handwritten “Collection of decisions of the Holy Synod on marriages between relatives by succession from St. baptism", compiled by Rev. Venedikt (Grigorovich), first vicar of St. Petersburg, and then archbishop of Olonetsky (1850) under No. 63 states: “The Most Reverend Olonetsky asked permission whether the successors of one child could marry each other?” Answer of the Holy Synod of September 2, 1835: “by virtue of Article 211 of the nomocanon, they cannot.” See Pavlov's 50th chapter of the Pilot's Book, p. 175 and approx. Perception itself cannot stand on any point of view: it is an abstract concept, not a thinking subject; but the church may have one or another point of view on succession as an object of its consciousness and activity. We must not forget that the decree of 1834 was circular, and the closest in time opposite decree of 1838, although circular, was secret; nevertheless, later separate decrees, consistent with this latter in their motivation, were given only in the name of those diocesan bishops in whose diocese cases arose that were resolved by these, unfortunately, not secret decrees. According to the theory of Prof. Berdnikov, church custom cannot be “folk”, “arising from popular views.” As if the believing Christian people, together with the hierarchy, do not form one body of Christ - the church and do not live the same spiritual life with their shepherds! That is why customary law exists in the church, because it ultimately stems from the same source as church legislation. It is known that many canons of cathedrals and St. the fathers were nothing more than a formal recognition of what already existed in church custom, created by the life of the entire Christian society, that is, both the laity and the spiritual hierarchy. This is how the canonists look at consuetudo secundum legem, who are also lawyers and who, therefore, it is permissible to rank at least no lower than prof. Berdnikov, for whom jurisprudence is “dark water.” See Scherer, Handbuch d. Kirchenrechts, Bd I, § 03. ut, s. 183.