From church judicial practice of the 18th century

In the February book “Russian Antiquity”, prof. A. S. Lebedev published an article entitled: “The use of punishment among the clergy and laity in the 18th century.” The venerable professor has been dealing with this issue for a long time and publishes the more interesting results of his searches, based on consistory and other church-legal documents, for general information in his communications. In this case, the reader is given a number of facts about the use of corporal punishment by the spiritual authorities of “corporal combat” and “corporal humility” - as the documents of that time put it. In particular, the use of physical combat was widespread in monasteries; here, for personal crimes and misdeeds, they were beaten with whips and rods, and put in chains. Beating with anything was practiced simply as a measure of attack or initiation by the father of his novice son; Not only monks and novices, but also nuns and novices were punished with whips. - “The parish clergy were not subjected to corporal punishment” in comparison with the monastics. A number of facts related to this article make a particularly difficult impression. The bishop’s right to impose “merciless punishment with lashes in a consistory or spiritual government” was so generally accepted that no one protested against it, no one even complained about the torture and cruelty with which it was applied. Cases of complaints - and not rare ones - related to the cruelty of the “priestly elders” (current deans). Even these bodies of the diocesan authorities sometimes used whips, “rushing with whips and blows on the bodies” - in the language of the canons of their fellow priests; As for putting people in chains in their priest’s yard, they were directly authorized to carry out this event. It is especially difficult to hear that cruel corporal punishment was sometimes inflicted by the priest not for misconduct, but simply for acts of behavior or indiscretion in priestly practice. For example, the Right Reverend Joasaph (Gorlenko), having seen in the village of Izyumtse, in the priest’s house in the corner, something like a washbasin, in which the priest baptized children in the winter, determined: “to punish the priest in spiritual administration with whips, so that he does not create falsehoods, but maintains a place for it according to the rules in the church.” – The laity were also subjected to corporal punishment in spiritual courts, men – with whips, women – with rods. The crimes for which such punishments were imposed were: violation of the sanctity of marriage and chastity, second marriage, and especially insults to the spiritual rank. “Sometimes the bishop,” says the venerable author, “sentencing to punishment with lashes in the consistory those criminals who, by the nature of their actions, should have been subject to civil execution, even presented this as a matter of special pastoral mercy, saving the guilty from a more severe punishment.” – The venerable author, in his communications, is limited to the practice, mainly, of the Belgorod bishops. We can say that the same practice was quite common in the 18th century in other dioceses, for example, Rostov, and in confirmation we present the following extract from one court verdict of Metropolitan Arseny (Matsievich) of Rostov dated October 22, 1762. “By decree of Her Imperial Majesty, our archpastorship listened to what was happening in our Rostov consistory, at the request of the city of Romanov, the Church of the Holy Life-Giving Trinity, which is in the churchyard, priest Simeon Vasilyev, his coming to his spiritual son, the estates of the Spasoyaroslavl monastery, the village of Yakovleva, the peasant Vasily Ivanov, in battle they, Vasily, this priest, the matter for which it turned out; the said Trinity priest Simeon presented an announced petition submitted to our bishops; On July 7th of this year, 1762, he, the priest, was in the Romanovsky district in the village of Pomogalovo to take, from the Zemstvo Fedor Fedorov, spiritual paintings with the sexton Alexander Fedorov, and how they, the priest and the sexton, after taking these paintings, walked along the road through the said village of Yakovlevo, then the above-mentioned peasant Vasily, we don’t know why he invented it, He beat the priest with mortal and unbearable beatings, saying that why are you not marrying him, Vasily, because he, at his request, wanted to marry a soldier, Ananya’s name, and the fatherland and whose patrimony she is, and her husband is alive or dead, he, the priest, knows nothing about that, and asked that from such innocent and vain things done to him, the priest, the above-mentioned peasant, to protect and have mercy on the unbearable beatings, so that he, the priest, will not be so unnecessarily offended by him in the future; and according to the inspection and inventory in our Consistory by Pope Simeone, it turned out to be broken places: a sign on the face - above the very left eye it turned purple; on both hands, on the right and on the left, from the very shoulders to the elbows there are large purple marks; on the back, on the sides and on the left leg of the wrestler there are very purple black broken places, and it is clear that there is nothing heavy with a bat; and the above-mentioned peasant Vasily Ivanov in the consistory showed by interrogation: on the aforementioned July 7th day the said parish priest Simeon of the Trinity (whom Vasily also has a spiritual father) was in the village of Pomogalovo to take spiritual paintings from the zemstvo with the sexton Alexander, and with that sexton Alexander they walked past the village of their Yakovlev, he Vasily knows nothing and his priest mortal and unbearable beatings, saying that why are you not marrying Vasily, he Vasily, did not beat him with anything, and he did not complain about the priest presented from him, as a testimony to the declared sexton Alexander, because he and the petitioner priest are in the same church, besides, this priest has a sexton who accepts children and therefore he, the sexton, may not show Vasily the truth about him, and besides, Vasily has no quarrel or orderly petition with that sexton; aka de Vasilei, on the 7th day of July, was to be hired for almost the entire day at work on the Volga River (which is about five versts from the village) for scraping and lifting logs from that Volga, and in the shown village of Yakovlevo he came to his house around noon for lunch, and after having lunch at the same time, he went to the Volga River and stayed on that Volga until two o’clock in the morning, except for that, he has no one to present as testimony. Priest Simeon, in response to that interrogation, said as proof that, like him, the priest from the village of Pomogalova, shown in his petition, walked through the village of Yakovlevo, for example, an hour and a half before night, and then the priest who came out of that village of Yakovlevo, the said peasant Vasily tore his hair for the barns and beat him with a wildflower stick in his hands, in fact, in what was previously written in his petition the priest, who was walking with him, the sexton Alexander, was blessed; and besides, before him, he has no one to present as a witness. And the one shown, presented by priest Simeon, as evidence of the church's deacon Alexander Fedorov (to whom the peasant Vasily had no reference), stated that this priest and that deacon are in the same church, and besides, he is a priest, his deacon takes in children; and Vasily did not show any quarrel or ordered petition with his sexton. And according to the Code of Chapter 10, Articles 158 and 159, it is ordered to interrogate witnesses through references, and not to believe the challenge. And according to the decree of 205, it was ordered not to interrogate witnesses with whom the plaintiff or defendant has an order or some other quarrel, about which, according to a certificate or investigation, it turns out, which did not turn out to be the case in this case, and besides, the sexton of others was not presented as evidence from them. And so there is no one to sort out that case, and by virtue of the Code and the decree, and printed in the military trials in part 2, 3 chapters about the witnesses of the second paragraph under the number 12, according to the proper order, so that he, the sexton, shows the truth itself, without enticing anyone, exhortation, interrogation, shows: how in the year 762, July 7 in the evening, for example, how an hour before night, a sexton happened to him with the priest shown Simeon from the village of Pomogalovo, back past the mentioned village of Yakovlev, walked and when they came out of it and went past the barns, then from them, in an unknown way, the said peasant Vasily Ivanov ran out to them, who, without saying anything, suddenly hit the priest Simeon with his hand on the church and, knocking him off his feet, threw him to the ground and, sitting on him, began to beat him with his fists on everything that he saw and was afraid that the same thing would happen to his sexton (for this peasant is strong and the two of them cannot defeat him), he ran to that village to the peasants, demanding help from them, and as soon as he ran up, the peasants standing in that village in large numbers, seeing his sexton running towards them, said among themselves that he and his sexton needed the same trampling let me say that when he heard, the sexton no longer approached them, being afraid of them (instead of protecting himself) from the same beating, turning back, turning away from the road (where the said man hit his butt) he went into the forest near that village and so, as soon as he himself, the sexton escaped and secretly went to his house alone, and how that man already left the priest behind and beat him with a stick, the sexton does not know, only he had a butt stick in his hands (with which he walked). - The Orthodox confession, interpreting the 10 commandments of the Lord, the fifth commandment - honor your father and mother - not only about carnal parents, but also about spiritual ones in equality, and to question 62, how this commandment should be understood, by the way, it answers like this: this commandment commands us to honor our parents and give them all honesty and reverence, since they were born and we are educated, but also a natural conscience (even if we had not had it, and from God’s command) teaches us that it is right to love and honor our parents, since we are indebted to those for the good deeds they have done to us, which we cannot ever repay, but with the power to revive we too, as they did us, then the inherent commandment will uphold in the word, which says: father and the mother and all of them, from them we all saw certain good deeds, as they are spiritual fathers, teachers of the Lord, rulers, kings, existing in dignity and this likeness, and the end of all is this reverence and love, which should be shown to those who intercede, it is appropriate to show them in prudence and submission, and in honest words and the like; by order of the blessed and highly glorious memory of the sovereign Emperor Peter the First, printed in St. Petersburg in the year 718 July 27, the testament or testament of Basil, the king of Greece to his son Leo the philosopher, in which the testament on priestly honor, in chapter 3, is printed as follows: have the whole wisdom of Orthodox dogmas and honor your mother church, even Give thanks for the Holy Spirit, and with Christ for God, place a crown on your head with me; Even if you should be ashamed and honor your carnal parents, much more than those who gave birth to you in the Spirit of God; they give a temporary life to the child; This eternal life intercedes after birth; almost the church, may you be honored by it; and be ashamed of priests, as spiritual fathers and intercessors for us to God; Priestly honor ascends to God; Just as for your sake your servants honor you righteously, so also for the sake of God the Jews honor Him righteously, just as their honor passes to God, so the dishonor that is multiplied against them angers God even more. And from such chapters everyone can see that pious Christian law commands priests to be honored more than carnal parents, and that the veneration of priests is more than the veneration of parents, which is most godless. - About carnal parents in the Cathedral Code, Chapter 22. in paragraph 4 it is printed: if someone, a son or daughter, not remembering the Christian law, teaches his father or mother to speak rudely, or hits his father or mother with his hand with insolence, and in that case the father or mother will teach them to beat with their foreheads, and such forgetters of the Christian law will be beaten with a whip for their father and mother. And in the Moscow Great Breviary in the nomocanon, in the rules below, it is printed on sheet 343, in canon 121 of the fourth council: as it is not worthy to simply reproach a priest or beat, or slander, or slander, or denounce in person, even if the essence is true; If he comprehends this, the worldly will be cursed and be driven out of the church, for he will be separated from the Holy Trinity and sent to the place of Judas; it is written that there is; Do not speak evil to the prince of your people, and dishonor the abbot in the same way; of the same sheet on the reverse in canon 126 of the Apostle Paul: if anyone reproaches a priest, let him be forbidden for one summer, and if he is beaten to death or killed with a tree, let him be forbidden for three years, if the priest also forgives his sins. The cathedral code of the above-described 22nd chapter in article 11 is printed: if the same scolder, having called someone or dragging someone into his yard by force, begins to beat him with a blindfold, or a whip, or a batog, and from the court he will be brought to justice about this and such a scolder, for such a deed, will inflict dishonor and mutilation twice as much, and in the same cathedral code in Chapter 10, in the following articles, is printed: in 87 city cathedral churches, it is dishonorable for archpriests and protodeacons, and priests, and deacons to rule against their monetary salaries; in 1988: and parish churches, to which there is no reproach, priests and deacons against city cathedral priests and deacons; in 136: if someone tries to seek combat and robbery, and the defendant does not stop fighting, but says about the robbery that he did not rob and order the plaintiff, for injury and dishonor, to add double the salary, and in the price that the sovereign will indicate. And according to a certificate from our economic office, it turned out that ordinary priests of the Rostov cathedral church each receive a cash salary of seven rubles a year, and the parish city church will receive three rubles and fifty kopecks, and twice that will be seven rubles. And the above-described peasant Vasily Ivanov declared in a fairy tale that if, for what Vasily committed to the above-mentioned parish priest and his father, the spiritual Trinity priest Simeon in battle and his injury about insolence, it is commanded by virtue of the rules of the saints and decrees, with it Vasily for the guilt that turned out to be his in that case, to recover the due amount of money from that priest, then Vasily will pay it guilty, if only the discretion of our bishop ordered him, Vasily, to pay that money, for not his property, to give the proper period in which he, Vasily, for his property, would undoubtedly pay the future 763 in the month of April. And according to the above-described circumstances, shown by the peasant Vasily Ivanov in the mortal and unbearable declared parish priest and father of his spiritual Trinity priest Simeon, battle and injury (although he, Vasily, did not admit this, and locked himself out in his interrogation, but the witness presented from the priest, the sexton Alexander testified that he Vasily beat his priest at that village on the road, also in the consistory at Upon examination of his butt, there were broken, purple, significant marks on his face, on his arms, on his back and on his legs) he remained guilty. And since, according to the fifth commandment written above from the Catechism and the pious King Basil of Greece, tested by Peter of blessed memory, the first emperor and autocrat of All-Russian testament, it was commanded that priests and spiritual fathers be supported in equal love and honor as carnal parents, and even more so, since priestly honor ascends to God and just as honor on God passes on them, so does the hedgehog on them. dishonor angers God even more; the dishonor of God and Blasphemy are in one force, and civil law orders blasphemers to be burned, and the peasant Vasily Ivanov, shown, contrary to the commandment of God and the rules of the saints, and civil royal rights, instead of the honor due to this priest and spiritual father, dared this spiritual father, who was walking along the road, attacking him robberly to beat and mutilate mortals and obnoxious beatings, for which he was subject, according to the force of the above-described civil rights in a civil court, to severe punishment; however, we, in accordance with our pastoral calling and condescension, seeking above all true repentance and soul salvation, to send him to the civil court, leave him and command for his above-mentioned insolence and the unbearable anger declared to the priest and his spiritual father by mortal beatings, in our Consistory to inflict a sufficient punishment on him with whips and according to the punishment for his dishonor and mutilation priest, according to the power of the above-described civil rights, to collect from him Vasily against the cathedral priest the above-described number of seven rubles, also duties, the number is subject to decree and upon collection, this number is to be given to the priest with a receipt, and the fees are to be written down in the book, and then him, Vasily, until he himself admits to the above-described insolence and brings proper repentance, and also to this priest for dishonor and mutilation of these seven rubles will not pay, until then send him to the Spasoyaroslavsky Monastery, in which he will be kept in decent work without leave, and he will be from the entrance to the church and Christian requirements in excommunication; to admonish him to the local governor, and sometimes to the All Saints' keymaster of the cathedral, so that he, in his demonstrated insolence, would confess and bring true repentance and would not be hardened and become a completely disastrous son; It is not forbidden to bring him to the church singing in the porch and to the meal to listen to the word of God and teaching. And if he, Vasily, does not want to bring repentance beyond his aspirations, then let those admonishing him tell him that he will not even be buried in the church if he remains bitter and dies without repentance. About such a case, for proper notification and for the sake of announcement to all the churches to the people, we command our consistory, with this written definition of ours, to be published throughout the diocese by decrees without fail” 1 . Reading today the news about the application of such “pastoral” and condescending admonitions to peasants guilty of fighting and injuring priests and their spiritual fathers, it is, of course, difficult to refrain from expressing sad irony at the expense of this pastoralism and condescension. However, having cast aside in all this cruel church-judicial practice of the 18th century those features that were reflected on it as a stamp of the rude morals of that time, we will find in it something instructive for the present time. Thus, in this practice we are struck, first of all, by the broad and deep significance of the church court in the social life of Russia of the last century. During this time the Church Court had very wide jurisdiction; he considered and issued his decisions - not to mention church ones - even on very important criminal offenses of the laity. Church court and criminal jurisdiction...what incompatible concepts these are according to the views of our time! After all, this means the church was invading the state sphere? Not at all; criminal courts divided their work without encountering any constraint from the church, but the church - at least in the person of its most energetic bishops - carried out in its institutions, with its own means, research into the crime, decided and put into effect its sentences, without waiting for the decisions of the criminal courts in the same cases, acted independently of them and in this sense, competed with them. In fact, a priest who was beaten by a peasant very willingly - as we saw from the case we presented - makes a complaint not to the provincial chancellery - the criminal court of that time, but to the spiritual consistory, and the defendant peasant not only follows the plaintiff, but also willingly carries out the decision of this non-criminal court in his criminal case. Why? Because, of course, the priest considered it easier to obtain justice from his superiors than from the provincial office, and it was more profitable for the peasant to undergo, albeit impressive, admonition from the archpastor, than to be subjected to the merciless and cruel punishment of a criminal court. - But, the church court of the 18th century not only competed with the criminal court - which, although it always represents benefits for those on trial, is not always desirable for the purposes of justice - but also complemented it. A striking example of this is the following decision of Arseny, Metropolitan of Rostov, dated 1758 on August 31. “Our bishops have the reasoning that our subjects are the Yaroslavl district, Verkhovsky camp, the village of Morotsky, the church of St. of the Life-Giving Trinity from the priests and clergy, by petition, it is known that on April 758, 30 days of one Morotsky parish of the village of Kozlova, landowners, retired warrant officers, relatives, Matthew and Ivan Afanasyevich, the Lytkin children, having gathered in large numbers with their patrimonial peasants in that village of Morotsky, they were sacredly and clergy beaten to death and mercilessly with a knife and clumsy butts, and of them priest Vasily, inhumanly torturing and chopping his head to the brain and breaking the secret ouds, killed him to death, and another priest Alexy was left barely alive by torment, about which the Lytkins and the peasants of torture and murder are now taking place in the Yaroslavl provincial chancellery, a matter that, before a decision is reached, we have quite considered that This murder does not have any correct reason and no blessed reason for justification, but there is a real insolence of the Christ-killers themselves, crying to heaven; The previously shown Lytkins, not their commoner brother, but a priest, bearing the dignity of Christ, dared to dishonorably and inhumanly kill and put to death; These Lytkins should be slaughtered from the peasantry, as if they were defiled by murder and priestly blood, according to proper church justice, excommunicated from entering the church and from all Christian requirements... 2. For this reason, for the violence and godless insolence they committed, by the power of God given to us by the bishops, according to the power of the spiritual regulations (2 parts on sheet 33), we excommunicate them, the Lytkins, from the peasants from the church entrance and from all Christian needs, so that priests, no one, would come to them with shrines and needs; If they, the Lytkins and their peasants, stubbornly come to the church during singing or the divine liturgy, then stop the singing and liturgy before they leave the church and publish about this in our diocese in all churches” 3. We do not know how the Lytkins’ case ended in the provincial chancellery; it is possible that, given the red tape of that time, it dragged on for a very long time and, given the then judicial bribery, it ended in their acquittal, and the blatant impudence remained unpunished by the criminal court; How can one not recognize, with such a very possible assumption, a relatively quick and right church court of significance that complements state justice? From the judicial practice of the same Metropolitan Arseny (Matsievich), we know, further, several examples that his excommunication sentences had a beneficial effect on the persons who fell under him, not to mention the persons of the victims who received satisfaction from them, which, at that terrible time, they would have been in vain to look for anywhere. We know several examples that those deprived of church entry, having spent no more than a year under excommunication, turned to the metropolitan expressing repentance for their insolence with an awareness of the justice imposed on them, church punishment and with a request to lift the excommunication from them. So, in the year 1755, on January 4, Metropolitan Arseny excommunicated the landowner of the Rostov district, the Landmilitsky Eletsky regiment, captain Nikolai Vasiliev Terpigorev and his wife Ekaterina Andreeva “for the offenses and dislikes they caused to the house of God the bishop and his eminence”; and on December 22, the same year, these excommunicated people turned to the Metropolitan with a petition, in which they explained that “by their insolence, before his Eminence, they are guilty and the prohibition inflicted on them recognizes being right and, feeling that guilt, they bring repentance for everything.” As a result of this request, the Metropolitan “out of pastoral duty, having mercy on their souls, ordered the house of his Eminence, the housekeeper Hieromonk Ambrose Nikolai Terpigorev and his wife Catherine, according to the church rites, to confess and allow, and before entering the church, and before all the Christian sacraments, they should be introduced again (which, according to the confession of this housekeeper, were allowed)” 4. In 1751, to the same Metropolitan, the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment, Lieutenant Tikhon Fedorov Yaminsky, asked for permission from his father of the Uglich district of the village of Pavlovsky, Fedor Timofeev Yavlinsky, and the Metropolitan “commanded a resolution: for the request of the petitioner, both his father and the people and peasants, to continue to allow him into the church and into their houses with to attend to all sorts of demands” 5 . Whoever takes into account the position of the patrimonial landowners of the last century, their ignorance, rudeness and omnipotence, the crooked justice and red tape of judicial institutions, the poverty and humiliation of the clergy, will, in view of the examples of church judicial practice presented above, admit, of course, that the church court at that time was a very important addition to the criminal court. But that time has passed. At present, our criminal courts, of course, have risen immeasurably high compared to the criminal courts of the last century, and yet, is it possible to say that our social life does not need to be completely supplemented by church courts? As for compliance with the goals of criminal state justice of modern criminal justice, it is clear that we will not take the liberty of considering the question posed from this point of view. But we have the right to take a different point of view of social and personal morality and look at the matter from it. Then, worthy of our full attention, for example, will be the following, not a rare phenomenon in our criminal practice: the court and jury recognize the fact of the crime, but do not find its perpetrator guilty, even if he himself admitted to committing it. The question now is: can such a decision really satisfy not only the public, but even the personal conscience of this acquitted criminal? If it can, then perhaps out of 100 such cases in one case, and in 99, both society and the acquitted should feel some shame on their face. “I stole, but I’m not guilty,” “I killed, but I’m not guilty,” “I squandered, but I’m not guilty,” these are judgments full of internal contradiction, which neither logic nor conscience can tolerate. The only circumstance that somewhat reconciles reason and conscience with such judgments is, of course, the thought of the discrepancy between guilt and retribution; criminal retribution, in many of these cases, would exceed the guilt, due to mitigating circumstances, would be injustice and cruelty. Criminal justice, in many of these cases, is taken to extremes; either to acquit an obvious and confessed criminal, or to subject a person, almost weak-willed, to the circumstances of the crime, to the same punishment as a notorious villain. There is no middle ground and there cannot be one. And so, the perpetrator of the crime emerges from the court acquitted, with friendly applause from the audience, that is, from society. What is this applause? Aren't they the essence of a public spitting on reason and conscience? Of course - yes, that's the point! Our criminal code knows and recognizes, in some cases, the possibility of such an anomaly and the only means of eliminating it recognizes the tradition of such an acquitted criminal, a church court or church repentance. A strange, awkward, humiliating situation both for the criminal court and for the Church is created by this outcome of the trial. For on the one hand stands the state prosecutor, committing the church to repentance, on the other the church - a preacher of repentance - awaiting the order of the prosecutor to fulfill the mission for which it was established by its Divine Founder. – In those cases where an acquitted criminal, sentenced to church repentance, is a truly conscientious and God-fearing person, the determination of the criminal court, for the spiritual authorities, is completely executable; for such a criminal, even without a ruling from a court, himself, prompted by his conscience, will turn to the priest for pacification. But, for the spiritual authorities, the definition of repentance in relation to a person of little conscience or a non-believer is completely unenforceable. In this situation, fulfilling the order of the criminal court, the spiritual authorities can only appoint a certain period of penance and entrust the supervision of its execution to a well-known priest, then further, after this period, the defendant bows out and neither the priests nor the spiritual authorities are able to do anything with them; because the defendant has served his legal penance, and the spiritual authorities are not authorized to prohibit the defendant from “entering the church,” or in general to excommunicate him from the church by the decisions of the criminal court. Yes, there are cases even today, when criminal justice has been placed at the proper level, in which the free, i.e., independent action of the church court is reflected as a significant addition to the criminal one - even according to the latter’s consciousness - and yet, the church court does not currently provide this addition, because it does not have independence and power. Both from time immemorial, and in particular in the 18th century, in Russia the church court acted as a censura morum, and the scope of its jurisdiction here was unlimited, just as unrestricted as the sphere of spiritual confession - forum internum, the only means of orientation in which is the decalogue. According to the canons of the Orthodox Church, not only the bishop, but also urban and rural presbyters (priests) are authorized to take disciplinary church measures in this area. According to the rules of Theophilus of Alexandria, “the presbyters in the village of Gemina did a lawful thing..., as Kiradiya, who caused offense and did not want to stop the untruth, they excommunicated from the church meeting” 6 . The removal from office of a reader – a person “who has been found guilty of the crime of fornication” 7 – is not considered illegal, that is, an action that exceeds the authority of the elders. In the article we mentioned, Prof. A. Lebedev, presented quite a few facts of the use by church authorities of judicial and disciplinary measures for offenses of this kind. However, on this subject, the history of church law knows, in addition to facts, legalization with general church significance (for the Russian church). In Art. 29th, so-called Adrian’s Instruction 8 contains the following injunction: “Which widow or girl lives with someone unlawfully and gives birth to a child, cleanse the woman in labor with prayer without wrapping it, and name the baby, and collect a written note on the woman in labor in which house she lives, so that in the meantime she will wet herself where she has not gone. And how can they take her to the ten-year-old yard and interrogate who she gave birth to that child with? And the one whom he says, having found, interrogated and, based on the search, inflict punishment on him - beat him mercilessly with slaps and send him under the head to a monastery for a month, and order him to be in the monastery, between church singing, in monastic works, and order him to come to church singing, Vespers, Matins and Liturgy, and after the Liturgy, make 100 prostrations every day. And the woman in labor should be given a decree against the same thing as she will have a blowjob for 40 days, and not have any personal money. And just for the record, those rascally speeches they made in the ten-year-old's yard should be written down in a book. And if those who are widows or whores refuse to name their cohabitants, then they will be punished twice so that they do not hide those fornicators from punishment with any excuses in an unlawful act (Art. 30). After inflicting such execution, the instructions instruct the lawless to marry - to marry, “so that no one lives lawlessly, without a wedding, with a widow or a girl (Article 31). – The measures taken by Adrian’s instructions against suicides and robbers are worthy of note. The former, of course, are deprived of a Christian funeral service and burial in a church cemetery; Meanwhile, the following cases of death are classified as suicide: “whoever, while swimming and boasting, and playing, drowns, or gets drunk with wine, or kills himself from a swing.” The second (robbers), seriously wounded in robbery or robbery, receive farewell instructions from the priest, but upon death they are not honored with a funeral service and burial in the church cemetery, and without a funeral service they are buried in a “wretched house.” A century has passed since this Hadrianic censura morum ceased to operate in the life of Russian, predominantly peasant society. The role of censores morum, after that, was sometimes assumed by landowners in their estates, and then after 1861, it was partly assigned to the Volost Boards. The latter were inactive in this role and the result was the savagery of the peasants, to combat which, recently, the institution of zemstvo chiefs was brought to life, in many places sincerely welcomed even by the peasants themselves. How history repeats itself! The priestly elder, armed against fornicators with whispers, was, of course, an abnormal phenomenon from a church point of view, but he was a necessary filler for the gap in the police-state organism of our fatherland; this is proven by the fact that after its abolition, life itself, so to speak, by the logic of facts, was forced to restore it in a more normal and perfect, purely state institution of the zemstvo chief. But, censura morum, only partly is the task of the state, and most importantly, the task of the church, since religion in general is the cradle and support of morality, and therefore, if 100 years ago, the church abolished among its midst an institution that was more reminiscent of a police officer than a shepherd 9, and if now, in these days, this abolition has been successfully carried out by the state, then it does not follow, of course, that the church can consider itself the right to remain inactive and to rest, instead of energetic action and wakefulness on guard of gospel morality. True, it cannot be said that at the present time, the Orthodox Church has completely lost in this regard all effective influence on society and individuals - according to its institutions, this is even impossible; for it is always characterized by a living and effective word of reproof, the sacrament of repentance always operates in it, which gives peace and cleansing of the conscience to every criminal who has not received proper retribution in the worldly court and is burdened by this. But this is not enough. These means of action of church authority are alive and effective only under the necessary condition that the criminal is inclined to obey them, if he himself is looking for words of reproof and atonement for his guilt; Only under this condition is it applicable, with dignity for the church and benefit for the penitent, the assignment of spiritual penance, as determined by a criminal court, or by the court of a spiritual father. But what should not only the priest, but also the diocesan authorities do with such a person who laughs in response to admonition and mocks spiritual penance? The Criminal Code, which precisely defines cases of surrender to church repentance, and the Charter of Spiritual Consistories, which describes the order of church legal proceedings, pass over this issue in complete silence. Both of these codes authorize the church court to use decisive power, but do not mention a single word about binding power: and the latter, at present, is completely inactive; in this regard, the church court of the present time is far inferior to the church court of the 18th century in terms of strength and effective influence on the internal life and morals of society, and in its very essence, there is something abnormal: for the Founder of the Church Himself authorized it not only to release the warmer, but also to bind. (Matt. 18:17–18). From the archives of the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in the village of Krasnoye Yaroslav. lips Mashkinsky district, book of decrees, No. 1051. What follows are links to canonical definitions relevant to the case. From the archives of the previously named church, No. 604. From the archives of the named church, decree No. 70. From the archives of the said church, decree No. 337. Feof. Alexander, right. 14. Instructions from Patriarch Adrian to the priestly elder were published in the 1st complete collection. laws, vol. 3, no. 1612. The instructions to the “Dean” (from 1803) - the institution that replaced the priestly elder - define the measures of disciplinary jurisdiction for the protection of Christian morality. “If the dean heard that some outrages were happening in the parish, robberies, strife, fights, embarrassment, insults and deceptions, drunkenness, etc., then he should denounce and admonish in private and in church, threatening with God’s judgment those who do not repent, inspiring the priest to act with the same admonitions and, as a last resort, spiritual penances.” Art. 49 of Plato's instructions. You might be interested in: