On the convening of the Local Russian Council and on the Patriarchate

The press talk about the convening of the council and about the Patriarchate in recent days 1 has taken a slightly different direction: the impatient anticipation of the council is being replaced by heavy thinking - is it the right time to convene the council? And is it really needed at all? Are any reforms needed? On the question of patriarchy, opinions differ sharply; on the one hand, it is declared with all decisiveness that the patriarchate is not needed; on the other hand, that the whole point is in establishing it: you just need to not establish, but restore the (already established) patriarchate and the church will be instantly renewed. In “New Time” for April 11, two articles were published on this issue: 1) The Kiev Clergy on the Church Council and 2) On the governance of the Russian Church. V. Rozanova. In the March book. Christian posted an article by St. Anthony Archbishop of Volyn: Restoration of the Patriarchate. Regarding these articles, it would be useful, I think, to express some thoughts. In the first article, the anonymous author (a layman) characterizes the mood of the Kyiv clergy this way: “among” progressive-minded priests, as well as among the ultra-right, there is a very sympathetic attitude towards the convening of the council, the restoration of the patriarchate and the destruction of the post of Ob. Prosecutor. In the circles of moderates, who make up the majority, a more restrained, and often completely negative, attitude towards the reforms put on the agenda is noticed: “We are afraid of the council - one can hear here. The turmoil in the minds has not yet subsided, the troubled sea has not calmed down. Passions are running high. Is now the time for organic reform? As if the cathedral did not cause a new schism... And, moreover, take the question of the organization and composition of the cathedral: if the cathedral is assembled in such a composition as the Pre-Conciliar Presence designed, then such an episcopal council will not satisfy anyone and will give rise to even more serious discontent; everyone will say that this is not a church council, but a council of only bishops-monks; the church is the totality of the entire flock: (shepherds) and flock. If they decide to convene a real council, i.e. representation of the entire church, then this is now downright impossible. Before convening a council, it is necessary to restore the living cell of the church - a self-governing parish. And only when church and public life is restored, only then will it be possible to convene a genuine church council.” On the issue of restoring the patriarchate in the same circles, the following opinion is expressed: “the restoration of the sovereign patriarchate may be fraught with complications: we are no longer talking about the possibility of a repetition of Nikonianism, which would be a heavy blow for the church. But we fear that under current conditions the patriarchate will not liberate and elevate the church, but, on the contrary, will suppress and humiliate it. If the patriarch is a weak person, then the church will fall under the yoke of those surrounding the patriarch. If there is a despot on the throne of the patriarch, then he himself will suppress the church. The defender in the person of Ob. Then the clergy will not have a prosecutor; in the dioceses the situation may turn out to be terrible, downright medieval.” The famous writer-publicist, Mr. Rozanov, calls on readers of Novoye Vremya to be completely indifferent not only to the convening of the council, but also to matters of church administration in general: “If the religious life of the country,” he said, “flowed depending on the order of affairs in the consistories and in the Synod, then perhaps for a long time in Rus' there would have been no religious life at all. Fortunately, this dependence does not exist, or it exists only partially. The heart of every person is an independent spring of religion. 2 Who was Ob. Prosecutor?, or what was the composition of the Synod when Elder Seraphim appeared in the Sarov forests, or when Ambrose lived in his hut in Optina Hermitage? “Nobody knows this and no one is even interested in it.” Both Seraphim and Ambrose were independent creators of religious light... Everything truly great and beautiful always arises from invisibility. The entire “Russian faith,” one might say, was accomplished in silence. And therefore, questions about the patriarchate and regional prosecutors, which have been making noise in Russian life in recent years, are in fact very secondary issues. There is no need to exaggerate their significance: these are questions of external decorum, questions of almost “decency before foreigners,” so that we would not be ashamed in front of them and no one would dare to reproach us that “the Russian Church is ruled by an official,” that the outer church of our church does not have a proper appearance.” “Christianity was born “in a den”, in a “stable”.... to say that there is no sign and a pointing “finger” is impossible. The heart of Christianity is humility, humiliation and simplicity. And the situation is given according to this interior. The “Heart of Orthodoxy” is created in the forest, on the banks of small rivers, near the “well”, “key”, where people then make pilgrimages. This continues to be the “nativity scene”, the “stable”... Perhaps it is not even fate, it is not the eternal destiny (“it will not be possible”) for Christianity and Orthodoxy to enter mansions, onto parquet floors, into halls covered with green official tablecloths. Entering there, or being dragged (through force) there, it dies, suffocates, turns pale... “History actually received Christianity once in a complete palace: this is the papacy, Rome. Russia definitely doesn't want to repeat this. Apparently he is implementing Christianity in the village. But let’s not consciously strive for this either. “How God will arrange it”... for now, we have bishops, priests, good service, we have consistories, a Synod, officials and Vl. K. Sabler. Something... Everything is incomplete! Everyone wants to “finish” it. And that’s why everyone is dragging and projecting. Then how can we have the whole essence in an “unfinished form.” “The establishment of the patriarchate and the abolition or even weakening of the regional prosecutor’s office would, according to Mr. Rozanov, have the consequence of immediate not only suppression, but the crushing of the white clergy by the monastics... Well, on the other hand, we must not forget this small fact, which is also a terrible warning for the future: as soon as the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg fell ill and ceased to temporarily manage the affairs of the diocese as a parish, i.e. the rich and powerful clergy immediately carried out a measure by which the right to perform services was taken away from the priests of all house churches, i.e. the poor and weak... So the priests alone, without supervision over them by apxieev, whether secular officials, or parishioners, can also begin God knows what to do.” Archbishop Anthony of Volyn argues quite differently: “Now there is no point in talking,” he says, “about any councils, or about the revival of a theological school, or about the revival of a parish, until there is a patriarch... The highest government of the church is a council. Undoubtedly so; Just don’t forget that our councils ceased along with the end of the patriarchate. The patriarch is the executive power... and the creative and legislative power is the council. But the council cannot gather by itself, cannot carry out its decisions on its own, cannot wage a constant struggle for the church against currents of social life hostile to it, especially now, when the latter is so alien to the main foundations of Christianity - humility, abstinence and love, and is guided by pride, sensuality and selfishness... “But,” he reassures, “this is a small problem: the restoration of the patriarchate is a very easy matter, namely: “The council can be convened by the Highest command by the patriarch, but the patriarch himself (the first) can be proclaimed by the Highest decree and manifesto. How? We have spoken about this more than once: according to Divine law (de jure divino), the Supreme Shepherd cannot be canceled or limited in his God-given powers. Emperor Peter the 1st and his regulations only bound the high priest, but no power can abolish him. He was actually forcibly deprived of his canonical rights, but in the eyes of God they remain with him. Who can now prevent Peter’s successor from lifting this restriction and untangling the ties of the church? Who would dare not recognize the legality of such a godly act? How can it be expressed? Proclamation of the primate, or Moscow Metropolitan, as canonical patriarch. Then, of course, Christian love will inspire the head of state and the head of the local church to ask the other patriarchs for this blessing.” 3 This ending resolves the ten-year wait and preparation for the convening of a local Russian council. Let's try to understand these opinions. The question of convening a council is connected with the question of restoring the patriarchate and abolishing the post of regional prosecutor. We will consider them separately and, therefore, divide our speech into two parts: about the council and about the patriarchate. The question about the cathedral, in turn, splits into two: is the cathedral needed at this time, and is it needed at all? That convening a council is inconvenient at the moment—all three opinions agree on this. The first of them indicates fear as a motive: lest something worse come out of the cathedral, simply because now the time is not calm, “the turmoil in the minds has not subsided, passions are boiling.” The motive is unclear: what turmoil in the minds and what passions are we talking about here? It seems that purely ecclesiastical issues, which the council should consider, are far from being able to worry our society as much as political, civil and social issues, which our legislative institutions, however, deal with without hindrance and are far from unsuccessful. Why can’t the council deal with purely church affairs, whose legislative activity is so needed at the present time? Of course, we can admit that it is true that convening a council in the present spring, summer, or generally before the end of elections to legislative institutions is not entirely convenient: but there is no reason to postpone it further and only out of fear. Another motive is more important: a proper council is supposedly impossible until the issue of parish reform is resolved, or until the patriarchate is restored... There can be no doubt that a cathedral composed of the hierarchy, clergy and representatives of parishes with a presiding patriarch would be fuller, more perfect, more splendid, to put it in ecclesiastical terms. But since there is neither one nor the other, isn’t it better to be content with a less perfect cathedral than to remain without a cathedral? Moreover, delving into the essence of the matter, wouldn’t it be more correct to pose the opposite question: what here determines one another: the presence of well-organized parishes and the patriarchate, the convening of a council, or vice versa? That a cathedral is conceivable without well-organized parishes and a patriarchate is incomparably easier to prove than the opposite. One has only to recall the historical fact that councils acted as legislative and constituent bodies in the church in an era when there were no parishes in our sense of the word, much less a patriarchate. Moreover, these ancient cathedrals acted in this capacity even better than medieval cathedrals, when the patriarchate in the West and East of Christianity was at the apogee of its glory, its greatness. In our Russian Church, councils acted from the very beginning of Christianity, long before the establishment of the patriarchate, and acted with power no less than the councils under the patriarchs. The assurance of Archbishop Anthony of Volyn that the council canonically cannot be convened without the patriarch, in view of this fact, is striking in its strangeness, just as his reference to canon 34 of the Apostle is striking in its strangeness. 1st Universe cathedral and the local Antioch: here it is said about primates and metropolitans, as the initiators of the council, but not a word about the patriarchs. It remains for us to weigh the motive for the uselessness of the cathedral, indicated by the famous publicist, Mr. Rozanov. G. Rozanov seeks to substantiate the uselessness of the council and the general unimportance of issues of church government more deeply, and his reasoning, if not specifically expressed in Rozanov’s language, could seem so convincing that it would perhaps be difficult to take them into account, much less reckon with them. “The heart of every person is an independent spring of religion... The entire Russian faith can be said to have been accomplished in silence, and therefore questions about the patriarchate and the regional prosecutor are secondary questions, questions almost of decency before foreigners.” This is almost the truth, but not the very truth: after all, if everyone’s heart is an independent spring of religion, then what kind of religion will it be? Religion is the union of God with man: but if the heart itself creates its own god, then p. what does it connect with? With yourself? - This is not religion, but self-adoration. But the truth is that the heart is truly an organ that perceives God, that perceives Christ. Individual religion is the dwelling of Christ in the heart, there is communication with Christ invisible to outsiders. And the more intensely and often a person experiences this communication in his cage, the more religious and stronger he is. The desert, in general external solitude, is indeed more convenient for the cultivation of this individual religiosity than the noisy metropolitan life. The desert raises a prophet... but let’s not forget: the desert can also raise a fanatic. “The heart of Orthodoxy is created in the forest,” “in the stable.” So according to Mr. Rozanov’s theory, but not so in reality. Is it? Seraphim of Sarov, Serius of Radonezh and other Russian prophets were born in the forest and in a stable? Did they not come to the forests as Christians, but only appear as such here? The reality is completely different: Christ enters the heart of a person completely regardless of who it belongs to: a person born in a den manger or in a royal palace? What is important is what this heart is like: whether it perceives Christ, whether it absorbs the rays of His light, or whether it remains cold, like rocky soil, remains an “independent spring of religion,” i.e. self-deification and actually turns into a stable, the inhabitant of which sings not praise to the Sun of Truth, which illuminates this stable, but utters blasphemy and reproach... The history of “Orthodoxy”, the “Russian faith” testifies that the preaching of Christ found receptive soil not in the forest, but in the princely mansions of the Prince of Kiev, and from here - from the mother cities of the Russians - the light of Christ's faith shone to all the cities of Russia, and then began to penetrate into the forests and deserts. “The heart of Christianity is humility, humiliation and simplicity.” And this is true, but partly; It’s not said here: before whom is humility and humiliation? Before God, not before people. And this is very important. Rozanov's (like Tolstoy's) humility, humiliation and simplicity, strictly speaking, are no good: but Christian humility is, indeed, a virtue that is desirable equally for the village and for the cultural center itself. Christian humility gives birth to a hero (“Rejoice, invincible audacity of the passion-bearers”!), Rozanov’s humility gives birth only to servility. All this is true... but the main thing: we are not talking about the conditions for nurturing internal, individual religiosity, but about its external manifestations, the result of which is the creativity of the Church, as a visible religious union, as an external whole, made up of the interaction of individual units, variously configured internally. And so, as soon as this visible Church emerges as a colossal (multi-million), complex whole, questions about this or that organization of its management, about who is at its head, cease to be of secondary importance. For the organization of this organization, the mood of the heart alone is no longer enough; the activity of the mind and, in particular, the regulating power of morality, or law, must also come into play. Yes, in this matter of external church building, not only the prophet receives great importance, but also the teacher, and the steward, the lawyer, the artist, the natural scientist, the doctor, the virgin and the married, the rich man and the poor man, the peasant and the nobleman, the slave and the king. Everyone can and should contribute their share of participation and, as millennia of experience shows, they actually contribute their share of participation in the creation of the Great Orthodox Russian Church. I will not say a phrase if I express it this way: the Russian nation in its entire history has not contributed anything as great to world construction as the Orthodox Church. Yes, the eyes of not only Eastern Christianity, but also Western Christianity are turned to it. It has long been a subject of interest, attracting the minds and hearts of confessors of other faiths. The Orthodox Church in its present form with all its institutions is only a great national inheritance and, in a sense, is our national pride before the whole world. We must not only preserve this heritage, but also help it flourish in the future. And if at the moment we are experiencing there is no lack of zeal for the faith in individuals, but a decline in respect for the church as a visible institution, or as a system of institutions, then it is clear that questions about its management have a very, very deep meaning. Suppose for a moment that at the head of its management there will be a person with the views of Mr. Rozanov, or a whole board of them, and will begin to act in the sphere of church government in accordance with their views on Christianity and Orthodoxy: will not then Orthodoxy really leave capitals and cities for villages and forests, leaving Catholicism, Protestantism or Jewry to replace its empty place in cultural centers? Yes, if even in personal religious work the heart and mind of everyone cannot be an “independent source of religion, but needs corrections and adjustments of the church as an institution, then all the more this must be said about external church building. This is the great dignity of Orthodoxy, that the highest authority in it is not considered an individual person, even if he was a prophet, patriarch or pope, but only and only - the church council. A local council is not only desirable, but also directly necessary, precisely as a body of legislative and constituent church power. By now, many very important issues have arisen that require a legislative solution (for example, the issue of the oaths of the council of 1667, mixed marriages, prayers for the dead of a non-Orthodox religion), there have been many needs in developing organic statutes for very. important church institutions. Let's pay attention to eg. to the fact that the Spiritual Regulations - the main constituent act of the Holy Synod - were created almost 200 years ago, are completely outdated and require a replacement act. The organization of diocesan administration, the organization of parishes and monasteries, as well as religious educational institutions also require the development of fundamental legislative definitions. The need for radical reform of the church court was clearly recognized back in the 70s of the last century and has not moved one step forward until now. All this at present is really “somehow” and “in an unfinished form”: the entire fullness of church power, i.e. legislative, administrative and judicial is concentrated in our country solely in the Holy Synod, “consisting of six to seven bishops and two bishops, replaced every six months. That is why our church administration in recent times has been characterized by extreme instability of orders, frequent replacement of one by another with sharply different ones, arbitrariness, discretion, and uncertainty of subordinate authorities about how higher authorities will react to their activities. The elimination of this shortcoming in our church governance and the establishment of certainty and fundamental legal stability in the latter constitutes, and to our deep conviction, the strongest motive for convening a local Russian council. Each moment of delay only further complicates and complicates the task of the future council and inevitably leads to increased religious and ecclesiastical anarchy, involuntarily making “everyone’s heart an independent spring of religion.” On the issue of establishing (or restoring) the patriarchate, the opinions of the press at the moment are sharply different. The majority of the Kyiv clergy and Mr. Rozanov think that the restoration of the patriarchate “will not liberate or elevate the church, but, on the contrary, will suppress and humiliate it; “the establishment of the patriarchate or even the weakening of ob. The prosecutor’s office will have the consequence not only of suppression, but of the crushing of the white clergy by monastics.” Archbishop Anthony of Volyn speaks quite differently. He is an enthusiastic and sincere admirer of the patriarchate, expecting from it innumerable benefits not only for the church, but also for the state. In his opinion, “the restoration of the patriarchate is the restoration of that freedom or autonomy of internal church life, which is recognized for the church by both the latest legislation and public opinion.” “Everyone knows that our lack of a patriarch as the supreme shepherd is the main reason for the alienation from the church of schismatics, zealots of the canons: now they are going to create their own false patriarch and promise to take him around Moscow in a golden carriage. “This is what we wrote in a memorandum of 1905: If such an event (the restoration of the patriarchate) had taken place during Lent, then no later than Trinity a legitimate local council would have taken place with the participation of the Eastern patriarchs, and by the fall the holy church would have flourished with such power of grace-filled life and spiritual revival that it would have carried the flock far away from those brutal instincts with which ours is now torn apart homeland, and the Autocratic Power would unshakably and joyfully stand at the head of people's life. Sacred chants, not Marseillaises, would be heard across the face of our native country; bells would ring in Moscow, not cannon shots; Black Sea ships, decorated with velvet and flowers, would bring and take away the successors to the apostolic thrones of the sacred east, and not traitors, not traitors led by Jews; and in general there would not have been a revolution then, nor now, nor in the future, because the nationwide enthusiasm for the restoration of Orthodoxy after its long captivity would not have allowed the sowers of godless troubles to approach” 5. This is how polar opposite the opinions are on the issue of establishing the patriarchate in the Russian Church. How should we react to these two extreme opinions? Apparently, such discord in opinions and such sharp expression of them are determined by the difference in the sources from which representatives of both opinions drew their information and formed their ideas about the future Russian patriarch. They stood on completely different planes when they decided the essential question in this case: what is a patriarch? These planes are literary, everyday, historical and canonical. According to the first, the patriarch is the highest archpastor, with his sacred rank superior to all bishops, archbishops and metropolitans of the local Church. His priestly service is distinguished by extraordinary solemnity and splendor. For lovers of church ritual, its restoration is indeed very desirable and it is very easy to do: the patriarchal sacristy and library have preserved all the details of the patriarchal priesthood and ritual up to a full description of the ritual of “procession on a donkey.” The restoration of this “patriarchal rank” with the award of its leading member to St. It’s really not difficult to make a Synod even along the path indicated by His Eminence Anthony. But whether the restoration of this dignity will be so fruitful for the strengthening of Orthodoxy is, of course, a different question. After all, all our bishops, especially the metropolitans, in their sacred vestments are only slightly diminished in comparison with the patriarchs. The Kiev clergy and Mr. Rozanov obviously do not mean this side of the patriarchate, but the sole sovereignty that Patriarchs Filaret and Nikon actually used, and which Peter the Great or the author of the Spiritual Regulations were seriously afraid of. The restoration of such a patriarchate, of course, is not desirable either for the clergy, or for the Old Believers, or for His Eminence Anthony himself. The third plane remains - the canonical one. Pr. apparently stands firmly on it. Anthony. He directly accuses opponents of the establishment of the patriarchate of canonical ignorance. “Taking advantage of the ignorance of Russian society in church canons,” he says, “and the ignorance of the clergy themselves in them, our educational and academic history, civil and church, presented the abolition of the patriarchate not at all as a direct and inexcusable deviation from the basic canons of the entire Church of Christ, but as a matter entirely dependent on the discretion of the secular and church, or even the secular government alone, and determined by one or another understanding church or even state benefit. If some writers or teachers objected to the reasonableness of Peter’s and Theophan’s reforms, then again from the point of view of benefit, without in the least bothering themselves or readers or listeners with the question of whether, in the very essence of the matter, it is conceivable to abolish in the local church its head, its supreme shepherd, established by ecumenical councils with the same certainty as the three degrees of hierarchy "6. So, the question of what a patriarch is in the canonical sense, what rights belong to him, is resolved by the rules of the Ecumenical Councils with the same clarity and certainty as the question of the three degrees of hierarchy. If in reality this matter were clear and definite, then, of course, the restoration of the canonical patriarchate in the Russian Church would not need any council and would indeed instantly restore the canonicity of our church government. Unfortunately, references to the canons and history of the patriarchate say something exactly the opposite. Thus, in the rules of ecumenical and local councils approved by the ecumenical councils, the term “patriarch” appears only once in the 7th rule of the Council of Trullo; in general, they carefully avoid using this term 7 and in the name of those hierarchs who actually bore this title in state legislation and everyday life. As for the definition of the essence of the patriarchate, in the monuments of Byzantine law there is the only experience of regulation of this subject, which belongs not to canonical law, but to state law, namely the Epanagoge of Emperor Basil the Macedonian. The title of the epanagogue about the patriarch was in some abbreviation into the syntagma of M. Vlastar and thus, as it were, “canonized”, received canonical sanction. But even this single experience of defining patriarchal power is such that, in the apt expression of N.P. Aksakov, it indicates only what “a patriarch should not be, and not what he should be” 8. The rights and extent of power of the Eastern patriarchs were established not by Ecumenical Councils, but gradually through custom and partly by imperial legislation. Ecumenical councils only from time to time affirmed these rights (for example, the right to ordain metropolitans (Chalcis. 28), the right of the highest court (Chalcis. 9, 17), so that the determination of the rights and limits of the power of the patriarch, possible on the basis of this diverse material, is a very difficult matter. Proof of this is provided by our literature, which is not rich on this subject. In 1878, Professor St. Petersburg Theological Academy T.V. Barsov compiled a long book entitled “The Patriarch of Constantinople and his power over the Russian Church,” in which he presented the experience of determining the canonical rights of the patriarch. St. The Synod, although it crowned this book with a doctorate, did not take into account its actual scientific merits, but taking into account only the zeal of the author and the poverty of our canonical literature. The writer of these lines had to repeatedly and quite closely deal with the issue of the patriarchate, namely when considering the above-mentioned dissertation of Mr. Barsov, when compiling his own doctoral dissertation on “Church Power” (1896), then before leaving for the Pre-Conciliar Presence, when he published a number of articles entitled: The main principles of the establishment of the patriarchate desirable for the Russian Church (1906) 10, but I must admit that neither I myself am satisfied with my research, nor others who have paid scientific attention to these researches. In the Pre-Conciliar Presence, after considerable deliberation, only the following provisions on the patriarch were developed and accepted by the majority: As Chairman of the Synod, Patriarch 1) Presides over the Synod and directs the order of discussion of matters at Synod meetings. 2) Observes the execution of the resolutions of the Synod and the correct course of affairs in all institutions under the Synod for the management of the Russian Church. 3) Receives complaints against bishops and gives them proper treatment. 4) Communicates with other churches on private issues of church life directly from himself; on issues of general importance - on behalf of the Synod. 5) Serves as the body for relations between the highest church government and the highest state institutions on current affairs. 6) Enjoys the right to directly and personally petition the Sovereign Emperor, as the patron of the church, about its urgent and most important needs. 7) Upon completion of each year, he submits to the Sovereign Emperor an all-subtle report on the internal state of the Russian Church, indicating its needs for the purpose of its beneficial influence on the life of the people. As Patriarch of the Russian Church: 1) Strictly monitors the timely replacement of idle episcopal sees. 2) Gives vacations to bishops within Russia and outside it, for more than a month. 3) Accepts for consideration cases of personal disputes between bishops who voluntarily turn to him for resolution of disputes without formal legal proceedings; its solution is mandatory for both parties. 4) Explains the private perplexities of bishops on issues of church order, excluding those cases when such perplexities cause general clarification and therefore require discussion in the Synod. 5) With the knowledge of the Synod and with the permission of the Sovereign Emperor, convenes the World Councils and presides over them. 6) Has the highest supervision over order and improvement in the Russian Church and, in necessary cases, proposes to the Synod to take appropriate measures to restore the broken order. 7) He enjoys the advantage of honor before all the bishops of the Russian Church, and his name, together with the name of the Synod, is commemorated during Divine services in all churches of Russia. 8) Has the right to send teaching messages and pastoral appeals throughout the Russian Church. 9) For violation of the rights and obligations of one’s ministry, one is subject to trial by a council of bishops of the Russian Church, convened by the Synod at the discretion of the Sovereign Emperor 11. No matter how insignificant the advantages of the patriarch expressed here over other bishops were, however, they also met with a sharp protest from the minority. At the same time, the motives presented by the protesting minority deserve attention, namely: “In the canonical rules of the period of ecumenical councils - gov. prof. N.S. Suvorov - there is nothing that would speak in favor of the restoration of the patriarch, since the canonical rules from the time preceding the formation of patriarchs rather prohibit than prescribe the naming of bishops of the first see with any distinctive titles, such as. exarch of the priests, or high priest, or something similar, allowing only the name “bishop of the first see” (Carth. sob. rights. 48), and the canons of later times know the patriarchs as the highest bishops of individual territorial parts of the Roman Empire, and not as the highest bishops of the whole empire, which the restored Russian patriarchs should have been” 12. “After that,” said Prof. Archpriest F. Titov - since the majority of the members of the Department have assigned to the first bishop of the Russian Church such rights not only of honor, but also of power over the entire Russian Church, for which there are absolutely no historical or canonical grounds, I am forced to join the opinion of N. S. Suvorov on the issue of the patriarchal title of the first bishop of the Russian Church. To what he said, I, for my part, consider it necessary to add my considerations in favor of the untimeliness and impossibility of assigning the patriarchal title to the first bishop of the Russian Church, as a designation not only of the highest honor, but also of the highest power and his special rights... The 34th Apostolic Canon speaks exclusively only about the advantages of the honor of the first bishop and about his indispensable duty not to do anything without reasoning with everyone” 13. As can be seen from here, those who have specifically studied the canons and history of the Eastern patriarchate are far from agreeing on the definition of the essence and rights of the patriarchal office. Where did the Eminence Anthony of Volyn get his conviction that “the patriarchate was established by ecumenical councils with the same certainty as the three degrees of hierarchy” - this remains a positive mystery. No, if the need really arises to restore the patriarchate, then a council is needed for this, and this latter will still have to work a lot to develop the proper canonical structure of the office of the patriarch. So she is canonically indeterminate! And if it had happened that the patriarchate had actually been introduced in such a quick way as His Eminence Anthony projects, then the patriarch restored in this way would have been in extreme difficulty at the very first stages of his ministry: what should he do? Where to find guidance and even instructions for such a responsible activity.” And such an uncertain situation would inevitably lead to an increase in even greater arbitrariness, discretion and instability in the affairs of church government, and in no way to its ordering. This article in the form of a report was read at the meeting of the union on October 17, April 20th. Italics are ours, here and further. Christian. 1912, March, 479, 484, 492. Archbishop Anthony: Restoration of the Patriarchate, Christian. March 1912, p. 483. Christian, pp. 492–493. The term patriarch is used in the rules of the local council of the Double (861) on the 15th and 16th and in 1 rights. St. Sophia Cathedral (879). N. Aksakov: Patriarchate and canon. St. Petersburg 1908. Reprint from the Church Bulletin 1906 (Objections to the article by Prof. N. Zaozersky: The main principles of the establishment of the patriarchate). Theological Bulletin 1905 The review was published in the Orthodox Review of 1879. Theological Bulletin 1905 – 1906 Journals and minutes of the meetings of the Pre-Conciliar Presence, vol. I, pp. 279–280. You might be interested in: