The book "Trebnik" and its significance in the life of an Orthodox Christian

In our conversation, delivered at the meeting of the Kyiv Religious and Educational Society last year 1, we talked about the “Typikon” or Church Rule and then pointed out to our listeners a very regrettable and incomprehensible phenomenon in the religious life of our modern society - an obvious neglect or a very superficial acquaintance with such a book, which, by its purpose, should regulate every day and every step of our life. An event of the greatest importance in our religious and cultural life over the past year, which has excited the minds of our intelligentsia, which, unfortunately, cannot boast of the firmness and certainty of their religious convictions and thorough acquaintance with the teachings and rituals of the church to which they belong, comes to the fore and persistently demands an answer to a new question and in the same branch of our special studies - the question of the meaning of another, no less important in the religious life of a modern believer, church liturgical book, which we call the Trebnik. This book, as you are not unaware, was condemned by the venerable writer of the Russian land, whose name is on everyone’s lips, in his “new confession” or in response to the resolution of the Holy Synod of February 20-22 last year, regarding his excommunication from the Church. Extremely unfair and deliberately biased objections to this book, poured out from the pen of our great writer, undoubtedly under the influence of an outburst of offended pride and bilious irritation, an outburst inspired by an act, although powerful, but filled with high Christian love and an ardent call addressed to him by our highest ranks, to return to the bosom of the Orthodox Church, and to us, his admirers, to pray for him - especially are regrettable for us because among the Russian intelligentsia there were like-minded people who, through publication (in periodicals), tried to develop the extreme views of our writer on this book with reference to facts that they allegedly borrowed from the pages of our Trebnik, and with the undoubted intention of impressing people who are little familiar with its contents. Trebnik or, more correctly, Potrebnik (as this book was called in ancient times), as the name itself shows, there is a church liturgical book in which everything that is needed for every son of the Orthodox Church from the day of birth to his last breath on earth is collected and contained. With the Breviary in his hands, the shepherd of the Orthodox Church welcomes into the Christian home the birth of each new member and consoles the sick mother of a newborn who has suffered the mortal pangs of birth; when performing the rituals and prayers laid down in the Trebnik, “for a woman in labor after fourty days,” the newborn is introduced into the assembly of believers, “named in the name of Christ,” is churched, and his mother is given access to the church of the glory of God, where, for natural reasons, she was deprived of the right to appear; prayers and rituals in the rites of the sacraments of baptism and confirmation of the same Trebnik, the newborn is made a son of the Orthodox Church and receives the grace-filled gifts of the Holy. Spirit, strengthening his spiritual powers for every good deed; in the days of our moral failures and sincere heartfelt contrition about this, with the prayers of the Breviary, the pastor of the Church consoles repentant sinners by pointing out the all-forgiving love of God and his immeasurable mercy for them; when a single member of the Church changes from single to married life, the Christian shepherd calls upon him God’s blessing and in the prayers of the Breviary gives such an abundance of good wishes and instructive examples of a truly happy married life, which the most enlightened and wise father and the most important and passionately loving mother cannot express; at the moment of determination to devote oneself to celibacy and service to the church in a monastic form, breaking ties with the world and everything that is near and dear to a person consisting of flesh and blood, through the Breviary, to encourage oneself, hear the incantation about the commandments of the Divine Teacher: “He who loves his father or mother more than me is worthy of no more than me: and whoever loves his son or daughter more than me is no more worthy of me.” worthy (Matt. 10:37) and again: “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and come after me” (16:24), and receives a whole series of indications of the greatest and most amazing examples of asceticism and anachoregism in the history of the Christian church, which most convincingly say that people who chose this kind of life not only saved themselves and achieved the Kingdom of Heaven, but also brought humanity and the Church of Christ invaluable services; in various circumstances of our life, public or private, at the beginning of any good and useful work, in times of joy and severe grief, the shepherd of the church with the Breviary in his hands with his prayers, filled with sincere good wishes and true promises of success, with deep, of course, on our part, faith in God as the source and giver of all good, instills a full consciousness of the need - not to lose heart, not to become despondent in case of failure or failure, always remembering that everything comes from the will of the Provider, without Whom not a hair falls from our head; in illnesses that befall a believer due to his sins, the priest, through the prayers of our Breviary, ardently urges him to confess his sin before God as the cause of the illness, and with the joyful hope of a speedy recovery, with the help of God and through the prayers of the Church, he keeps the spirit of the sick person and the loved ones around him cheerful; in the hour of terrible anguish of spirit, when in front of the eyes of relatives and friends, who have already used all their efforts to save the life of a dear patient, a terrible struggle of life and death occurs, when the painful moment of separation of the soul from the body comes, in which horror freezes the blood in the veins, and the mind of those surrounding the dying bed refuses to control the thoughts and feelings, St. The Church, according to the Trebnik, begs the immortal Father and the Only Begotten Son and the Most Holy Spirit to “resolve unbearable illnesses and the bitter infirmities that contain it,” “the body, from which it was formed, will be separated, and the souls will settle there, where they have accepted to be, even until the general resurrection” 2; upon the death of an Orthodox Christian with touching chants, touching rituals and sublime prayers of our Trebnik. The Holy Church, paying homage to the ashes of the deceased, as the organ and conductor of the grace of the Holy Spirit into the living soul, prays to God for the remission of the sins of the deceased and “for the indwelling of his soul in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, where the righteous will rest,” and consoles those who remain alive, overwhelmed by the sorrowful feeling of separation, with hope in the mutual communication of the living and the dead in prayer and in meeting with the deceased in that world, where, in time, we will all go, as wanderers of this life for a short time. Let us say briefly that the book Trebnik is necessary for every Orthodox Christian, without distinction of gender and age, at any time, under any circumstance in life, namely, it is that book through which the Church, created by Christ and consisting of living members who believe in Him, “blesses in the name of God, as our writer’s wife expresses herself in a letter to the Most Reverend Anthony, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, all the most significant moments of human life: births, marriages, deaths, human sorrows and joys" 3. As a book containing the rites of almost all Christian sacraments, the Breviary, in sublimely poetic prayers and chants and symbolic rituals, miraculously harmoniously merged into one inseparable whole, with all clarity and certainty offers believers a deep dogmatic teaching about the sacraments and makes the understanding of this teaching, thanks to the absence of dry schemes and subtle school definitions, accessible to people, no matter what stage of mental development they are at. But the book Trebnik received its real name here in Russia, but in the Orthodox East, in the Byzantine Church, where this book was created and took its real form, it has a different name: Euchologium or Prayer Book 4. This last name is more accessible to our understanding, since this name characterizes with complete clarity the purpose and, in part, even the composition of our book. Indeed, the Trebnik is a Prayer Book, but not the abbreviated one with which we greet the morning and conclude the evening of every day of our life, but the Prayer Book, as is clear from the above, is complete, embracing the life of an Orthodox Christian in all its diverse manifestations. The subject of our present conversation, as the definition we have just made shows, is not only very extensive, but also very versatile, and therefore there is no way to exhaust it in its entirety, within the time we have in this case, without risking tiring your enlightened attention. Therefore, there is an urgent need to establish the point of view from which we intend to conduct our speech in this meeting about the Trebnik as the most important of the church's liturgical books and the most useful to every son of the Orthodox Church. It seems to us that as such a starting point it is best and easiest to choose those objections and attacks on the book of Trebnik, which were made against it in very recent times by our talented writer and his like-minded people, with the goal of both giving a feasible response to these attacks, and placing this book at the height that our Mother, the Orthodox Church, rightfully assigns to it among other church and liturgical books. But in carrying out this task, we are faced, first of all, with the difficult necessity of reproducing before you here the very text of those attacks on the book of Trebnik, which were made by our writer in his so-called “new confession.” I am convinced, our writer confesses in his response to the resolution of the Synod of February 20-22 on his excommunication from the Church, that the teaching of the Church is theoretically an insidious and harmful lie, practically a collection of the grossest superstitions and witchcraft, completely hiding the entire meaning of Christian teaching. One has only to read the Breviary, follow those rituals that are continually performed by the clergy and are considered Christian worship, to see that all these rituals are nothing more than various techniques of witchcraft, adapted to all possible cases of life. In order for a child, if he dies, to go to heaven, you need to be able to anoint him with oil and bathe him while pronouncing certain words; in order for a woman in labor to cease being unclean, it is necessary to cast well-known spells, so that there will be success in business or a quiet life in a new home, in order for bread to be born well, for drought to end, in order to be cured of an illness, in order to ease the position of the deceased in the next world, for all this and thousands of other circumstances there are well-known spells, which in a certain place, for certain offerings (sic!) are pronounced by the priest. “I really renounced the Church, stopped performing its rituals and wrote in my will to my loved ones that when I die, they would not allow church ministers to see me and my dead body would be removed as quickly as possible, without any spells or prayers over it, just as they remove any nasty and unnecessary thing, so that it does not disturb the living” 5... A little lower, in the same confession, our writer says: “I consider all the sacraments to be base, rude, witchcraft inconsistent with the concept of God and Christian teaching, and, moreover, a violation of the most direct instructions of the Gospel” 6 . So, the accusation directed against our Trebnik, with a complete unfounded denial of the ritual, in general, concerns, mainly and above all, the presence in it, in significant quantities, of incantatory prayers. In order to discredit our Trebnik in the eyes of those weakest of the children of the Orthodox Church, who, although they consider themselves to be her sons, are little or not at all interested in churchliness, in general, and our church liturgical books, in particular, our writer decides to directly identify the incantatory prayers of the Trebnik with the spells and incantations or sorceries current among the common people, with the help of which healers or so so-called sorcerers exploit the ignorant masses of the people in their favor and keep them in slavish subordination to themselves. But is it conscientious on the part of our thinker-writer artist and his like-minded people to make deliberately deliberate rapprochements and even comparisons of incomparable and heterogeneous objects that, as we will see now, stand at the extreme poles? What are the incantatory prayers of our Trebnik, and where do they originate in the practice of the Christian Church? The belief that evil demons sometimes take possession of a person and drive him into a frenzy and madness was inherent in all peoples of antiquity in pre-Christian times, no matter what stage of cultural development the people stood at. From the story of Christ the Savior, told by the holy evangelists, we are convinced with all striking clarity both of the fact of the existence of evil demons and of the fact that they often took possession of people and caused them cruel torment and illness. Christ the Savior, during his earthly life and preaching, healing many people from evil spirits (Luke 8:21; 8:2), transferred power over unclean spirits to St. to the apostles and believers in Him, as one of the powerful means for convincing the people of the truth of His teaching. Sending 12 disciples to preach to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, He gives them power over unclean spirits (Mark 6:7) and commands: “heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons” (Matthew 10:8). To the seventy apostles, when they returned from preaching and spoke with joy about their successes, saying: “Lord, even demons obey us in Your name,” Christ the Savior said: “I saw Satan like lightning falling from heaven. Behold, I give you power over the serpent and the scorpion and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing will harm you” (Luke 1:17–19). After his resurrection, the Savior addressed all believers, sent to preach the whole world, preach the Gospel to every creature, with the following speech: “And these signs will be given to those who believe: In my name demons will be given birth” (Mark 16:17). Our Lord Jesus Christ also indicated to his disciples and followers the means to combat demons. In addition to calling on His name, He demanded from them faith in Him, even if only as small as a grain of a grain, as well as fasting and prayer. “This generation does not come forth,” says the Savior to his disciples, except by fasting and prayer (Matthew 17:20–21; Mark 9:29). We also find examples of the powerful meaning of the name of Christ the Savior in the fight against evil spirits and the terrible fear of these latter before Him in the gospel story. The demon-possessed Gadarene, at the sight of the Lord, cries out with a great voice: “What is it to me and to you, Jesus, the Son of the Most High God; I adjure you by God, do not torment me” (Mark 5:7; Luke 8:28). About those healed of demons in Capernaum it is said: “I went out and was demonized by many, crying out and saying that you are the Christ the Son of God. And forbidding them, not allowing them to speak, for I have seen Christ himself existing” (Luke 4:41). In the apostolic church we see not only the use by believers in Christ the Savior of the right granted to them to cast out demons (Acts 5:16, 8:7, 19:12), but also amazing cases of abuse of this right by non-believers. The seven sons of the Jewish high priest Sceva “began to call upon those who have evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying: We adjure you by Jesus, which Paul preaches” (19:13). But the abuse of the Lord's name by unrecognized spellcasters did not go in vain. The evil spirit, responding to their spell: “I know Jesus, and Paul to everyone, who are you” (v. 15), enraged the sick man, who tore their clothes and beat them. The powers granted to believers in Christ over demons continued to live in the Church He founded and under the apostolic men. Invoking the name of Jesus Christ crucified and prayer remain formidable means in the fight against unclean spirits both at this time and in the future. “Every demon,” says St. Justin Martyr, an apologist of the 2nd century, in a conversation with Tryphon the Jew, is defeated and subdued by the name of this very Son of God, the firstborn of all creation, who was born of the Virgin and became a suffering man, was crucified by the highest people (the Jews) under Pontius Pilate, and died, and rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven” 7. In the 3rd century in the Christian Church we also see exorcists who, however, were not ordained to this title, because, as the Apostolic Constitutions say, “the glorious feat of exorcism is a matter of the voluntary favor and grace of God through Christ through the influx of the Holy Spirit” 8 . The power to cast out unclean spirits still belonged to the successors of the apostles, the shepherds of the Church of Christ and believers awarded the special grace of God through the influx of the Holy Spirit. “Fearing Christ and God in Christ, according to Tertullian, a Christian apologist of the 3rd century, they, that is, the demons, submit to the listeners of God and Christ” 9. The names of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob were also terrible for demons, but if these names of the forefathers were pronounced by exorcists in Hebrew. “The names of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, says Origen in his work against Celsus, translated into Greek have no meaning. If you say: God of the father of the chosen people, and the God of laughter and the God of the heel, then you will do no more with these names than by pronouncing those that have no power” 10. Exorcists or demon exorcists soon, however, took a place in the clergy of the Orthodox Church on a par with clergy. According to Canon 26 of the Council of Laodivia, “incantations should not be performed either in churches or in houses by persons who have not received authority to do so from the bishops” 11 . Exorcists or exorcists were dedicated by the bishop according to a special rite 12, which retained its power here, in the south of Russia, even in the 17th century 13. The reason for the establishment of such a position in the practice of the ancient Christian Church stemmed from the need to cast spells not only over those possessed by evil demons, but also over all catechumens approaching the sacrament of baptism. According to the teachings of the Apostle Paul, people who do not believe in Christ walk “in the world of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience.” (Eph. 2:2). According to the testimony of the 3rd century writer, holy martyr Cyprian of Carthage 14, and the 4th century Patriarch of Jerusalem Cyril, spells were cast over everyone preparing for baptism, and these spells lasted quite a long time. “We need to have only gold, and gold cannot be purified without fire,” says the teacher of the Christian Church, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in explanation of this custom. Just as those experienced in the craft of goldsmithing, using thin tools to blow into the fire and direct it at the gold hidden in the melting vessel, achieve what they want through the intensification of the surrounding flame, so when the exorcists inspire fear with the divine spirit, and in the body, as in a crucible, kindle the soul, the enemy demon flees, but salvation remains, the hope of eternal life remains, and the soul, having been cleansed of sins, finally accepts salvation” 15 . “If an enemy force with great cruelty attacks someone’s body, confuses and seduces the mind, then, according to Origen, Christians resort to frequent prayers, fasting and invocations of exorcists” 16. So, the power over demons granted by Christ the Savior to the apostles, their successors and even believers continued to retain its power in the Church of Christ always. The means indicated by the Savior for combating evil spirits were also practiced in the Church - prayers, fasting and invoking the name of God or the name of Jesus Christ. Should we be surprised after this that in the practice of the Christian Church there have always been incantatory prayers, and some of them retain their power even to this day 17? The holy fathers of the church worked on compiling these prayers. Church tradition considers Gregory the Wonderworker, St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom to have worked most in this kind of works, whose glorious names make up the brilliant pages of world cultural history. Incantatory prayers, once forming a separate independent book, which was handed to the exorcist by the bishop, upon his decree - “the deacons give him (i.e., the bishop) a book, in which there are incantatory prayers 19 ..., and the luminary gives the newly ordained one with his hand and says: “Receive the power to step on all the power of the devil and on the serpent, and drive away the demons, and destroy all their torment and malice. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen” 20 – also penetrated the pages of our Trebnik or Prayer Book. The purity and sublimity of the Christian views of these prayers and their inimitable brilliant literary merits are best told by the great names of their compilers and by the fact that the Orthodox Church has preserved these prayers to this day in its practice without any doubt about their benefit for the pious edification of believers. But abuse, as we know, penetrates into all spheres of human life and activity. Christian incantatory prayers did not escape this fate. In the Church of Christ there were always imitators of the ill-fated sons of the Jewish high priest Sceva, who illegally arrogated to themselves the power to cast out unclean spirits. Uncalled spellcasters also took up the work of composing their own incantatory prayers, trying to imitate in this the authoritative works of the ecumenical teachers V. Velikago, John Chrysostom and others. But their prayers, unlike the latter, received, and rightly so, the name apocryphal, 21 false, renounced. The compilers of these prayers, being simple people, simple-minded believers, well-read in the books of Holy Scripture, in patristic literature and in apological works (i.e. lives of saints) and apocryphal nature, deprived of theological education and the skill to judge sensibly about sublime subjects, and to be able to distinguish in Christian literature the true from the false, the useful from the harmful, they wrote many such prayers that represent a mixture of actual historical events with facts and stories rooted in apocrypha and legends, borrowings from commonly used Christian prayers with works of their own creativity of low dignity, the alternation of deep and sublime thoughts of a pure Christian worldview with thoughts and ideas of a simple folk worldview, often rooted in inventions of idle imagination and even popular superstitions. The names of these authors are unknown. With the widespread distribution among the people in ancient times of the “Consumer Book” or “Trebnik”, in the absence and even the possibility of strict control over the copyists of church liturgical books by the church authorities, these apocryphal and renounced prayers freely penetrated the pages of the Trebnik, both in the East in Byzantium, and here in Holy Rus'. The fight against this evil on the part of the highest spiritual hierarchy became possible only after the invention of printing, from the time of the establishment of strict spiritual censorship. In Russia, the Trebnik first underwent a thorough revision only in 1658, when it adopted approximately the composition with which we currently have it. At this and subsequent times, many kinds of renounced and apocryphal prayers were thrown out of our Trebnik by your reference books, both on the orders of the patriarchs and the Holy Synod. But, to deep regret, the work of cleansing the Trebnik from the superficial, folk element has not yet been brought to the desired perfection and completeness. And to this day, in our Trebnik one can find, albeit insignificant, remnants of Christian legend or apocrypha, for example, the story of St. Abimelech the Saint in the Church of Agrippo, “not even seeing the fall of Jerusalem”, in the prayer of “the holy seven youths for the weak and sleepless” 22, and reflections of the people’s understanding of the forces of nature, such as, for example, “contempt of the eyes” 23 in prayer “on the first day” after the wife never gave birth to a child” 24, “a great name written on stone”, “seated like wax from the face of fire 25 - “in the order that occurs in the fields, or grapes, or helicopters, if it happens to be harmed by reptiles or other species” 26. These and very few other remnants or remnants of our Christian religious worldview, rooted deeply in the historical past of our great fatherland, are those “knots” (Matthew 7:3) and gaps about which the weak faith in the authority of the Church of our intellectual crumbles, and which, not without gloating, he points out to our shepherds and archpastors. But the opponents and detractors of our Trebnik do not consider it necessary to compare the rites and prayers contained in it with the apocryphal and renounced prayers we have indicated, compiled by people, although simple-minded, but often deeply religious and sincere, and for greater humiliation and mockery (we cannot find another expression) of this most important church liturgical book, they compare and, even directly, liken its content is the lowest kind of folk art, which is known under the name of incantations, spells, straight magic, or, as our writer puts it, witchcraft. In this kind of works of ignorant, even illiterate, half-Christian, half-pagan people, we see the most terrible mixture of Christian views with remnants of crude paganism and earthly superstition, real facts with absurd inventions of idle, and sometimes downright sick, imagination; from the literary side, it is a set of phrases and words without any connection or consistency, and sometimes even downright nonsense. In this kind of works of the ignorant masses, a person’s thought is turned not to God the Father, as the source of light and great good, not to the Son of God, as the redeemer of the human race and healer of our souls and bodies, nor to the Holy Spirit, by whom every soul is alive, with which the prayers of our Breviary are filled, but to the unreasonable creature, to the dark forces of nature and, sometimes, to the very source of evil - the demon and his servants - witches, sorcerers, healers, etc. A person expects from them help in difficult circumstances of life and relief from painful illnesses, turning to the “hot sun,” to the “month with silver horns, with golden legs,” to the mother of damp earth, to the green oak grove, to the Ocean Sea, etc. π. The symbols and rituals that accompany these folk conspiracies include Buyan Island, Alatyr-stone or Bel-latyr (amber), Petrov-cross, tryn-grass and gap-grass, plants sought by the people on the night of Ivan Kupala 27, etc. For example, here are a few examples of this folk art 28). “On the sea, on Okiyan, on the island of Buyan, there is a cathedral apostolic church. In that cathedral apostolic church stands the Mother of the Most Holy Theotokos and the Monk Antipius, a dental healer. He asks and prays to the saints of God for the servant of God (name). Just as you, saints of God, did not have toothache, so God’s servant (name) would not have toothache. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen, amen, amen." This is a conspiracy against toothache. And here is a sample of the prayer assigned even to the hieromartyr Antipas, which should be read with his “jaw on the stone”: “Rejoice at the wall and its root, remove, O Lord, the disease from my jaws and my teeth, so that they may not collapse as a wall forever, O Christ God, and grant help, Christ, and health, healing of the head and jaws of your servant (name) through the prayers of the holy hieromartyr Aptypas, and the Holy Mother of God, and the merciless saints Cosmas and Damian, and all your saints now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen". An example of an incantatory prayer can be a conspiracy against fever or against shaking, of which the people number 12: “I conjure you, St. the great Apostle Sisinius and the holy evangelists Luke, Mark, Matthew, John! Run away from the servant of God (name) in three days, in three races; and if you do not run away from the servant of God (name), I will call upon you the great Apostle Sisinius, and Saints Sikhail and Anos, and the four evangelists Luke, Mark, Matthew, John, and they will begin to torment you, giving you four thousand wounds a day.” Our great writer and his followers include the prayers and rituals of our Trebnik among this kind of absurd prayers and conspiracies. But is there at least some degree of truth, scientific integrity and impartiality on the part of opponents of this church liturgical book? A detailed analysis of the content of those prayers and rituals against which our great writer so mercilessly arms himself in his “new confession” is, in our opinion, the best and direct answer to the question posed. Let the facts, so to speak, speak for themselves. The high calling of a woman, indicated to her by the Creator in paradise with the words: multiply and fill the earth (Gen. 1:28), was overshadowed, in the very first stages of human existence on earth, by severe punishment. For breaking the commandment of God in paradise, the woman received the following sentence from God: “I will multiply your sorrows and your sighs: in pain you will give birth to children” (3:16). And we observe every day what severe physical and mental suffering is accompanied for a woman during her entire period of fruiting. But these illnesses and torments are only harbingers of more severe physical suffering that a woman experiences at the moment of birth. At this time, when quite often the life of the mother and the child being born hangs on the brink of death, among the close people surrounding the patient, who have already exhausted all human efforts to alleviate her suffering, complete despondency and mental anxieties often reign, causing them no less severe moral suffering. But then the cry of a child being born is heard - this first greeting to our world, although beautiful, but full of sorrows and sighs - and everyone’s previous fear disappears and is replaced by the brightest joy. It is natural for a Christian family, completely overwhelmed by a feeling of deep satisfaction, to share its joy with its Mother, St. A Church that is always responsive to the call of its true children, no matter what circumstances of life they find themselves in. The Shepherd of the Church hurries to the sick bed on the very “first day before the wife gave birth to a child,” in response to the call of the believers and prays to the Almighty Lord, healer of every ailment and every disease, so that He would “heal the slave who gave birth, restore her from the sick bed on which she lies,” forgive her “her voluntary and involuntary sins, preserve her from all devilish torment,” “health and well-being of the soul and bestowed upon her body, protected her with bright and shining angels,” preserved her “from illness and weakness, from jealousy and envy, and from the eyes of contempt,” cleansed her “from bodily impurities” and “from various uterine contractions” and brought with his mercy “in her humble body to correction” 29. The newborn is not forgotten in these prayers either - the subject of expectations and hopes, for which the shepherd of the Church of God asks, so that He would preserve him “from all poison, from all cruelty, from all storms of opposition, from evil spirits, day and night” and grant him “to worship the earthly church, which you have prepared to be glorified by Your holy name”; the grandmother and women who were present at the birth and touched the mother in labor, and even the house “in which the boy was born” are not forgotten 30. For all of them St. asks. Church of forgiveness of sins and mercies from the rich bounties of the Savior, who deigned to be born on earth from the Blessed Virgin Mary. No less sublime in content are the prayers of the “mother’s wife, forty days at a time,” which are read by the pastor of the church over the woman, so that she, in the language of our writer, “ceases being unclean.” In these prayers St. The Church prays to the Lord Jesus Christ to cleanse “from all sin and from all defilement those who come to Your Church, so that without condemnation they may be worthy to partake of Your Holy Mysteries” and to be worthy of “an honest presbytery of entry into the church of His glory” 31 . The means for obtaining the kingdom of heaven were indicated by Christ the Savior Himself: more often than not, anyone who is not born of water and the spirit cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (John 3:5). But for this, the sacrament of baptism alone is not enough, or, as our writer puts it, “the ability to anoint him, that is, the baby) with oil and bathe him with the utterance of certain words,” but it is necessary to have faith in the saving power of the sacrament of baptism. “Whoever has faith and is baptized, according to the Savior, will be saved, but whoever does not have faith will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). The formula for the sacrament of baptism or the words spoken by the priest during the immersion of the baptized person are indicated in the Gospel by the Lord Himself. “Go and teach all languages,” Jesus Christ said to his disciples after his resurrection, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). The apostolic rules strictly punish those who deviate from this formula. “Whoever, bishop or presbyter, does not baptize according to the Lord’s institution in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, says the 49th apostolic canon, let him be cast out.” As for anointing with oil, closer to the truth - with oil, then no skill is required from the pastor of the church on this subject. In ancient times, in the Christian Church, not only elders, but even deacons, successors and grandmothers anointed with oil; they anointed not only certain parts of the baby’s body, but also his entire body 32 . The purpose of establishing this custom in the Church of Christ is not an incantatory, magical one, which our writer seems to see everywhere, but “for the healing of soul and body,” “for the hearing of the faith of Christ,” “to walk in the footsteps of Thy commandments.” 33. With this ritual, the Holy Church wants to show believers that from each of its new members it prepares a good warrior to fight all kinds of enemies and especially the enemy of our salvation the devil, who, “like a roaring lion, goes about seeking someone,” (1 Peter 5:8), and therefore, like the athlete of antiquity, who thus prepared for competitions and struggle in the arena, anoints his body with oil. So, in the teaching of the Church about the sacrament of baptism - the only sacrament subjected by our writer not to unfounded condemnation, but with indications of facts, we find “nothing base, rude, inconsistent with the concept of God and Christian teaching,” no “witchcraft,” much less “violation of the direct instructions of the Gospel.” But our Trebnik, as we said, covers the most diverse aspects of the life and activity of an Orthodox Christian; are there, in fact, any “techniques of witchcraft” and “gross superstitions” in his other prayers indicated by our writer? In the prayer, for example, “whenever anyone is allowed to enter a new home,” the shepherd of the church asks the Savior of the world, who did not disdain to enter the house of the tax collector Zacchaeus, “to protect all those who desire to live here and who are unworthy, praying to You and bringing supplications,” from all harm, “blessing those who dwell here, and keep their lives unhallowed” 34 . In the prayer “for the church, which is cold from evil spirits,” the Church asks the Lord that He “put into flight every devilish act, and every satanic presence, every slander of opposing and present forces from this roof, and from those possessed by it, and from those who go around under it, a terrible sign against the demons of the victory of your cross who bear and call on your good name,” prays that He, The Lord, “a strong wall of those who hope” and “those who place hope” - “having above all harm and temptation those who are in this house, he preserved, delivering them from the fear of the night and the arrows that fly during the days, from the thing that passes in the darkness, from the clot and the demon of the midday: yes, your servants, your female servants and babies, enjoying your help, and the angelic army keep, as one and all in one mind sing faithfully: The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man will do to me; and again: I will fear no evil, for You are with me” 35. The prayer “over the sowing” (of rye, wheat and other fruits) is so sublime in the idea underlying it, and so deeply edifying in its thoughts, that we ask permission to bring its text here in its entirety: “Lord our God, from Thy most pure and rich hand, the seed offering presented before Thy eye is offered by the seed, O Lord, and to this we entrust ourselves to Thee: lest we should imprison this with laughter in the soulless depths of the earth, lest we look upon the command of Thy Majesty, commanding us to give birth, and to vegetate the earth, and give seed to the sower and bread for food. And now we pray to You, our God, hear us praying to You, and open to us your great, and good, and heavenly treasure: pour out your blessing, until we are satisfied with your false promise. And take away from us all that consumes our earthly fruit, and every punishment that is righteously brought upon us, sin for our sake: and your rich bounty has been sent down upon all your people” 36 . In “following in the rainless” in all seven prayers compiled by Callistus, Patriarch of Constantinople, we beg the Lord of all, having despised our sins, “thy rains came down on the needy and begging places: they brought joy to the face of the earth, the poor for the sake of your people, and infants, and livestock, and everyone else: they long for you to give food to them in a good time” 37 . These prayers are filled with deep contrition for sins and self-reproach. “We have been so greatly blessed,” says the third prayer, “as if we were enemies: we have despised the benefactor of the commandments, and despised the life of wickedness, and the filthy and unclean thoughts of the acquisitive: and not exactly have we rejected your love, but we rush at each other like beasts, and we devour each other’s flesh with covetous images and our unrighteous will. How worthy we are to receive your benefits: You are righteous, we are unrighteous; You love, we are at enmity; You are good-hearted, we are not good-hearted; You are a benefactor, we are predators. "... But I, in response to your unsearchable mercy and your unmemorable evil womb, boldly approach You, the benefactor, foolishness and ingratitude: do not give up sin for our sake in your hands to dryness, below iniquities for our sake, crush us with the bonds of famine, but for your goodness, grant the land you have determined, and the inheritance rain is yours, and fill the depths of the earth with your life-giving waters." “visit with your mercy, and dilute the air with watery clouds, and irrigate the earth with your rich rain, and revive its vegetation, and with the blowing of the kindest winds, make the fruits whole and full, and multiply with your compassion” 38. “Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,” the soul suffering from drought cries in the fourth prayer, “remember how you have done your hand, consider the infirmity of our nature, how you created us: see the groaning of birds, the persecution of cattle, the cry of an infant, the cry of the young, the curse of the old, the deprivation of orphans, the solitude of widows, there is a shortage of the poor, and a prayerful voice for all your people, and visit the earth and drink in the fat rains, which are more deprived of phlegm, withering away through their vegetation, and abhors the destruction of man and cattle 39 . The same thoughts and petitions form the content of the other three prayers “for dryness and rainlessness” 40. In “prayers for all infirmities,” the pastor of the church sends out prayers to the Almighty Master, the physician of souls and bodies, “to visit the infirm brother,” to stretch out his arm, “full of healing and healing 41 and to raise him from the bed of infirmity. “Forbid,” the priest prays, “the spirit of infirmity, leave behind from it every ulcer, every disease, every wound, every fire and shaking (fever): and if there is a sin or lawlessness in it, weaken it, leave it, forgive you for the sake of philanthropy" 42 . The prayer read in church when commemorating the deceased, or, as our writer puts it, “to ease the position of the deceased in the next world,” is one, and it is well known to every Orthodox Christian, namely: “God of spirits and all flesh, having trampled down death and abolished the devil and given life to your world” 43 . With it, the Church prays to God, the lover of mankind, to rest the soul of the deceased “in a brighter place, in a greener place, in a place of peace, from where sickness, sorrow and sighing will flee,” and to forgive “every sin committed in word or deed or thought.” We are well aware that “there is no man who will live and not sin: for you are the only one besides sin, your righteousness is righteousness forever, and your word is truth.” This prayer, used in the Christian Church since ancient times, 44 contains the most sincere thoughts and aspirations of a strong believer and is filled with deep sympathy for the deceased. With this prayer, in the most living and immediate relation in content, stands the exclamation of dismissal in the rites of burials and requiems, preceded, in view of its special importance, by the deacon’s exclamation: “Wisdom.” “Christ our true God, risen from the dead,” through the prayers of the saints, as we believe, “will bring the soul of his servant attached to us” to the villages of the righteous, will give him rest in the bosom of Abraham, and will count with the righteous.”45 But the most severe criticism and even, frankly, mockery on the part of our venerable writer, standing before the gates of death, was the rite of Christian burial and those rites by which the “last debt” is paid to the deceased person of St. Church and loved ones who survived. We are sure that more or less all of our listeners are familiar with these rituals and with the most important of the hymns of this touching rite of the Orthodox Church, and therefore, to console ourselves with hope, we will not see any of them as sympathizing with the extreme views of our writer on this rite. In fact, the rituals with which we pay our last respects to the deceased clearly tell us that we ourselves, and even more so St. The Orthodox Church is far from the idea that our deceased: father, brother, son, mother, daughter, are “a nasty, unnecessary thing” that we would hasten to get rid of so that it “does not bother us alive.” On the contrary, all of us, regardless of social status and material well-being, depressed by the heavy grief of the loss of the upcoming separation from a dear being, hasten to show him the most tender signs of attention and care, which, unfortunately, we are not always generous with during their lifetime. We dress the dead in the best clothes, decorate them with flowers, place them in rich coffins, lay wreaths, arrange magnificent funeral ceremonies, cover the last path of the deceased to the grave with greenery, erect crypts for them, place expensive mausoleums and monuments over their ashes, etc. The Holy Church, sharing grief “with those who cry and are sick and expect Christ’s consolation,” for its part, presents the ashes of the deceased with even greater signs of attention and respect. The head of the deceased, as his good warrior, who fought for the good of St. She crowns the church and its course with a crown with images of the faces of Christ, the Mother of God and St. John the Baptist; puts the cross in his hands - the Symbol of our salvation, or the saint places it on his forehead. an icon as a sign of his faith and belonging to the Church; the coffin is covered with a cover with an image of a cross made of brocade, from which, as a rule, church vestments of clergy and the vestments of sacred objects used in the church are prepared, indicating thereby that the ashes of the deceased are a shrine and are under special care, the cover of the Mother of St. Churches. She calls the ashes of the deceased “relics” (τὰ λείψανα) 46, i.e. such a name that is appropriated only to the bodies of holy men, glorified by miraculous incorruption; near the coffin of the deceased, as if at a shrine, she lights candles, burns incense, gives a kiss to the deceased, starting from the head of the Church to the last believer present during the ceremony, pours St. oil, and in ancient times St. myrrh, anointing him, according to the exegetes of Orthodox worship, for the fact that “the deceased labored in sacred deeds and achieved perfection” 47, and finally accompanies him to the grave with the angelic chant: “Holy God.” In a word, to the ashes of the deceased Orthodox Christian St. Our Church treats us like a tender, loving mother. In her opinion, the ashes of the deceased are not a “nasty, “unnecessary thing,” “interfering with the living,” but “beauty created in the image of God,” 48 the church of God, the dwelling of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 3:16–17; 6:19–20), the blessings of Christ (6:15), the organ and conductor of the grace of the Holy Spirit into the human soul (John 3:5; 6:56–58) through the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, communion of the Body and Blood of Christ and through other rituals and prayers of St. Church, and therefore a sacred object and worthy of reverent veneration. And which of us will have the courage to deny the well-known fact that these, namely, the solemn rites of Christian burial that we have now indicated, and the tender loving attitude towards our mortal remains on the part of our Mother Church, give to all who die with hope (1 Thess. 4:14) that upsurge of moral strength, in which death itself is not fear, but a welcome guest, a harbinger of a new life with the Lord forever (v. 17). A person who dies in peace with the Church is calm and well aware that St. Our Mother, the Church, will not only pay a due tribute of respect to his mortal body, but will not forget about the soul that lived in him until the end of time, while she stands praying for her repose “with the saints,” in a “greener place,” in a “calmer place.” All close relatives will die, ardently mourning the coffin of the deceased, “relatives and knowledge” will be forgotten, the grave mound will be overgrown with grass and will lose all trace of the fact that the ashes of the deceased lie beneath it, but St. The Church will proclaim “eternal memory” to her worthy son, and truly forever, until the end of the world. (Oh, what happiness it would be for a person if he were ever honored with eternal memory with praise) On the contrary, with what coldness and horror the thought of the hour of death grips a person’s soul, with the knowledge that he is alone in this world, and he has no one, as they say, to “close his eyes” at his last breath. Do you now need to paint a gloomy picture of the death of a man who calls in advance that St. The Church will not spread its veil over his ashes and will not accompany him to the grave with her touching chants?.. But Christian burial is not only a reward on the part of St. Church to her son for the valiant feat of devotion to her and serving, to the best of her ability, her interests and good, but there is, so to speak, a religious manifestation, a triumph of the Orthodox Church, created by her for the purpose of, on the one hand, arousing jealousy and zeal in the living members, who are often exhausted in bearing the cross placed on them, with the promise of the same reward from her in the future, and on the other, taking advantage of as a visual proof, before the ashes of the deceased, to offer in your religious rituals, prayers and chants the most eloquent lessons of the vanity and transience of our stay on earth, the need for contempt for everything fleeting and transitory and worthy preparation of ourselves here on earth, for the kingdom of heaven - in a word, everything that concerns heaven and has little to do with earth, with which sorcery, conspiracies deal, witchcraft, superstitious spells, etc. And it must be done in full justice that, to achieve this goal, the Church very skillfully used the works of two of the greatest church writers, St. Ephraim the Syrian and St. John of Damascus. An ardent and inspired preacher of repentance and the frailty of human nature and the vanity of life on earth provides excellent material for the highly talented and poetic creations of the famous John of Damascus, who modestly calls himself in the inscriptions “Monk John” 49, and both of them together fill the rite of Christian burial with such exemplary, in all respects, chants and prayers that produce irresistibly a deep impression even on people who do not belong to the Orthodox Church. The stichera of the funeral rite depict, first of all, the vanity of human life. “Like life’s sweetness,” St. sings. The Church, in self-confessed stichera, remains uninvolved in sorrow; how is glory on earth immutable; all the weakest canopy, all the most charming sleep in a single moment, and all of all death accepts...” “This is our belly; color, and smoke and dew of the morning indeed. Come, let us see clearly on the tombs where physical kindness is, where youth is, where the essence of hair and carnal marriage is; everything has withered, like all the grass has been consumed." where there is temporary dreaming; where there is gold and silver; where there are many slaves and rumors; all the dust, all the ashes, all the canopy...” 52 – “We are walking along the eternal path, as if we are condemned ahead, all our faces are still waiting. Where is the kindness then? where are the penalties; where is the glory of this life? Nothing of this will help us...” 53 Human glory, popular rumor, nobility, wealth, beauty - all this is vanity and insignificance because all this remains here on earth and does not follow the deceased on the other side of our life, and all this does not save anyone from the common human fate - death, which creeps up unexpectedly. “A strange sacrament of death: it comes upon everyone in hopelessness, nature is corrupted by need, the elders take, abbots, scribes, teachers, the vain philosophies decay.” 54 “The colts suddenly delighted from the very same breasts into the grave, and conjugated themselves with eternal conjugation, and created independent weeping, and from the palace vostasha: but together there is marriage, together there is a coffin, together there is conjugation, together there is unharnessing, together there is laughter, together there is crying.” 55 In view of the insignificance and short duration of human life and the unexpectedness of death, which does not spare either gender or age, St. The Church invites all believers, looking at the coffin of the deceased, to stop thinking about the temporary. “Come and see the whole strange and menacing vision, cognizable by all, the image now visible, and the philosophizing of the time for no one. Today the soul is separated from the body, to the eternal world that passes away: for it goes on the path, which has no other procession, to St. Judge impartial, where angels stand. It's scary, my brothers. the judgment is here, where we will all stand before us: we will be crowned, and they will be put to shame. In the same way, let us cry out to the immortal King: when you are about to test the hidden things of man, have mercy on your servant, whom you have accepted, O Lord who loves mankind.” 56 To further enhance the impression on those present at the tomb of the deceased, the Christian poet in church hymns speaks to them on behalf of the deceased. “You see me silent, and lying lifeless, weep for me, brothers and friends, relatives and knowers: yesterday was the day I talked with you, and suddenly the terrible hour of death came upon me. But come, all you who love me, and kiss me with your last kiss: for I am going to the wrong place with you, or having other conversations: for I am going to the Judge, where there is no partiality: for the servant and the master stand together; king and warrior, rich and poor in equal dignity: each will either become famous or be ashamed by his deeds. But I ask and pray to everyone, continually pray to Christ God for me, so that I may not be brought down through my sin to a place of torment, but may He punish me where the living light is.” 57 “Save yourself, you vain belly, save yourself, all of you, friends, relatives and children: for I am going on a path that I have never walked before. But come, remembering my love for you, follow and consign my grave to the grave, and judge my humble soul with the tears of Christ, pray that the fire will consume me unquenchable.” 58 I pray in my mind to hear, from this labor I say: for for your sake I have created weeping, so as not to bring any benefit to anyone: but when you sing this, remember me sometimes called. We have met together many times, and in the house of God we have hung together.” 3) Among the funeral stichera we often hear the warmest consolation for the mourners surrounding the coffin of the deceased, consolations coming again from the face of the deceased. “Why do you cry fiercely for me, O people; You seem to be worrying in vain; presented to everyone broadcasts. Death is the rest of all: from nowhere we will hear the voice of Job, saying: death is a man’s rest.” 59 “Do not weep for me, weeping for nothing worthy of beginnings, but always weep more than those who sin against themselves, relatives and friends, the deceased calls the baby: so that you will not endure torment.” 60 “Why are you crying for me as a child who has passed away; lie cries out invisibly, for he is not mournful: for the joy of all the righteous is determined as a child, worthy of the tears of those who have not done the deed, for they sing to Christ.” 61 All the stichera of the burial rites are full of the most sublime Christian thoughts and deep human feelings, but the stichera and chants in the rite of infant burial are imbued with the greatest tenderness of feeling. The loss of a tender, beloved child usually resonates painfully in the hearts of parents, and St. The Church, in its chants, seeks to express its warmest condolences to the inconsolably crying parents in the following chants: “Many times before the grave the nipples beat and say: Oh, my son and sweetest child, don’t you hear what your mother is saying; Behold, even the womb that bore you, you did not speak as you told us; but be silent and say to you: Alleluia.” 62 Oh, who will not weep, my child, because of your lamentable death from this life! Like an immature baby from its mother’s embrace, now like a chick you soon flew away, and you escaped to the Creator of all. Oh, child, whoever does not cry, in vain your clear face is fading, as before, like a red crimson! Oh, whoever does not rebel, my child, and with tears will cry out much of your splendor and the beauty of your life! As if the ship had no trace, it arrived soon before my eyes. Come, my friends, relatives and neighbors, with this kiss that sends me to the grave.” But there is no way to exhaust all the wealth of thoughts, high poetic inspiration and pure Christian worldview, which are represented by the rituals, prayers and chants of the rites of Christian burial, as well as other prayers for various occasions in our lives. It is advisable to believe that on the basis of the presented material, which we have extracted directly from the Trebnik, unprejudiced people and seekers of truth will hardly have the courage to assert that these works of a great theological mind and pure Christian poetry have at least some similarity with the above examples of folk art, known under the Name of renounced prayers, incantations, incantations, etc. We leave it to your enlightened mind and your conscience to decide the question: is there anything in everything that we have said so far about the rituals, rites and prayers contained in our Breviary that would really be crude and “low-lying”, full of “crude superstitions”, and would resemble folk “techniques of witchcraft, adapted to all possible occasions of life”? 63 On the contrary, to make comparisons of prayers, rites and rituals of the Trebnik with monuments of folk art created by ignorant people, with the aim of exploiting the people's children's faith and poorly developed religious worldview, with a complete misunderstanding of the forces of nature and a superstitious fear of it, does not this mean on the part of our writer to act “arbitrarily, unfoundedly”, to bring deliberate “slander” against our Trebnik, let’s say moreover, even “incite to bad feelings and actions” 64 (We use the words of our writer addressed to St. Synod) people who are little familiar with this book, weak and unstable in the Orthodox faith, but who blindly believe in the authority of the artist of the Russian word, who once knew how to awaken “the best feelings” among his admirers? In particular, in relation to the rite of Orthodox Christian burial, in refutation of the extremely gross mockery of it on the part of our venerable writer, those closest to him unexpectedly rose to the defense. In a well-known letter to the Most Reverend Metropolitan Anthony of St. Petersburg, our writer’s wife directly admits that “her sorrowful indignation knows no limits,” and, mainly, because she learned “about the secret order of the Synod to priests - not to perform a funeral service in the church of Lev Nikolaevich in the event of his death” 65. Well understanding what great consolation she and other members of her family were deprived of in a Christian burial, she, under the impression of “an acute impulse of her grief,” in the form of a threat to St. The Synod intends, illegally, even through a “dishonorable priest by bribery, “for a lot of money” 66 to achieve the funeral service for her husband, and the prayers of the Church, which our Mother Church never denies to any of her true children, no matter how low in the rank of social position here on earth he may stand, and always offers it willingly and for nothing. In this case, by performing a Christian burial over an unbelieving husband, she, as the High Hierarch of the Russian Church, His Eminence Metropolitan Anthony, explained to her in a reply filled with dignity and tact, in a fit of her indignation, she is even ready to “allow the criminal profanation of the sacred rite,” 67 because “without faith, prayer is not useful.” “Prayer was established in the Church, as the ever-memorable Moscow Saint Philaret says, not as a plausible rite, but as spiritual help and a tool for attracting the grace of God, merciful and saving, which our writer “does not demand” and the existence of which in the Church he “does not recognize” 68. But, deciding on the criminal profanation of the sacred rite, our writer’s wife, as is now known from his last confession, goes against the orders “written by him in his will to his loved ones,” and therefore to her, “not to allow church servants to see him and to remove the dead body as quickly as possible,” “as they remove any nasty and unnecessary thing.” 69 So great in a person brought up in the spirit of the Orthodox faith [and who does not break ties with the Orthodox Church, although he understands this Church in a unique way, is the need for Christian prayer and in the rituals of our Orthodox Church! Is it necessary to talk about people who are true believers and deeply religious, for whom the absence of all this in our Church would seem like impenetrable darkness and would blow a terrible cold into the human soul. All of us, true children of our Mother Church, live in the best of worlds, but we are all strangers and strangers in it. Our lot is filled with gratifying moments of blissful joy, but, for the most part, our life passes among temptations, troubles and sorrows, and sometimes so difficult that we fall and become exhausted. Both in bright moments of joy, and especially in difficult days of sorrow and failure, we all need the strengthening grace of God, which is brought down into our soul through the prayers of St. Church, with the help of our Trebnik or the great Prayer Book. Those who work in the sweat of their brow, burdened with the heavy adversities of life, dejected by sorrows, experiencing bright moments of joy and family happiness - everyone will find the answer for themselves in this book, according to their given situation and mood. Let this book, revealing the life of a Christian in all its varied manifestations, cease to be a book only for church libraries and parish pastors, but become a reference book in the home of every Orthodox Christian, taking a place next to the Bible or St. The Gospel. With a close and comprehensive acquaintance with the contents of this book, mockery of it will be impossible, we will treat Christian rituals better and more consciously, and at the same time, we will learn to love our holy Orthodox Church deeper and more fervently - our Mother, nurse, water-bearer, protector, patroness and prayer book until the end of the world. This conversation was published in Kievsk. religious societies. a separate brochure entitled: “The shortcomings of modern church and religious education and the reasons that gave rise to them.” Kiev, 1901. Prayers “for the long-suffering to die.” Trebnik ed. Kyiv. 1873 l. 169. Church Bulletin 1901 no. 13th century 418–419. Εΰχολόγιον Gcar. edit. Venet. 1730 praef. See the philological explanation of this name. Missionary Review 1901 June p. 808. In Mign. Patrol. Curs. complete, t. VI col. 676 (ser. graec.). Regulation apostle ed. Kaz. 1864 p. 286. Mign. Patrol Courses. Complete. (Ser lat) tom. I, col. 415. Mign. Patrol. Curs. Complete. (S. graec.) t. XI, coi. 1252. Acts nine local cathedrals. Kaz. 1878. pp., 53. RKP. my library XVI century l. 37 rev. "The order and ordination and blessing of an exorcist or exorcist." Description rki. M. Synod. bib. M. 1869. Dep. III, 1, p. 124; RKP. Kiev Sof. personal No. 17, l. 7, no. 76 l. 3; No. 77 l. 6. Mign.Patrol. Curs. Complete, t. Sh. (ser. lat.) coi. 1150–1151. Ibid. t. ХХХІП, (ser. graec.) coi. 348–349. In our modern Trebnik there are four incantatory prayers in the rite of baptism (l. 6–8), “the spell of St. Martyr Tryphon in the rite performed in the fields, or grapes, or vertograd, if you happen to be harmed by reptiles or other species” (l. 180 vol. - 181) and 6 prayers of St. Basil the Great and John Chrysostom “to those suffering from demons and for all infirmities” (l. 163 vol. 167). Εὐχολογ. Gortr. pttg. 284, 578, 581, 584, variae lectiones 1–7. In our Trebniks of the 12th century: “the book of the great Trebnik, which contains incantatory prayers” (Rki. Kiev-Soph. bib. No. 75 l. U). “If this is not available, then another one will be given to him in that place” (Ois. RKP. M. Synod. library department Sh, part 1, p. 125). RKP. my library XVI century l. 38 rev. Such prayers from our ancient Trebniks were published by Prof. I. L. Porfiryev in the proceedings of the IV Archaeological Congress in Kazan pp. 8–24; I. Karatygin in Christ. Read 1877, vol. 1, pp. 423–448; prof. N. S. Tikhonravov in “Monuments of Renounced Literature” vol. II, pp. 351–360; Professor N. F. Krasnoseltsev in the description of the Slavs. The director of the patriarchal library in Jerusalem Kaz. 1889, pp. 24–32; L. Vasiliev in Anecdota graeco-bysantina part I (Scientific Zap. Ими. М. Унив. 1893, вып. XI, стр. 323–343); проф. М. И. Соколовым в новом материале для объяснения амулетов, называемых змеевиками М. 1894, стр. 2 – 4, 19–34; профес. А. И. Алмазовым в Летоп. Историко-филолог, общ. при Имп. Новорос. Univ. 1896, VI, III, pp. 380–432, etc. The expression of the Trebnik from “oches of the contempt” is ὀφθαλμῶν βασκανἰας“ (Εύχολογ. Goar. pag. 261), i.e. to save “from the evil eye” or “slander”, or, using the traditional expression, from the “evil eye”. In handwritten and oral spells, “lessons”, “prizes”, according to prof. M.I. Sokolov, are special demonic creatures, but even more often “lessons”, “prizes”, etc. are attributed to a bad person, who is considered dangerous, often a sorcerer" (New material for explaining amulets called serpentines, p. 58). In our Russian theological literature there are articles aimed at justifying these words in our Trebnik. in Moscow. Church. Ved. 1879 g. Λ· 23, pp. 192–212, in Review. 1880, vol. I, pp. 544–558 under the title: “The integrity of the church in prayer for the mother in labor” and in Reading. General Love. spirit. enlightenment 1880, No. 12, pp. 391 – 446 under the title: “On the attitude of the church to folk wisdom.” These words are found in the “spell of the Holy Martyr Tryphon” (Required l. 150 vol.), which in the Greek original has a special introduction with a story about the reason for the appearance of this spell and the inscription: Ευχή τοΰ άγιου μάρτυρος Τρύφωνος“ (Goar pag. 554). The learned J. Gohar made the following remark about this prayer: “This is a spell, not a prayer, and it is not Tryphon the martyr, but perhaps of an unknown name and a very well-known simplicity of a husband, a counterfeit false and completely condemnable fruit (reprobandus omnino foetus) “..."Like any empty and superstitious observation, according to which insects are condemned with accusations, zealous quarrels and punitive actions and sent into exile should be avoided, so this spell of an unknown author and apocryphus (apocryphus) should be ceded to its author, since neither the writers about the life of Tryphon, nor the authors of church histories about the spell make any mention of it. And that great name of God, written on stone, inscribed with the letters of Whose very stone was crushed and ground, echoes like a fable (fabulam redoleat). Therefore, when prayers with special reverence replace this spell, then I think that it was written recklessly (temere) by the author of a simple meaning." (Ibid. pag. 556. not. 5). Gohar made, therefore, even the conclusion that "et nunc hodie Graecia mendax in historiis pelerumque fallit" (Ibid.) - According to the observations of Prof. A. I. Almazov, this prayer is not enjoyed particular popularity in the Greek church and “was not included at all in the Greek manuscript euchologies” (Chronicle of the Historical-Philological Society. Imi. Novoros. Univ. VI, III, pp. 406–407). Our observations, however, led to different conclusions: we not only see it in the most curious Euchology of 1153 of the Sinai Bible. No. 973 and, moreover, with the inscription, namely, spells, not prayers: ἀμπέλου, κήπου καὶ τῶν χωραφίων (A. Dmitrievsky. Description of the liturgical rkp., stored in the biblical law of the East, vol. II. Ευχολόγιο pp. 119), but also in many other euchologies of the Greek Church (Ibid. pp. 243, 582, 964, etc.) Of greater interest to us is another observation by Prof. A.I. Almazov, namely, that “in handwritten copies of the Russian Trebnik, the real prayer (spell) is completely unknown” (Letop. Historical-philological general. vol. VI, Ш, p. 406) This prayer - a spell, therefore, appeared to us no earlier than 1658 through the Greek Venetian Euchologium of 1602, and therefore cannot be considered, in the proper sense of the word, as our folk relic. Explanations of these herbs can be seen in the archaeological dictionary published in Antiquities, Proceedings of M. Arch. Society, M. 1885, vol. X, pp. 212–215. We borrow from the book of Prof. I. Ya. Porfiryeva: “History of ancient Russian literature” Kazan. ed. 3, 1882 p. 155. Εὐχολογ. Goar. pag. 294, 295; A. Dmitrievsky. Description Litur. RKP., storing In libraries there is law. East vol. II. Εὐχολογ. Page 3, 93, 189, etc. Breviary l. 12. From the sequence of holy baptism. Breviary l. 188. – 190 rev. The late famous archaeologist, Chevalier de Rossi, undoubtedly establishes the curious fact for liturgists that in the 7th century the prayer: “God of spirits,” with very minor and, one might say, insignificant variants, is already found as epitaphs in the tombstones of southern Egypt. He considers a found tombstone inscription near Cairo, examined by a professor of Christian religion, to be an example of such epitaphs. epigraphy and archeology, Edmund Leblanc, who erroneously attributed this prayer to the year 344 (I.V. Pomyalovsky. Regarding a Greek Christian inscription recently found in Egypt, pp. 2-5). Bunsen. Hippolitus und seino Zeit. 11. Leipz. s. 537) and from the euchology of 1027, Parisian national. p. 1012). This last circumstance, however, does not give us the right, together with Prof. I.V. Pomyalovsky, only on the basis of existing variants in epitaphs, assume that “the formula of the inscriptions of the ancient formula is euchological (Regarding a Greek Christian inscription recently found in Egypt, p. 11). Undoubtedly, the compiler of the epitaphs took the inscription from the liturgical interpretation or from the euchology, and not vice versa. As for the variations in this funeral prayer, they must be attributed either to the existing diversity in the text itself, used in different churches, or to the freedom with which the compiler of the epitaph used it when inscribing it on the tombstone. The source of variants in this prayer can also be considered those funeral prayers that we find in the indicated liturgical monuments (Εὐχολόγ. Goar., pp. 437, 434; A. Dmitrievsky Ευχολόγια, pp. 1112–1113). 3) Req. l. 80 rev., 96 rev. 141 rev. etc. ) Pisan. fathers and teaches. church, related to the interpretation of rights. divine service SIB., 1855, vol. 1, p. 232. ) Trebnik, l. 93. From the stichera of the self-confessed in the rite of burial of worldly people. Trebnik, l. 94 rev.–95. From the stichera for kissing in the same rite. Trebnik, l. 92 rev. From the stichera of the self-vocal ones there. Trebnik, l. 130 rev. Ikos in the rite of burial by a priest. Trebnik, l. 131. Ikos in the same rank. Trebnik, l. 134. From the stichera of the self-vocal saints. I. Damascus in the rite of burial of priests. Trebnik, l. 133. From stichera on kissing in the following of worldly people. Trebnik, l. 129 rev. Ikos in the rite of burial of priests. Ibid. 141. From stichera for the last kiss of a deceased baby. Ibid., l. 138 rev. From what rank of infant burial. Ibid., l. 139 rev. From the canon “On the rite of infant burial. Breviary l. 139. Ikos in the rite of infant burial. Missionary. Review 1901 July p. 808. Church Vestn. 1901 No. 13, p. 418. Church West. 1901 No. 13, p. 418. 3) The file of the archive of St. Synod of 1841 .V « 2513. (Read in the general love. spiritual education. 1887, parts II and III p. 137. Mission. Review 1901 June p. 809. You might be interested in: