Basic principles and characteristic properties of the law of the Russian Church

The peculiarity of the position and relationship to the state of the Russian Church in comparison with the Western Church. Fidelity to the legislation and traditions of the ancient Eastern Church. Particular respect in royal power. The position of the sovereign in the church and his special attitude towards it A historical review of the relations between church and state, as well as the emergence of various political teachings that sought to scientifically and legally substantiate these relations, very clearly depicts various moments of the struggle for the original existence, the freedom of its life of the Christian Church among the peoples of Western Europe, its rapidly increasing successes in this struggle, which were revealed by the subordination of entire states under its authority; and then - individual moments of the struggle for independence and freedom from church influence of these states themselves. Thus, the struggle for freedom and the struggle for dominance represent, so to speak, the vital nerve of the centuries-old history of mutual relations between church and state in the West. What result did this struggle give? What did these two warring parties come to after a long, centuries-long struggle? What have they given to the present time? The once great Roman Church, which took precedence among private, local churches, separated from the union and communion with them, spread its borders widely in Western Europe, and managed to deeply root its spiritual authority among them, has now fallen so low in the consciousness of the peoples whom it educated that it has lost all confidence in itself, in its divine mission on earth. The medieval state, which “good Catholics” now sigh about as a flourishing state of the church, in the minds of most cultural peoples is depicted as a terrible time of spiritual slavery, darkness, a time of cruel torture and the fires of the Holy Inquisition. For most of the peoples of Western Europe, Catholicism and the papacy have now become synonymous with religious lies and violence, sounds that arouse feelings of anger, disgust and revenge. In enmity with their mother church, these fighters for religious, moral and cultural freedom have long lost all sense of proportion and decency: there is no crime that they would not attribute to her, no vice for which they would not blame her, no disaster for which, in their views, she would not be responsible. And it would be good if all this evil attributed to her concerned only the external side of her existence, her policy in relation to states, the way of life of certain influential persons of her, for example, some popes or her institutions, for example, the Jesuit Order: no, the former children accuse and loudly denounce their former mother of perverting the most holy treasure, the bearer of which she was intended to be the Lord and the Apostles: in the perversion of divine truth, in the perversion of the sacraments, in perversion of the statutes and discipline of the ancient Church of Christ and the Apostolic Church. The first renegades from the Catholic Church openly preached that its sacraments = idololatria, impii cultus; its dogmas are impia dogmata et doctrina daemoniorum et antichristi; its high priest is ipsum verum antichristum esse 1 and their voice was sympathetically listened to by the sovereigns: they took upon themselves the responsibility of preserving the shrine of Christianity and the church; The Catholic Church began to be interpreted as a political body created by cunning deceivers, power-hungry and self-interested popes in dark times. In passionate polemics, in mutual denunciations, the opponents spared nothing, and through this unhappy struggle they achieved that they destroyed the last remnants of living faith in both the church and religion. Rationalism, skepticism and complete atheism took the place of faith. This is how the current state of affairs was created in Europe in the 19th century, characterized by cold indifference, the desire of Christians outside the church to fragment into small religious societies, cultural struggle, persecution of the church, and the revival of atheism and paganism. Of a completely different kind of interest is the history of the Eastern Church, and in particular the Russian Church, in its relations with the peoples and states among which it established itself, on which it spiritually influenced and continues to influence, taking on the character of both a national and state church. The historical interest here lies in the fact that in the continuation of its centuries-long existence among the most diverse nationalities, under the most diverse external conditions, the Church of Christ remained an internally original whole, always remained identical; on the other hand, remaining unswervingly true to its spirit, its tasks, it entered into the most friendly relations with states, penetrated into the entire state organism, as if merging with it into one whole. Its position in the East and among the Slavic peoples is accurately depicted by the ancient patristic likeness of a ship sailing on a vast ocean. This ship of the Church of Christ sails to different nations; accepts new and new swimmers; they diversify the hull of the ship, motley and decorating it with their national colors; but they themselves change even more spiritually, becoming akin to the unity of faith and spirit in the ship with representatives of the most different nations and times. Time and the political destinies of the Orthodox Church put their marks on the hull of her ship, expand and variegate it; but its internal structure, the discipline that dominates it, its goal and direction remain unchanged. At the same time, two main principles in the internal life of the Orthodox Russian Church appear with particular clarity, characterizing the features of its external relations and, in particular, its law; this is: a) her loyalty to the dogmas, canons, statutes and traditions of the ancient Universal Church and b) her high respect for royal power. Both by its historical origin and by its internal character and structure, the Orthodox Russian Church is a living branch of the Eastern Church. The Russian people heard the first news about Christianity from the Greeks. The historical conditions that favored his sincere disposition towards the Christian faith of the Greek law included those close political and trade relations into which the first organizers of the state system of the Russian land, the Varangian Russians, entered into with Byzantium. Byzantium was a representative of Christian culture. Everything Greek amazed and captivated this rough, warlike people, as the Russian people appear on the historical stage. Naturally, therefore, it happened that before the Equal-to-the-Apostles Russian prince undertook the feat of enlightening his land with Christianity, his capital was already filled with Christians; she was already predisposed to accept the Greek faith. This external motive, which attracted her only because she was the Greek faith of the most educated and powerful people, found itself strengthened in another more important circumstance in terms of its internal influence - in the celebration of Greek worship among the neighboring Slavic peoples in a language understandable to the Russians. The first monuments of Russian writing, the beginnings of Russian literature, were dedicated to the service of the Christian religion. The rough but healthy feeling of the pagan Slav, the childish but receptive mind in Christian worship and church literature suddenly received such complete satisfaction that they already irrevocably submitted to the authority of religion. And not later than under the successor of St. Vladimir “the Christian faith began to be fruitful and the monks began to multiply and the monastery began to be many.” Yaroslav himself, loving the splendor of the church, loved priests and monks “too much and was often devoted to book reading; and a gathering of many scribes who translated the Greek books into the Slovenian language, and copied many books, and people are taught by them even to this day 2.” Meanwhile, among the newly enlightened Russian people, the Christian faith of the Greek law reached its full triumph, in the Christian East and West that important and fatal event for subsequent Christian history, which is called the division of the churches into Eastern and Western, has almost already taken place. The sharp isolation of the representatives of one and the other, the passionate polemics between the two antagonists, excluded for the Russians any reason for hesitation in deciding the question: which of the two warring parties to lean towards with their sympathies. The circumstances mentioned above were already so strongly in favor of the Eastern Church. But the Russians should have been favored by her obvious rightness: they did not need to go into the details of the disputes and ups and downs of the struggle between Rome and Constantinople; the question was decided for them by the written laws of faith of both - and the advantage immediately remained with the Greeks: they had an excellently processed nomocanon of 14 titles, edited by the famous Photius, the largest and most important part of which was part of the ancient Greek nomocanon of John Scholasticus, already translated into the Slavic language, perhaps by the apostles of the Slavs - St. Cyril and Methodius. In accordance with this nomocanon, the Roman Church could only give the false Isidorean decretals, which appeared only a few years earlier than the Photius nomocanon: how could they compare with the latter? Yes, this Greek nomocanon could already serve for the Russians as evidence of the truth of the Eastern Church and an exposer of the wrongness of the Roman Church. It also contained a strong positive side of the truth of the Eastern Church: since it contained in its entirety all canonical ecumenical legislation, starting with the rules of St. the Apostles and further embracing the 7 Ecumenical and Local Rules (of which the most ancient were approved by the VI Ecumenical Council and recognized even by the Roman Church) and St. fathers. Here, in the same nomocanon, the Russians could also encounter denunciations of the Latins for deviating from the prescriptions of ancient ecumenical legislation (the denunciations are contained in the rules of the Trullo Council). And history confirms this meaning of the Greek nomocanon with the most indisputable evidence. Ancient Russian writing is rich in lists of the nomocanon, and these lists go back, according to undoubted historical evidence, to the times of Izyaslav, the son of Yaroslav, and then continue to appear in all subsequent centuries; in addition, the Slavic nomocanon could have arrived in a sufficient number of copies from other Slavic lands even earlier: Vladimir and Yaroslav already used the Greek nomocanon when drawing up their charters. The Nomocanon was a sacred book for the Russian Church, the foundation and reflection of its faith, its structure, its discipline, and continues to be so to this day. As containing the externally ordered legislation of the ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church, it has always served and serves for the Russian Church as an internal connection with other parts of the entire Eastern Church and with the ancient Universal Church, a measure or criterion for judging and assessing its own state at a given moment and the state of other churches standing in fraternal relations with it. The principle of obligatory universal legislation for the Russian Church is the first basic principle of all its law. In this capacity, it is solemnly pronounced by each of the bishops at his ordination: since the bishops have, first of all, a duty - the right to rule the Church: “I believe in the Seventh Council of Orthodox Saints, Father, and I rejected it, and I destroy it, and I curse it, and I curse it. And even as you have given us the Scripture, I accept... I flock to the catholicity and apostolic church and thus I believe and will confess before the nations” 3. This is how the ancient Russian bishop solemnly professed this great principle, and so every modern Russian bishop professes it. This is precisely the great principle - the living beginning of the law of the Russian Church: the laws of the Universal Church are the rules of the “vital word of those who have it,” as another Russian hierarch, Cyril II, Metropolitan of Kiev, testified at the Vladimir Council of 1274: “It is dangerous for all who have received the priesthood with all the care (befitting) to observe the holy rules of the most holy Apostle and according to those former Our reverend fathers, who have the living word, with their most pure laws, like some wonderful walls, protected God’s church and laid a stone of solidity in the foundation, which Christ swears will not be destroyed from hell itself.” Turning then to the current state of the Russian Church and seeing in it “much disagreement and rudeness,” he believes that one of the reasons for this is the oblivion of the holy rules; Seeing then the disasters of the church and the fatherland, here too he points out the clear consequence of the transgression of the father’s commandments. “What is the income of the inheritors, leaving God's rules? Has God not scattered us across the face of the whole earth? Shouldn't we take our city? Did not our mighty princes fall with the edge of the sword? Weren't our children taken into captivity? Aren't God's holy churches desolate? ...All this happens, but we do not keep the rules of our saints and reverend fathers. Now I have thought with the holy council and with the venerable bishops that they should perform tests on church things” 4 . And then this saint and with him the council of Russian bishops establish their own rules regarding certain phenomena in Russian church life: these rules are strictly based on the rules of the nomocanon, which had just appeared in Rus' before in the new Slavic translation of St. Sava, Archbishop of Serbia. Centuries passed, important questions of church structure and discipline arose, complex church and political relations arose, sometimes putting the Russian hierarchy, Russian princes, and the entire Russian Orthodox people in a critical position, regarding the most cherished church and national traditions, their closest sympathies and antipathies. Strigolniks and Judaizers appeared, these ancient Russian Protestants, who radically overthrew the contemporary and previous structure of the Russian Church and contrasted it with their unusually bold and radically opposed church teachings; In the struggle against them, some ardent zealots of churchism fell into infatuation with their power, infatuation that went so far as to praise the inquisitorial methods of persecuting heretics and the policies of the “Spanish king.” Discord arose among the Russian hierarchy itself - the Russian bishops, one half of which - the Western Russian - with the assistance of the Lithuanian princes, took energetic measures to isolate themselves into a separate metropolis and thus divide the united Russian Church into two independent ones; there was a moment when the spiritual connection of the Russian Church with its mother, the Church of Constantinople, was ready to collapse, whose unworthy leaders were ready to enslave it under the yoke of the Pope and do the same with the Russian Church (Union of Florence). But quite victoriously and with amazing skill, the Russian Church emerged from these difficulties, and all this - invariably relying on its basic principle, the unchanging preservation of the rules and traditions of St. apostle and saint father of seven councils. This last of the indicated moments in the history of the Russian Church is so important and characteristic that we will allow us to give some evidence about it from the Russian people themselves of that time. This is how the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily Vasilyevich depicts this moment in his letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople Mitrofan: “After the repose of our late father, the Right Reverend Metropolitan Photius, for the need of the filthy invasion of us and internecine warfare for the sake of the Christian for the sake of dispensation and spiritual benefit, I forced Bishop Jonah to come to you Ryazansky, a very spiritual husband who lived in a virtuous life from infancy for many years... with a request that we would appoint that bishop Jonah to the metropolis. Because we did not accept our petition for any reason, we did not appoint that Bishop Jonah to the metropolitanate... And for whom we did not send a message, nor did we ask or demand someone, we sent him to us, but the river of this Isidore. And God knows, even if we had not observed our original Orthodox Christianity, and if we had not had the fear of God in our hearts, we would not at all want to accept it from there: but for the royal ambassador there was prayer and for the most holy patriarch a blessing, and for him there was contrition and much subjugation and petition, as soon as we received him. When he forced us to conquer him a lot and petition, and to accept him, like a father and teacher, with much honor and good zeal, as before, like one of our most holy Russian metropolitans, imagining that this one is the only one from them, who does not know what he wants to do from him in advance. And when this Isidore, who was foreshadowed, came to us, and from the very first day they began to strive for the collective journey, and when he was forbidden to go, he began to create the decrees, saying: because I am not strong enough, I will not go; If I don’t go, the imam will take an oath from the Holy Patriarch instead of a blessing. And since it was not possible to admonish him and forbid him from going on his way, and there were many words spoken to him about these: “If you then go, and if you ever return to us, then bring to us our ancient piety and Orthodox faith, which came from our ancestor, the great Vladimir, who is held by the great catholic and apostolic church of God.” Greek; but do not bring other, strange and new and foreign from that church assembly to us... He promised with an oath that he would not bring him anything new and strange. Now come to us, bring many strange and foreign things into our Orthodox Christianity through the divine and sacred rules of the holy Apostles and God-bearing Fathers and through the divine law, which was handed down to us by the holy Apostles and God-bearing Fathers of the holy cathedrals and Apostles of the Greek Church and all Orthodox Christianity... Bring it to us from the Pope scripture, in it about the Holy Dus two principles Latina affirmed in their Church and unleavened bread wisely. He also writes about the departed, and this is perplexing to us: he writes his epistle like this: those who, in the true speech of faith, confessed God with humility, accepted the end and repentance without hastening to bear the fruits of their sins, about which the spiritual fathers commanded them, and such, through the purification of torments, will be cleansed after death and so on. This Isidore himself, in his letters to him, where he sent a letter, calling himself legatos from the side of the apostolic seat, Latsky and Lithuanian and German, and sealed his writings with green seals and commanded to wear a crucifix in Latin sculpture before him... and also the commemoration of my father’s name in our holy collection and greatness create a church in your service, and to this end, subjugate and enslave us under the excommunication of many for the sake of heresies by the saints and God-bearing fathers, the Roman Church and the Pope of Rome... Not only did you create this, but bring many other strange and foreign things from the Orthodox Christian faith into our Orthodoxy. Having heard and seen this, we were moved first, then placing our hope in the ineffable destinies of God and thanking his love for mankind, we convened the God-loving bishops of our fatherland, who at that time found themselves near us... and I commanded them to look at that divine and sacred rule of the holy Apostles and God-bearing fathers, who were received from the great holy team, the Apostolic Church of God of your true Orthodoxy, and that message delivered by the pope was commanded to be read on the mass. And he appeared to all our God-loving Russian bishops and the most honest archimandrite and reverend abbot and other holy monks and monks, and to all of our Orthodox Christianity, as if Isidore’s whole work and coming was alien and strange from the Divine and sacred rules. And for this reason, by the ambassador, that scripture is Papa’s, written in Latin and according to your Greek grammar, which Isidore brought to us, under Papa’s seal. And we ask your most holy sovereignty, and with the holy king and with the entire divine and consecrated council, having looked into your holy and divine Greek rules and in it papa’s message and having considered, and for the need for a long and impassable journey and for the presence of the godless Hagarians on our Christianity and for the disorder and rebellions hedgehogs in the countries surrounding us and the rulers of the multiplication, freely for us establish a metropolitan in our land. Also for this reason, we need to do all the spiritual things for every Orthodox Christian, and our hidden, and the Lord’s necessary words and deeds, we need to do with the Metropolitan, interpreted by younger people, from them there is little to be learned from them. And for this sake, we ask your holy dominion, send to us your most honest writing, as if with the help of God and the grace of the Holy Spirit and the haste of the holy king and with the blessing of your holy dominion and the divine sacred collection, according to the holy rule, gathered in our fatherland, in the ruth of the earth, the God-loving bishops of our fatherland, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, who chose the person good, spiritual husband, Orthodox by faith, may they install a metropolitan for us in Rus': before this, out of necessity, a metropolitan was installed in Rus'. And we want this, by God’s grace, from the beginning of our Orthodox Christianity, sending and interrogating and loving with the holy king and demanding and desiring your most holy blessings and prayers; century" 5. We have taken the liberty of citing rather long excerpts from this message of the ancient Russian Grand Duke due to their special character. In truth, the humility of this prince before the blessed king and the pious Patriarch of Constantinople is amazing; This delicate, subtle, honest and firm policy of him is highly characteristic. The prince was well aware of the hesitation of the patriarchal throne before the seductions of union with Rome; Isidore too clearly revealed his mission in favor of this policy in relation to the Russian Church: and yet this Greek, unwanted, not asked for by anyone in Rus', two-faced, was received with honor; the sovereign's own interest, which required precisely a natural Russian metropolitan: for the Russian prince had to communicate with the Greek through an interpreter, translator, his “innermost, and the master's necessary words and deeds” to be trusted to a third person, a young man, was not at all consistent with the continuation of the old custom of receiving a metropolitan - the prince's first ally - from Greece and from the Greeks; and despite all this, how legally, how fully the Russian prince proves to the Tsar and Patriarch of Constantinople the right of the Russian Church to freely elect a metropolitan from among the Russian people by a council of its bishops! It is truly difficult to find anywhere such an example of such deep respect for authority, resting solely and exclusively on the branch relations of one church to another that were formed long ago. The sense of truth was so alive in this era; This is how sacred the authority of the older church seemed; the union of love with her was so highly valued! Occurring in the 16th century. the famous hundred-domed cathedral represents, as it were, an audit and judgment of the Russian hierarchy about the state of the Russian Church of that time. The basis for the judgment is the Greek nomocanon with its rules of the Holy Apostle and the Holy Fathers. Both the tsar and the council do not hesitate to condemn those customs and practices in church administration, in church rites, that disagree with the criterion they have chosen, the authority of which is beyond doubt for everyone. The establishment of the Russian patriarchate that followed towards the end of this century was considered, among other things, as a measure to protect and strengthen the spirit and traditions of the ancient Eastern Church, whose representatives in the east - the Greek churches at that time were exhausted under the weight of the Turkish yoke; Thus, in the act of establishing the patriarchate, the following words are put into the mouth of Tsar Theodore Ioannovich: “I know, say, fathers, that there was an excess of piety in the days of the pious kings in Hellas, and in Africa, in Egypt and in Libya, and in Palestine, and in Syria, in the Greek land, in the city of Constantine, and in Alexandria, and in Antioch, and in the holy city of Jerusalem and in other countries, where the indescribable vision of God was accomplished and a multi-human people turned from the darkness of ignorance to the light of prudence; now, as we also hear you, that there is a glorious place and worthy of much honor, which was built for the praise of the glorified God in the Trinity and for the salvation of men, everything was trampled under the hands of the wicked Turks and as if nothing good can be seen from them, but everything is dishonored and reviled... Our country, as you see, by God’s grace is coming into multiplying territory, and most of all, our pious faith, which was established on the foundation of the Apostle and Prophet, is growing and multiplying: and for this reason I want, if it pleases God and the divine scriptures do not prophesy, that the highest patriarchal throne will be established in the reigning city of Moscow” 6 . At the time of his appointment, the patriarch was instructed to “most especially guard and preserve the common traditions of the Holy Apostolic Church, immovably and without stumbling, and do nothing differently, bring nothing less than the traditions of St. Apostle and St. father canon and rules” 7; - and in his confession, the newly installed patriarch gave an obligation: “I also confess to observe the peace of the church, and not to philosophize against any right, in all my life, in everything following and obeying the holy apostles and the holy seventh ecumenical council” 8. In the 17th century all the activities of Patriarch Nikon in correcting liturgical books were a consistent implementation of the principle we are considering; Soon after, the former great Moscow cathedral, which made many orders and decrees regarding church improvement, remained just as faithful to this principle, and the patriarchs who were there, Alexandria and Antioch, fully approved of the actions of the council. “Your Holiness Patriarchs,” says the conciliar acts, “heard our councils and deeds and reasonings and said that this is true and they judged what was right, and agreed with us in everything; just as we hold and philosophize from the beginning: so you also naturally received unction and philosophized, for this tradition is St. Apostles and St. fathers and saints The church has an ancient rite. And with your blessing you confirmed our councils and reasoning.” In the 18th century statement of St. Instead of the patriarchate, the Synod introduced quite important changes in the order of church government and in various relations of church life; but at the same time, the basic ecumenical legislation is left as before in its full binding force for the Russian hierarchy. Thus, in a letter to the Eastern Patriarchs on the establishment of the Holy Synod, Peter the Great wrote: “we have determined the same spiritual Holy Synod, through the instructions issued, so that the Holy Church would be governed in everything according to the dogmas of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church of the Eastern Confession without any doubt, and these dogmas would have as the infallible rule of their rule, to which they are sworn in the holy cathedral church, they obliged themselves by kissing the holy cross and signing themselves” 9 . And the spiritual regulations were the first rule for diocesan bishops to establish: “ecumenical and local councils, and what is commanded in them, both their rank and the entire clergy, is due to be known much, which cannot be done without diligent and frequent reading.” And among the main provisions on the establishment of St. The Synod's spiritual regulations contain the following article, repeated later in both the current and present Ordinance. Spirit. Consistory: “the basis of government is the law of God proposed in the Holy Scriptures, as well as the canons or rules of the conciliar, St. father and so on." – In the present century, the principle in question was solemnly expressed by the Holy Synod regarding the publication of the so-called “Book of Rules” in 1889. The publication, as stated in the very title of the book, followed: “in the establishment of a single, holy Orthodox Catholic Church” and, as explained in the report of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod regarding this publication, should serve in our fatherland as the main basis for ecclesiastical justice and canon law itself, the study of which on this basis is recognized as necessary for the establishment of Orthodoxy itself. It goes without saying that we are far from the idea of ​​asserting that the history of the law of the ancient Russian Church everywhere and entirely represents a steady consistency with this beginning, that there were no deviations from the law of the Universal Church. Quite the opposite. Deviations were not uncommon and sometimes very sharp, but they also provoked a reaction - a return to the prototype, a correction. The interest of studying the history of the law of the Russian Church lies in the fact that it represents a continuous struggle of church canonical ideas with national customs hostile to them, with natural shortcomings and passions, which usually manifest themselves with particular harshness among strong, rude peoples, which were the peoples of the vast northern territory of Rus' - and constantly growing success in such an apparently uneven struggle. What social life, what kind of family hearth, what morals did the Church of Christ meet among the Russians? All this stood at the lowest level of education: clan was at enmity with clan where some family principles had already formed; but in other places it was even worse: here people, in the words of the chronicler, “live brutally.” Which neighboring peoples entered into immediate peaceful or hostile relations and clashes with the Russians in order to promote their civilization with their influence? Pechenegs, Polovtsians, Tatars, who instilled fear even in the Russians with their mere appearance. Is it surprising if the Christian idea, the most sacred right or authority, at times, in the practice of clergymen who grew up under such cultural conditions, turned into very unattractive types? Is it surprising that at times church punishment turned into execution and cruelty, pastoral power into brutal tyranny, food from the altar into feeding and feeding? All the more sharply in the midst of this darkness did individual true lights of faith stand out, the light of which not a single remote wilderness, not a single poorest and wildest corner of Great Rus' - from Kyiv to the extreme island of the Arctic Ocean and the most remote parts of Siberia - seems to be lacking. What were the successes of church canonical ideas, what was the victory of the Orthodox Church in its educational struggle against the natural savagery of the Russian people, and what was the basis for its future successes? In the past, its successes consisted in the fact that it acquired and strengthened its authority among the Russian people: according to their consciousness, there was and is not and will not be a faith better than it, in it is truth and righteousness, in it is sanctification and salvation. There is truth and truth in it, because there is no deification of human authority in it: before its demands, the king, the patriarch, and the last poor man are equal. Earthly greatness does not stand before her strict judgment and reproof; she is equally strict towards everyone and equally merciful towards everyone; in it the law is always above the highest persons. In it is sanctification and salvation; because thousands of years of experience have proven that both in the lives of individuals and in the life of the entire Russian state, in the most critical moments of a hopeless situation, the church raised its strong voice, encouraged, gave visible help and saved. And so, the cities, villages and deserts of the Russian land are replete with God’s churches; the Russian people cannot settle and multiply without them; they are always his faithful companions; they became his necessity. This centuries-old faith in the authority of the Church as a Church, and not in representatives of its infallible power, such as the infallible Roman high priest, the immutability and constancy of the principles of its discipline, the simplicity of its structure, according to which the entire fullness of its spiritual means is carried out only by three degrees of hierarchy, and each newly growing outlying region is easily arranged into a separate diocese with its own bishop, equal in sacred power with all the others. The bishops of the church, with their clergy, with their many faithful, with all the fullness of grace-filled gifts, are a sure guarantee for its success in the future. She is not afraid of the attacks of rationalism and negative historical criticism. For its legal provisions have already been tested by centuries-old trials: there is no falsa decreta in them; on the other hand - internal, in their essence they are invincible by reason, because they attract a direct sense of truth and captivate the heart. She is not afraid of changes, political transformations, because she has never linked her well-being with the favorable attitudes of states towards her. With deep gratitude she accepted rich contributions and grants from the ancient princes and did not cease to pray for their prosperity even when her descendants took back from her possessions what their ancestors had given her. The ruling, state Russian Church has always had and still has before its eyes the example of the extremely poor Eastern churches and those who do not deplete in their inner strength. The second main principle of the law of the Russian Church, which also passes consistently and continuously through its history, is the recognition by the church of representatives of state power of the special advantages of a position in the church and the rights of patronage and active participation in the organization of church affairs. This attitude of the Church towards representatives of state power serves as the basis for the closest, internal union between the church and the state in general, so that with the complete originality and independence of the structure and law of the Russian Church, in many respects it is in such unity with the state that it can be considered as one whole. What is especially worthy of attention in this regard is the naturalness of such a union, based not on the artificial means of prudent and consistent policy, not by the force of necessity, not by the result of any amicable deal, not by the force of the political tact of the government, secular or spiritual, but on the deep, religiously sanctified, respect for the royal power, which the church from time immemorial brought up in the Russian people, on the centuries-justified patronage and protection of church interests on the part of the state power itself, on her fidelity and devotion to the Orthodox Church and its institutions. Oh, if only this naturalness, based on these foundations, remained unshakable in the minds and hearts of the Russian people in our century, when with such energy, under the cover of either the results of modern state science, or under the cover of fashionable principles of freedom of conscience, ideas and trends of atheism, indifferentism and positive hostility to any religion, ready to destroy this naturalness, burst into you from the West, which has suffered from oppressive, painful discord between the state and the church and, as a result, either asleep in apathy and in complete despair about restoring peace between them, or trying to invent the most artificial means, the most sophisticated theories for this! Bringing to mind this predicament of enlightened Western peoples, cultural Western states and comparing with it the relations of union and internal peace, resting on the mutual trust of the church to the state and back with us, one cannot help but recognize, together with the Most Reverend John, Bishop of Smolensk, these relations as “blessed” 10. Revealing the particular basis of the union between the state and the Russian Church, His Grace John says: “The focus of this union, the support of this unity is royal power. The Church recognizes and maintains its relationship to the sovereign, as to the anointed one of God, placed by the Highest hand in the kingdom in which she (the Church) is located. Therefore, the Church recognizes the royal power as sacred, inviolable and indisputable; reveres it as an autocratic, unlimited power in the state, to which all members of the Church, equally those serving and those in charge, as members together of civil society, are subjects obliged to obey unquestioningly; as the power of supreme patronage and supervision in the Church, acting through state measures not only in preventing and suppressing crimes against it, but also in church governance itself. In accordance with such concepts of royal power, the Church considers it its most sacred duty to protect its greatness and inviolability - to protect it with its teaching, its rules, its spiritual influence on the conscience and morals of the people. Our Orthodox Church in particular expresses such concepts about royal power and its relationship to it: a) in the solemn rite of royal anointing, by which the royal power is sanctified, and the anointed one, as appointed and ascended to the kingdom by God himself, is filled with special gifts of grace, not only to strengthen strength in the exploits of his high service, but also in order to be a pure instrument of the Divine will in the actions of his autocratic power, after which there is no higher power on earth, like the power of the king 11. b) in national prayers for the Tsar, both everyday, at every church service, and special ones, on days of state celebrations, such as: on the days of the sacred crowning of the sovereign and accession to the throne, when the Church deliberately intensifies her prayers “for the hedgehog to bless his kingdom with the blessing of the King of the reigning; about his scepter being strengthened by the right hand of the Most High,” etc. 12 Actually, in relation to itself, the Church prays for royal power: “Give them, Lord, a peaceful kingdom, so that in the silence of their quiet and silent life we will live in all piety and purity.” Also: “keep his (the King’s) kingdom, grant him deep and inalienable peace, speak good things in his heart about your Church, so that in his silence we may live a quiet life” 13. c) in some special actions in relation to the royal power; so the Church: 1) accepts and testifies to the popular oath of allegiance to the sovereign; 2) obliges all his servants, not excluding the highest ones, by oath to unchanging loyalty and obedience to him, every time they take office; 3) in his teachings to the people, in their spiritual enlightenment by the law of God, in his moral influence on conscience and public life, he relentlessly inspires pure and perfect devotion to the throne, unquestioning submission to the royal power and will; 4) violation of the will or insult to the royal honor, any hostile plan against it warns, denounces and prohibits as a grave sin, and strikes with its spiritual judgment; It does not recognize traitors to the Tsar as its members, does not tolerate them in the company of its Orthodox sons and anathematizes them 14 . According to such relations of the Church to the royal power, the latter, for its part, puts itself in a direct, living relationship with it, taking an active part in its dissemination, improvement - spiritual and material, - patronage and assistance to its institutions, orders, and finally, in its defense against hostile actions within and outside the state. That this relationship of the state to the church is quite natural for us, that is, it is based on foundations rooted in the very essence of the matter - is proven by the entire history of the Russian state from the time of St. Prince Vladimir. Not political calculation, not pressure on conscience were the motives that forced the warlike prince to become a Christian of the Greek law, but a free internal disposition, perhaps even combined with the conviction of the superiority of the Greek faith over all others, clearly recognized from comparing it with them. That is why, having become a Christian, St. Vladimir not only did not grow cold towards the faith, but, on the contrary, grew more and more in love for it. His children marked themselves either by a deeply religious, moral life, having won the crown of martyrdom (Boris and Gleb), or by declaring an amazing love for the Christian enlightenment of themselves and their subjects (Yaroslav... and without loving church statutes). Then the history of the Russian church and its hagiology exhibit an amazingly long series of princes - zealots of the faith, zealots of enlightenment, princes of saints, princes-martyrs-sufferers for the faith. The long line of tsars of Moscow and all Rus' does not represent a single one who would not have marked himself with deep personal devotion to the Orthodox faith and hence the resulting actions for the good of the church; finally, the first Russian emperor, the transformer of the entire political system, marked his attitude towards the Orthodox Church in no other way than by solemnly confessing himself as Her obedient son and by actively striving - out of duty, the God-given authorities to correct the spiritual order and to ensure that sufficient spiritual edification was taught to the Christian people. It is clear that with such a basic nature of the relations between representatives of state power and the church, it is very difficult to bring them under any specific formulas of state law developed in the West under the influence of a completely different nature of relations. With deep personal religiosity, each prince, each king could act in a completely unique way, as his own conscience, reason, given circumstances and the persons of the hierarchy who stood at the helm of the government and the closest advisers to the head of state inspired him. The oldest purely state act on the part of our princes in relation to the church was the definition of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the exact calculation of church persons and institutions, and then legal cases and crimes, as subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical court, or the “general”, “mixed” court - episcopal (metropolitan) and princely. Such a calculation, starting with the so-called charters of Vladimir and Yaroslav, is then repeated in the letters of grant of later princes, in the legal codes of Tsars John III and John IV: this calculation was then made under Peter the Great, and the scope of the church court was significantly reduced. From then to the present, the determination of church jurisdiction can generally be considered a matter of state power, although at all times the views or voice of the church itself or its highest administration have been taken into account. (This was done, not to mention the ancient times, and with the new definition of church jurisdiction regarding the introduction of the judicial reform of 1864). – Another act that expressed the active participation of government officials in church affairs was the election of persons ordained to the episcopal and metropolitan degrees. That the voice of the prince had power in the election of the bishop is attested to by our chronicles, which express the following thought in the tone of the legal position of common law: “it is not righteous to jump to the holy throne, but the prince and his people will delight in him.” But the prince, as well as the people, acted in this case certainly in agreement with the advice of the council of bishops, which, according to the rules, ordained the beloved prince and people. Thus, the Council of Bishops had the right to appoint a bishop, as well as a metropolitan; but the preliminary act of election was carried out through the prince and the people, and, of course, with the participation of the council of bishops. This was the case in ancient times; later, during the Moscow metropolitan and patriarchal periods, the matter of electing bishops belonged to the entirely consecrated council under the metropolitan (then patriarch) of All Rus' and the Moscow leader. prince and king; The same attitude remained with the introduction of synodal governance: election belongs to the members of the Synod, representing the Sovereign elected for approval. It seems unnecessary to enumerate in detail other aspects of church life, through the influence of which representatives of state power in ancient Rus' expressed their attitude towards the church, in view of the fact that such a listing lacks any general guiding grounds on which it would be possible to establish a classification of government actions in relation to the Church. The Reverend John made an attempt to place the actions of government authorities in relation to the church under the following generally accepted categories: 1) Legislative, in which the autocratic power a) issued for the church, through its spiritual government, laws and regulations regarding the order of its governance and deanery, as well as its rights and advantages in the state 15; b) approved and promulgated the church’s own decrees for nationwide implementation in the state 16. 2) Observatory, or the rights of supreme supervision over the state of the Church, the protection of Orthodoxy among the people, monitoring the church deanery, the actions of the persons who manage and serve in it, the implementation of its rules in the state, etc. - This included the actions of the supreme power in suppressing the most important crimes against the faith and the church, especially open and disturbing the world of the church, such as heresies, schisms, etc. 17 3) Actions proper governmental (administrative), such as: election and approval of the highest authorities in the Church, orders regarding the order of its management, direction of church affairs by type of state and for the general benefit of the fatherland, etc. 18 4) Judicial actions - the supreme right of trial over the highest clergy, civil executions of criminals against faith and church, etc. 19 “All these actions in the Church of royal power,” explains His Grace John, were carried out within two constant limits: 1) only through the church government, either separately through the highest shepherds of the Church or through their general councils; - 2) not otherwise than on the general basis of the Church’s own, fundamental laws, which have always been “the divine and sacred rules of the Holy Apostle and the God-bearing Father, who were received from the holy, great, catholic and apostolic Church of the East 20.” But such an attempt can hardly be considered successful, especially for the relations of state power to the Church in ancient Rus'. Thus, the calculated actions do not include the extremely important and rich in consequences salaries of princes and kings in favor of the church of real estate, monetary deposits, the construction of churches, deductions of income to the churches and generally concern for their material well-being. The government’s advice and concerns, jointly with persons of the hierarchy, on the spread of the Orthodox faith among semi-wild tribes on the outskirts of Rus', on the establishment of new bishops, and further joint meetings and actions on such important changes in the church structure as the establishment of independent election of all-Russian metropolitans, the establishment of the patriarchate, etc., which are not subject to any doubt as historical facts, do not fit into the above categories. – But on the other hand, the presented categories also indicate such actions of government authorities that in reality did not have the character they assimilated. Thus, it is impossible to agree with the position that the secular government in ancient Rus' issued laws and regulations for the Church regarding the order of its administration and deanery (1st category). The statutes of Vladimir and Yaroslav, to which reference is made to prove this, do not contain anything of the kind. They, as we said before, have a special task - to establish church and state jurisdiction. Then a reference to the proposals to the councils made by Tsars John IV and Alexei Mikhailovich can with great right be cited as proof of the opposite opinion that the Russian Tsars did not consider themselves competent to issue laws and regulations on issues of church administration and deanery, but in such cases turned to the Council of Bishops, which they considered the only competent legislator. Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible at the Stoglavy Council speaks with his questions not at all as a legislator, but only as a co-questioner; at least formally, just as our ancient bishops and metropolitans appeared as co-questioners at the Patriarchal Synod of Constantinople, seeking here a solution to their perplexed questions. “Yes, come together with us,” says Ivan the Terrible, “asking God for help, in all our needs, advise and judge, and approve according to the rules of St. apostle and saint father and according to the previous laws of our ancestors, so that every business and every custom would be built according to God in our kingdom and under your holy shepherd, and under our state. And which customs in former times, after our father, Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich of All Rus', have become unstable until now, or have been carried out in autocracy, according to their own will, or previous laws have been broken, or the work of careless God’s commandments has been weakened... about all this, please advise yourself spiritually and announce this to us in the midst of the council. And we demand your saintly advice and deeds and wish to consult with you about God to establish what is discordant for good. And what do we need, or what are the zemstvo disorders - and we announce this to you. And you, judging by the rules of St. apostle and saint father, affirm in general agreement, together. And I hit you, my father, and with my brethren and with my boyars with my forehead” 21. Legislators don't say that. The same should be said about the behavior of Alexei Mikhailovich at the council of 1667. It is also impossible to agree with the fact that in ancient Rus' the secular government had “the rights of supreme supervision over the state of the church” (category 2) or “the supreme right of judgment over the highest clergy” (category 4). That the great princes and kings very often pointed out to the church hierarchy the disorders they noticed or deviations from church order in the sphere of church life, and made demands on it in this regard - this is true; but from here it is still a long way from them to consider themselves or others to have jus inspectionis. This was a matter of pious zeal, the fruit of that deep attention to the interests and phenomena of church life, which was quite natural for an ancient Russian prince or tsar, whose private life and public activities were deeply and completely imbued with a religious and church character. That such a prince or king considered it his duty, his duty to point out the observed imbalances to the hierarchy is completely natural, but for him to internalize such an attitude as a right is difficult to prove. The same should be said about the supposed supreme right of judgment over the highest clergy. That princes and kings were present at the councils of bishops, that they even convened, or encouraged the metropolitan or patriarch to convene councils for the trial of persons of the hierarchy, that they sat at these councils with the honor appropriate to princely or royal dignity - this is undoubtedly, but the highest right of court was always considered to belong to the council of bishops or, in the most important cases, to the eastern patriarchs, but not to the prince or king 22. In general, about the relations of government power to the church in ancient Rus', it must be said that they were determined not by any specific legal principle, but by the degree of personal religious feeling of the ruler. Because of this, the difference in the attitude towards the church of one or another of the rulers essentially testified only to the fact that one, due to his personal individual abilities and inclinations, extended his attention and activities deeper into the sphere of church life, the other was content with the most modest share of influence on church affairs, being more occupied with state affairs or his own personal ones. Moreover, even extreme passion for religious affairs could not be reflected harmfully for the authority of the hierarchy, could not be dangerous for it: for this authority stood high; without consultation with their bishops, neither the prince nor the tsar dared to do anything important in the church sphere; so that if an excess of piety served in any prince as the reason that he was carried away in his worries about the church further than he should have been by worldly power, then on the other hand this same religiosity encouraged him to restrain himself in this enthusiasm with high respect for the authority of the hierarchy, and the zealous and courageous reformer-prince bowed before her as the most obedient son of the church. A remarkable example of such an attitude is provided by Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich in the establishment of the patriarchate in Russia. How the idea of establishing a patriarchate in Moscow was nurtured in the soul of the aforementioned sovereign is of no interest to us; what is important for us is that at the moment when it was already fully matured, the council of Russian bishops, for the discussion of which it was proposed, expressed the following to the pious tsar: “if your pious power delights, let this be announced by the ecumenical four patriarchs, and by this to each and every one of his metropolitans and bishops who advised and agreed with each other on the scriptures, it is convenient for God to help such an undertaking to come to fruition, it will be possible: since your pious power and we all have these, like pillars of piety... but even more so, for the sake of this, let me not imagine, O pious king, in a different language, especially those who write about the holy faith in Latin and other heretics, I However, in the reigning city of Moscow, the patriarchal throne was established solely by the sole royal authority. To this the chronicle notes “the pious king, having heard this, lightly speaks about this, if he could establish the highest patriarchal throne, like a king and autocrat; but, above all, deign to obey the will of God and the holy council; Most of all, he appeared in everything like a son and novice of the holy church” 23. With the transformation of the entire state structure under Peter the Great, the relations of state power changed (the relations of the Church remained the same) in the sense that its influence on church affairs increased. This happened naturally as a direct consequence of the exaltation of the head of state power, who took the title of emperor. Persons of the highest church hierarchy, together with other subjects of the state, had to become part of the class of estates and, together with other estates, recognize the only highest authority over themselves - the emperor. The abolition of the patriarchate was in the best possible harmony with the ongoing state reform: the patriarch, who had hitherto represented a person almost equal to that of the tsar in the state system, in any case standing out in importance above all other subjects of the state, was now replaced by a collegial institution made up of persons of the highest hierarchy and placed in state importance on the same line with the governing senate, composed of representatives of the highest civil class. The decrease in the importance of hierarchy in the state, which was already determined by these relations, was also increased by the fact that many cases and persons were separated from the jurisdiction of the church court and were subordinated to the jurisdiction of general state institutions. The emperor, a state reformer, had the idea to limit the sphere of influence of the church hierarchy exclusively to matters of a spiritual nature and to remove all worldly affairs from the former vast sphere of this influence - an idea that was far from being realized, however, due to the fact that the hitherto established relations had been strengthened for centuries and it suddenly became impossible to change them. – The result of such changes was that the highest governmental power of the Russian Church was concentrated in a government-ecclesiastical institution - the Holy Synod, established by the emperor and supposed to act in the name of the emperor: the Orthodox Church received the character of a state religion in the Russian state. This character of the “state” religion is revealed externally by the fact that all orders, actions, and events of the church government have in the state for its subjects, in addition to church-legal bindingness, like church ones, and state-legal bindingness, since they would come from other government institutions. This is, without a doubt, the advantage of the new position that the Church occupied in the reformed state. But the hierarchy has lost a significant share of its former independence and independence from state power. For now its government actions, such as legislative, administrative - for the management of subordinate institutions and property - judicial and police are carried out only by the Highest permission and even approval. Only in very recent times has the Holy Synod been given a very small range of relatively unimportant matters, which are carried out without the Highest approval. The general position of the Russian Church as a state religion is currently determined by our basic laws as follows: 1) The primary and dominant faith in the Russian Empire is the Christian Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern confession 24. 2) The Emperor, who possesses the Russian throne, cannot personally profess any other faith than the Orthodox; and by his rank and duty he is the supreme patron and defender of the Church, the guardian of its dogmas and all orthodoxy 25. 3) In church governance, autocratic power acts through the Holy Governing Synod, established by it 26. – It generally acts in two ways: 1) by considering and approving the reports of the Holy Synod on matters requiring the Highest decision, and 2) by announcing to the Holy Synod and through it the promulgation of the immediate Highest commands 27 . 4) Both those born in the Orthodox faith and those converted to it from other faiths are forbidden to deviate from it and accept another faith, even Christian 28. 5) Any slightest disturbance of the Orthodox Church in its rules, in the priesthood, and any distraction from it is strictly prohibited 29. 6) Any crimes against the Church, such as censure of the Orthodox faith, insult to shrines, violation of church decorum, non-compliance among the people with the rules and regulations of the Orthodox Church, are judged as criminal offenses. 7) Works of science and art are subject to prohibition as soon as they contain anything tending to undermine the teachings of the Orthodox Church, its traditions and rituals, or in general the truths and dogmas of the Christian faith 30. The task of the science of church law. Codification of law, its interpretation. Scientific systematization. The science of church law has the character of an exact positive science, relying, as its main foundation, on those positive sources from which law itself becomes recognizable. Its ultimate task consists in nothing other than the exact reconstruction and presentation of that integral legal image of the Church, which is given in its entirety by its objective law, set forth in positive sources. The science of law presupposes the latter as already existing, as a fact, on the one hand, already fully formed, having survived the history that preceded it, on the other, as something living, in its given state bearing the germ of changes that will later take place, which will then have further development and improvement. But if so, then a very natural question arises: what is its task? If the law is presented, so to speak, before the eyes of the student who studies it in its sources, then what does it mean that science should present it? How will this scientific representation, the image of law, differ from the one given by its positive sources themselves? The answer is obtained from consideration of the state in which the provisions of law, set out in writing, are found in its sources. Positive law contained in written sources is not something whole, completely and forever completed. At every moment of its existence it is the fruit of previous life, experience and legislative genius. Rarely, especially in the initial epochs of its existence, does it appear in the form of a whole, systematically embracing the different relationships of life. For the most part, it appears in writing in separate parts, or even as separate legislative acts (charter, prescription for a specific case, decree, etc.); so that sometimes a very long time passes, during which it remains in such a scattered, disjointed form, until, finally, a government authority or a private individual takes the trouble to collect these separate acts into one set or code. This compilation of codes, the codification of law, allows for the following different relationships in which the codifier becomes to its raw material. 1. He introduces his material without any change, writing article after article, act after act, the way they came to him, observing only chronological order in the queue. 2. At a further stage, the codification of law allows for significant processing of raw material and precisely in two respects: a) the codifier arranges individual acts and articles not in their chronological order, but systematically arranges their branches or groups, combining in them those that are similar in content and subject matter, b) at the same time transforms their appearance in such a way that it singles out from them the elements that make up the historical part of the legislative act and those motives that The legislator was guided personally, in a word, he singles out all the, so to speak, individual elements of a separate law and leaves in it only a legal provision, prescription or rule, thus turning a legislative act into a separate or separate articles of the law. In this form, among the sources of the law of the Russian church are the Byzantine nomocanons - general and penance - the helmsman's book, the complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire, their code with continuations to it, the collection of decrees of the Holy Synod. If in this kind of codes laws that have lost practical significance are highlighted, contradictory ones are reconciled: then they can satisfy more or less practical needs of use. If further they are approved for use by the authorities, then anyone who wants to prove any of their rights must literally, without changing anything, read or write down the legal provisions in those articles in which they are placed in the codes. There is no doubt that in this kind of codes a special, ordering rational element is already inherent, which was not in the original laws, as they came from the legislator: nevertheless, such a state of law is still far from scientific processing. The codifier stopped, so to speak, at the very beginning of analyzing and synthesizing activity in relation to laws, that activity which constitutes the essence of the scientific attitude towards them. The individual articles of the code, in their logical construction, represent a highly variegated, varied matter of either abstract general provisions or concrete descriptions of events, persons, actions, objects, and for the most part are connected to each other mechanically, being connected not by logical affinity, but only by the commonality of the subject of the whole department they form; Each one exists in it as a complete whole, not losing anything depending on whether new articles are introduced in the vicinity of it, or, on the contrary, the old ones are changed or completely excluded. – If we need to use a comparison to characterize this state of law, then the code can be likened to a well-organized warehouse for meat goods. In the warehouse, with all the accuracy, different parts of animal organisms are laid out on separate shelves: on one shelf - only legs, on the other - heads, on the third - loins, etc. This arrangement of organisms that have undergone dissection completely satisfies the practical needs of the buyer and seller; They easily find the required part of the animal on the shelves. Here is a kind of system: but an anatomist or physiologist is unlikely to be satisfied with such a system. Individual articles of the code or individual provisions of law are, for the most part, such complex parts, so to speak, pieces into which the whole organism of law is mechanically dissected. This comparison already partly explains how difficult it is sometimes to understand the true meaning of individual articles, so internally separated and externally grouped in codes. How necessary is a thorough analysis of their verbal and logical, then penetration into their inner affinities, bringing together the most apparently distant, the study of the entire modern or closest historical era, penetration into the general spirit of the entire social structure, to which, as external manifestations, certain articles of the code relate - this can be seen from the following considerations. Each individual legal provision, law, is an expression of law in words. The verbal form must not only accurately but also clearly convey the content and essence of a known law, so that they are understandable to everyone to whom the legal provision concerns. But if expressing one’s thoughts accurately and clearly in general is already a matter of talent, and not a matter that is accessible to everyone or, at least, given easily: then to perfectly express the right, which has a vital interest for those interested in it, is a matter that truly requires genius. A verbal shell perfect for ordinary thought, how often turns out to be completely insufficient for the law! How often does this vital interest refine human ingenuity in a law that one does not like, to find reciprocity, ambiguity of expressions in order to reinterpret its literal meaning in one’s favor! Therefore, even if we talk about laws that, from a general point of view, are impeccable, even perfect, it must be said that they are not always guaranteed against reinterpretation, i.e. from the difference in their understanding: what can we say about imperfect laws, bearing traces of haste, sometimes negligence, especially about ancient laws, outdated even in relation to their external form (language), and especially about laws in the original text written in a language alien to those who use them (there are many of these in church law)! How to establish in such cases a uniform way of interpreting the law, its exact and true meaning? Obviously, there remains no other possibility than to establish between him and a whole group of other laws of internal connection, to indicate to him a certain relationship and meaning in their entirety, embracing any real relationship of life. For each law, in its essence, strives to embrace some aspect of life, some of its relations, or to supplement, clarify the gap that was influenced by new phenomena of life in the legislation previously published on this subject. “Often, in order to form the legal form of one life relationship,” says Eagering, “various individual legal provisions must act together; they therefore find their connecting point in this common goal for all of them and are located around it like muscles around a bone. A life relationship expressed in this way in legal form can, in turn, be in a dependent relationship to another - to relate to it, for example, as its transitional moment, or as a consequence, or as a species to a genus. Thus, individual legal relations, which can be the subject of a separate legal discussion, merge into even larger systematic units - into legal institutions that present us, figuratively speaking, with a strong skeleton of law, to which its entire essence is attached in legal provisions. “The task of science is to explore this articulation of law, to find a real place for both the smallest and the largest” 31 . – Only in this way is it possible to achieve an accurate understanding of very many articles, or individual legal provisions, which in their isolation are often unclear, mutual, and contradictory. But this is not enough. Law, striving to embrace the most diverse aspects of social life, to define by its norms every newly emerging phenomenon in it - in this, so to speak, pursuit of life, which constantly delivers new and new combinations - new and new relationships - necessarily causes new and new changes in legislation - the external form of its expression; it necessarily makes the latter as changing as life itself is full of changes in its forms. But this change in law takes place in parts, and while its individual parts, under the influence of the demands of life, proceed sequentially from change to change, others remain at rest, in that initial immobility where they stopped, so to speak, in a long-past moment. It is clear from this how incomprehensible the old law will be if, due to some circumstances, it again comes into contact with new legislation created under the influence of new relations of life. Hence, a very significant part of the legal provisions for their understanding requires historical illumination, the reproduction of those legal relations in the existence of which it was created and under which it was completely natural and understandable. Thus, it becomes clear that even if there is a satisfactory codification of law, many of its individual articles require interpretation, or interpretation - literal, logical, dogmatic and historical. This commentary on laws or codes of law is the first, although the lowest, stage of scientific reproduction or scientific representation of a positive law given at a certain moment. Indeed, for a long time jurisprudence has directed its efforts towards such a comprehensive commentary on legal codes. Both the Roman law of Justinian and the canonical law have come down to us with varied and extensive commentaries. While paying tribute to the enormity of this kind of work, it cannot be said, however, that their results regarding the knowledge of law correspond in their breadth and depth to the amazing efforts that went into acquiring them. Their main drawback is the absence of an independent system: glossators followed in the interpretation of laws the arrangement given in the code, i.e. chronological or subject, or they arranged their material and comments on it according to an extremely artificial system introduced by Roman jurists, according to which all legal material was arranged into three categories: personae, res, actiones - persons, things and actions. In both cases, the result was neither an effective representation of the entire body of law, nor an effective representation of its individual institutions. The new jurisprudence took a further step in developing the sources of law. It sets as its task the study and reproduction of integral institutions of law on the basis of its sources, fills the gaps formed by them with the help of other sources, and strives to bring individual institutions into an organic connection, so that the system of law thus formed represents a whole coherent organism of its institutions. As was stated earlier, individual legal provisions only in their totality embrace a certain relation of real life and in this property, being brought into connection with each other, form a legal institution corresponding to this vital relation. The task of scientific analysis is to notice and highlight the main elements in a group of legal provisions, turn them into concepts with a definition of their essential and secondary features; “legal provisions discard their form of commands and prohibitions and become elements and qualities of legal institutions. This is how the concepts of institutions, the essence of legal actions, the properties of persons, things, rights, and units of all kinds are developed from them. This transformation of legal provisions into legal concepts sharply distinguishes the scientific presentation of the law from its presentation in the code. The legislator can limit himself to expressing his requirements in their original immediate practical form, but science has the task of not only putting them in order and explaining them, but also distributing them among the logical moments of the system. The legislator gives us, so to speak, composite bodies, which interest him only from the point of view of their immediate suitability for use; science, on the contrary, undertakes their analysis and decomposes them into simple bodies. Moreover, it turns out that many apparently different legal provisions are composed of the same elements, therefore, they can be mutually interchangeable, or that one differs from the other only in one moment, so that instead it is enough to point out only at this point that some legal provisions consist of completely different simple ideological elements and, therefore, on the contrary, can be obtained by themselves through the combination of these elements. Thus, only the analysis of legal provisions leads to knowledge of the true nature of law and its result is that instead of an infinite number of varied legal provisions, science receives a visible number of simple ones, from which it can recreate individual legal provisions upon demand. But the benefits are not limited to this simplification; the developed concepts are not simple decompositions of given legal provisions, from which only these latter can always be restored: an even greater benefit lies in the opportunity acquired through this for the increment of law from itself, its growth from within. Through combinations of various elements, science can form new concepts and new legal provisions: concepts are productive; they copulate and produce new ones. Legal provisions do not have this fertilizing power; they, as they are, remain themselves until they are brought to their simple constituent elements and through this enter into kinship relationships with others, both in an ascending and descending line, that is, until they discover their origin from other concepts and, for their part, themselves receive the opportunity to produce new ones. Such is the influence exerted by the analysis and systematization of legal provisions on the law itself; it can be described in one word as the elevation of legal provisions to the level of logical moments of the system. But for life this operation is of the greatest importance; it offers us, so to speak, simple reagents for infinitely complex particular cases of life. Anyone who would like to resolve the latter only with the help of legal provisions would constantly be in difficulty, because the combinational art of life is so inexhaustible that the richest casuistry of the code will seem pathetic in comparison with its ever-new cases. On the contrary, with the help of those few reagents we resolve every case. It would be even closer to call this systematic or logical structure of law its alphabet. The relation of a casuistically composed code to law reduced to its logical form is similar to the relation of the written Chinese language to ours. The Chinese have their own special sign for each concept; human life is barely enough to study them, and new concepts require them, first of all, to establish their own special signs. We, on the contrary, have a small alphabet with which we can decompose and put together every word, easy to learn and never putting us in difficulty. In the same way, the casuistic code contains many signs for certain individual cases; on the contrary, law, reduced to its logical moments, presents us with the alphabet of law, through which we can disassemble and depict all, even the unprecedented word formations of life” 32. This is how modern jurisprudence depicts the task of the science of law. In general, this task is divided into two main parts: historical, thorough research and putting in order the sources of law: for they are the basis of the entire science of law, and its systematic or logical construction. In relation to the canon law of the Russian Church, both parts of the general task of science are equally important, for, as for its sources, with their extreme diversity and plurality, it is positively impossible to navigate without the assistance of science. The reason for this diversity and plurality lies in the special historical relations of our Orthodox Church. Being from the beginning essentially an Orthodox-Eastern Church, the Russian Church for a long time was under the strong influence of the local Constantinople or Byzantine Church and in its structure, its discipline and governance it also used the law developed at the councils of this local church. – At the same time, the Russian Church had to receive a definition of its state position from the princes and tsars of ancient Rus'; then, freed from the influence of the Church of Constantinople, becoming self-governing, autocephalous, the Russian Church, due to the special position of its state Church, in the new period of its history formed a special, very extensive right in the so-called synodal legislation. Thus, the sources of its law, in all their volume and completeness, must allow the following division: 1, the main canonical sources, the content of the law of the ancient Eastern Church, i.e. its structure, the basic principles of the discipline; 2, historical canonical sources, the content of the law of the local Church of Constantinople, which had a strong influence on the management of the Old Russian Church; 3, historical sources of church and state law of ancient Rus'; 4, synodal state legislation of modern times, representing the current law of the Russian State Church. All the more important and difficult is the second part of the general task of the science of church law - its scientific systematization: for its task is to build a theory of law based on an accurate study of all these sources. Only under this condition is it possible to accurately and faithfully reproduce the law and fulfill the requirement of modern jurisprudence that each law should have its own system, that the latter should be extracted from itself, and not brought into it from the outside. For otherwise, it is the logic of a model alien to the object itself, into which it is forcibly squeezed, a network into which every other right could be squeezed in the same way - an element that makes it more difficult than easier to understand the structure of an individual object. The system is unambiguous with the internal structure of the subject and therefore is always completely individual: one system is characteristic of one law, another another” 33. Articuli Smalcaldici, Pars. II, Art.IV, App.P.I. Art III. Addition to the Ipatiev Chronicle p.267. Pol.Collected.Rus.Let.vol.2.SPB. 1843 Confession of Metropolitan Hilarion in Add. to Creation St. Ot. g. 2 books. 2. Definition Vladimir. Cathedral Rus. Histor. Bible vol. VI pp. 84–86. Russian East. Bible vol. VI, pp. 529–536. Addendum to the Act. Histor. T.2, No. 76 Empress Catherine II, in the Order on drawing up a new code, told the commission that “the property of the sacred laws is to be indispensable to them,” and therefore excluded the dogmas and basic rules of the Orthodox Church from the range of subjects that required transformation in legislation. Collection zak. Vol. XVIII, 1767. No. 12950, and 1768 No. 13095. Orthodox Interview 1860, part 1, page 28 “on the basic principles of Russian Church law.” See the Ceremony of the Crowning of our Sovereigns. See Observance in the Week of Orthodoxy. See Prayer singing on the day of the coronation of the sovereign emperor and on the day of his accession to the throne. See the worthy prayer in the liturgy of St. Chrysostom and St. Vasily Vel. In former times, the wishes of the Church were usually directly expressed to sovereigns at their crowning. The Metropolitan, on behalf of the entire Church, said to the Tsar: “Have the fear of God in your heart and keep the Christian faith of the Greek law pure and unshakable. To the holy cathedral church and to all the holy churches have faith and fear of God and give honor, since in it the second King was born from the holy font with a spiritual holy birth. And again I say to you, O God-crowned Tsar: have full wisdom in Orthodox dogmas, highly honor your mother Church, even for the Holy Dus you have been lifted up, and you yourself will be honored by her” (See the rite of the wedding of Tsar John Vasilyevich in the Supplement to Act. Ist. I, No. 39. Spiritual.Regulations.added.item.II and Last.in the week of Orthodoxy. These are the church statutes. book Vladimir, Yaroslav; statutory charters of other princes; articles on church affairs in the law books of John III and IV; proposals of John IV to the council of 1551; Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to the cathedral of 1667, etc.; letters granted in favor of church places and persons, etc. Arch. Expeditions Vol.I No. 225, 227, 241, 308, 321, 360. Act. Histor. vol.I No. 285, 161, 204. Act. Arch. Axl, Vol.I. No. 9, 80, 201, 241, etc. Ak. East. Vol.I No. 39, 41, etc. Collection Law, vol. I No. 412 Codes ch. I. Act. East. vol. I No. 39, 61. Additional. to them vol. II No. 76. Stoglav. p. 46. Ed. Orthodox Interview In this regard, the Spirit gives a remarkable testimony. The regulations, when one of the advantages of the Synod over the patriarchate is the right to try the chairman himself, while to try the patriarch requires the convening of a council and, moreover, with the participation of other patriarchs. So clearly at that time it was recognized who had the supreme right of judgment over the highest clergy. Additional to Act. East. No. 76, p. 191. Regulations Enter. and part I clause 3, 7. St. Zak. Vol. XV def. and pres. prest, ch. 3 tbsp. 46. St. Zak. vol. XIV app. to Art. 147 lips on censorship art. 3. Eagering. Spirit of Rome. rights at different stages of its development, pp. 30–5. Eagering. Quote. book pp. 30–35. You might be interested in: