On the peculiarities of the bishop's service of the Liturgy from the point of view of the ancient church rite

With a different feeling, of course, each of us left the academic church today, but I think I will not be mistaken if I say that the bishop’s service solemnly performed there left on everyone, as it always and everywhere in Rus' leaves, a very special, unusual impression. True, the spiritual gaze of those praying presents the same high spectacle of earthly life and the Supper of Christ as in the humble service of one priest and deacon, but our vision and hearing receive such complete satisfaction from it that if we do not pay enough focused attention to the prayers, it seems as if we are present at some special service. Everything in it, from the plowing boy with an unusual rug in his hand to the “strongest” voice of the protodeacon, noticeably affects everyone. The elegant decoration and abundant lighting of the church, often majestic in its appearance and size, sometimes very ancient and therefore full of historical memories dear to everyone, the united all-class multitude of those present in a festive mood and with conciliar prayer, a host of high-ranking clergy dressed in expensive clothes according to custom, with a bishop - often a very old man at the head, and finally, the service itself, which is always splendid, unhurried and “sweetly sung” with us, is in a state, to me it seems to influence not very impressionable, even cold souls. But perhaps most of all, the liturgical features with the ceremonial accessories of the bishop's priesthood, equally attentively observed by everyone, mean the most. Highly placing the hierarch above the concelebrants and the entire church congregation in general, some and especially ordinary people, whose lot we so rarely have the opportunity to pray during this service, they amaze with their novelty, external splendor, harmonious, but sometimes completely incomprehensible to them sounds; others are captivated by their solemn, often deeply animated performance; for still others, they are an object of reverent contemplation and, perhaps, pious reflection, and for a person interested in the past of Christian worship, these ritual details still occupy a special side, inconspicuous for others, but very important for him. When he sees them, his thoughts are involuntarily transported to times long past and, as it were, he imagines himself as a witness to other incomparably simpler and almost more edifying church and liturgical orders. In the distinctive features and the whole structure of the modern bishop's service, under the luxurious, centuries-old ritual frame, he sees not a special type of liturgy and not even a special presentation of it in the form of a characteristic edition, but recognizes an ancient general liturgical rite, in some parts remarkably preserved from the deepest, early Christian era, in others somewhat supplemented, complicated, or even completely disappeared from everyday church practice and therefore even more scientifically valuable in its historical content. To acquaint the venerable assembly with this half-forgotten and far from clear archaeological side of the ritual features of the bishop's service, freeing them for a time from some appendages of a ceremonial nature is my real task. The bishop's service is usually preceded by a meeting of the hierarch, only in a few cities, depending on the time of year, combined with his escort from his cells to the cathedral church. The bishop's house, now sometimes separated from the latter by quite a significant space, even the distance of an entire city, in ancient times in Rus', just as in other Slavic lands and Greece itself, was often directly connected to it, even more often it was located near it, in the church yard, like the abbot's cell or the dwelling of the parish priest. In this case, it was quite natural for the bishop to open his service with a ceremonial procession towards her. However, the nature and order of this procession, as well as the meeting that followed it, determined by the size of the holiday, local conditions and the personal will of the primate, were far from the same even in the same church during different periods of its history. The exits and meetings of our present rulers are solemn, but with even greater solemnity they took place in Rus' in the 16th–17th centuries, when, together with elegant choristers and numerous spiritual authorities, deliberately, at the special ringing, “to the cathedral” people from all over the city gathered, accompanied by the bishop, who leisurely walked from his cross to the church and at the same time read special prayers and psalms, the number and content of which apparently corresponded to the distance and different stages of the journey, were attended by the bishop's children, boyars, clerks and clerks, and sometimes the sovereign's boyars, governors and clerks in their expensive multi-colored clothes; when the bishop, preceded by a lamp and two large “oslop” candles, met in the porch by the archpriest with cathedrals and deacons with censers, after the usual entrance to the church and kissing with the well-known troparions of all local and holiday icons, miracle-working relics and the royal doors, with the entire host of clergy, entered the altar itself, and here it was, and not at the Western doors, as is done now, taking the cross from St. throne, blessed himself and everyone else, and then, going up to the altar and kissing the paten and chalice, he performed mutual forgiveness with those who were supposed to serve with him. It is easier for the Orthodox East to welcome and always welcome its despotis to the service, just as it does not know our late mass, celebrating the liturgy at sunrise, following the great doxology, and only as exceptions or in the case of litanies, a little after Matins. It was not always in Byzantium and the South Slavic lands that the bishop prayed with others in the church at the beginning of the latter; he read Matins with the prescribed rule more often at home in his cell. Notified by the ringing of a bell or by one of the church or his own bishops about the beginning of the canon, he came, as it happened, to the end of it in the church vestibule, where he was met by the serving priest with the deacon and clergy. Dressed here in a mantle and changing his traveling staff to a pastoral staff, the bishop, while singing the ninth or other hymn of the canon, entered the middle of the church, often in ancient times, as often now in the east, marked on the floor for artistic and liturgical purposes with one or another geometric figure, and sometimes in cathedral churches or the richest ones - with a mosaic image of an eagle, by way of a royal grant or in some way successive inheritance, passed, among other insignias, from the emperors to the eastern hierarchs. Having overshadowed himself with his hand and blessed the people and the clergy, who usually greeted their bishop in Greek or Slavic with a short wish for him for many years (είς πολλά έτη δέσποτα, the bishop - among the Bulgarians and Serbs), the bishop took his hierarchical place or a throne, usually located in the right wing of the church, near the dome pillar or one of the columns that supported the choir, or even near the church wall itself. On days of great holidays and remarkable memories, the procession of the eastern hierarch to the service began in the same way as with us, from his cell, where, in the middle of Matins, honorary citizens and senior clergy came more or less ceremoniously to see off their ruler, who, upon leaving the house from the stairs or its elevated locker, taught a blessing to the crowd of people who met him in the courtyard, who entered with him into the church, which by that time was filled with fragrant incense, so common in the everyday life of the East. Not always and not all bishops were presented with a lit lamp, which in the first centuries of the church, we think, illuminated the path for bishops going to serve in the middle of the night and the darkness of the dungeons, and then became exclusively a symbol of their spiritual guidance to others. But that which was not always an integral part of the entrance of the eastern rulers or was caused by urgent need, which was determined by the succession of matins, the well-known decoration of the church and its platform, the simplicity of morals and the natural riches of the east, having received a mysterious meaning over time, became an indispensable part of our festive bishops' meetings, their so-called processions “with glory.” The lamp and the dikiro-trikiria, the censer and the eagle now constitute, not for everyone, the familiar setting of the entrance, which was quite natural in ancient times, which, in connection with the presentation of the cross on a platter to the western gates of the church, the reading by the protodeacon, and not by the bishop himself, of the usual priestly entrance prayers, the foreign-language perennial and archpastoral overshadowing of the people from the very beginning noticeably distinguishes the bishop's service from Cathedral Presbytery. The bishop then does not enter the altar at the same time as the other servants, but standing in the middle of the church, “is publicly decorated with all the sacred vestments according to his rank, on the degrees, with incense and the invitation of poetry, a carpet is laid under his feet and a pulpit with its head stands on it.” In the old days, he entered, as we said, with the rest of the procession into the altar, where he then vested himself in a high place or near the throne together with the authorities, if he needed to hurry to the procession of the cross, which then often preceded the liturgy, or he returned, in the absence of the latter, to the middle of the church for more solemn vestments here, which took place on major holidays not only in Rus', but also far beyond its borders. The vestments of the clergy at the altar, in particular of the hierarchs in the east and in the Slavic lands, usually during praise stichera, with the placement of even the vestments on St. a throne instead of a table has now become everywhere, a common occurrence, just as everyone, and especially the altar servers themselves, are accustomed to unhindered entry into it and walking in it without vestments. The existing requirement, however, to pass through the holy doors in vestments and the strict prohibition for laymen, with the exception of the king, to enter the altar, speak of other ancient church orders that came from the time when the altar, which was not inaccessible in the first three centuries even for female communicants, was then provided to one clergyman, and he could enter it only at the appointed time and only after having put on vestments. The modern official, who instructs the bishop to vest himself outside the altar and enter it already vested, has on his side some advantage over the present-day priestly missal. In a more ancient era of the church, as probably in the first times of Christianity in Rus', servants usually dressed not in the altar at the edge of the throne, but outside it; in the altar or deaconium, which did not first have a direct internal connection with the altar, through arches, in one or another part of the church or even a special extension to it - this is an indifferent question in this case. In the 9th–13th centuries. the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople, for example, vested with all their clergy for the liturgy on Holy Saturday, before Easter Matins and on other great holidays in special halls of their chambers, overlooking the choirs of the Churches of the Resurrection and St. Sophia, from which, upon their appearance, they usually sent a blessing to the singers and people who had been with them for many years from below, listened to the service in full attire and, in a more or less solemn procession, descended to it through the church vestibule. But in the XIV-XV centuries, the last of them, at the end of the canon, already performed the usual beginning, taught a blessing to the concelebrants and vested himself with the elder deacons who dressed him on the right side of the church, in the recess or behind his pulpit, from where he then went, preceded by the deacons, to the western, at that time called “red” or “royal” gates, to the right of which a seat was placed for him near the wall, on which he listened to the beginning of the liturgy and awaited the coming of the king. It is precisely in this very place in their cathedral that the rulers of Thessaloniki continue to vest themselves among the vast pulpit on major holidays to this day, choosing, as it were, a middle ground between the ancient less noticeable and the current “publicly visible” bishop’s vestments. Having taken away some ceremoniality from the latter, or even better, moved it to the side of the church or to a special section of it, replacing the current, often very expensive and multi-colored clothes with the simplest “white or scarlet wave” robes, one will be able to imagine the ancient setting of the episcopal vestments. Having finished it, the bishop, when the deacon proclaimed the words: Thus let your light shine before men..., with trikyriy and dikyry, it overshadows the people, and the faces sing at the same time: Κύριε φύλαττε εἰς πολλὰ ἔτη . The basis of this solemn and often repeated rite during the bishop's liturgy is the essentially simple custom granted to each priest to bless and send greetings to the people during the service. And the bishop in ancient times, whether he appeared for the first time before a church meeting, whether he entered the altar and onto his throne on high, whether he taught the people after the Gospel, or received gifts at the great entrance with prayer for those bringing them, whether he taught the Eucharist or distributed the antidoron instead, whether he dismissed the believers from the service or himself left after it, each time he addressed those present in the church with words of peace, love or blessing, and they For many years they responded to the greetings of their ruler with a bow or a prayerful wish. As monuments and the practice that still exists in some places in the east show, the bishop for a long time did not bless the people with candles, but simply blessed them with his hand, less often with two, as all clergy now do and he himself does in some similar cases. Whether it is the need to make the bishop's blessing visible to everyone in the church with the help of burning candles, whether it is the desire to more clearly, more clearly present through the dikiriy and trikiriy the basic truths of Christianity, previously expressed by the folding of the fingers of a blessing hand, whether the prayer of the hierarch with a candle in the last one before the start of the service, or what else brought to life the ritual of overshadowing, we definitely do not know; but only the blessing of one, three or two - at first it makes no difference - lighted candles gradually entered into liturgical practice and, thanks to the Savior Himself, this symbolism of light, which was so consistent with the nature of the bishop's service and the festive time of its performance, found wide application in it. But having become a prominent ritual accessory of the hierarchal clergy, the overshadowing of dikiriy and trikyriy did not become a service advantage for the bishops alone. In the old days, the abbots of many monasteries, and not just some, as at present, served with one or two autumn candles. And even now the priest serves at Easter with a tricurium and a cross in one hand and a censer in the other - exactly as every Sunday matins began in cathedral churches, according to the testimony of Simeon of Thessalonica. Even the deacons before and the Byzantine emperors in their time, as anointed and semi-ordained persons, overshadowed the people with dikiriy or trikyriy - the former, when at the presanctified liturgy, instead of the priests, addressed him with the words: The Light of Christ enlightens everyone, the latter - when from the pulpit and in general publicly offered this or that instruction to their subjects. Having overshadowed the people with dikiriy and trikyriy, the bishop, sitting or standing, listens to the hours celebrated by his priest on the side, and the beginning of the liturgy together with the concelebrants, remaining in the middle of the church all the time until the small entrance. From the point of view of the ancient rite, this is not a feature, but a common order. Not to mention the hours, which, together with Midnight and Compline, were at first a matter of personal piety, and were celebrated by everyone at home, in the church vestibule, or in any other part of the church, but not in the altar; even such important services as festive vespers and matins began outside the latter, before closed church doors, just as our Easter matins still begin in the porch. The memory of the initial place of performance of these services in ancient times was also preserved in later regulations, formed under the new, changed conditions of the church system, for example, in their remark that the priest begins Vespers from his place on the choir, and not in the altar, or when he approaches the door to say certain prayers and litanies, he puts on the stole hanging right there and then opens them with a rope from outside the church. The Liturgy, homogeneous in its composition and purpose with other services in its first half, was no exception to them in this regard. The entry of the priest with the deacon into the altar before the beginning of it is not an original custom; in the ancient church, the first part of it, designed, like Vespers and Matins, for the presence behind it, along with the faithful, of partial members of the Christian community, before the small entrance, or better to say, until the time of the removal of the latter from the church, was performed not near the altar, but outside the altar, in the middle of the church, aloud to all those present, sitting listening to the Old Testament scriptures, the singing of the psalms of David and the reading of the Apostle, as everyone now sits on the last clergy and only the bishop during the antiphons. The priest's entrance into the altar was then connected with the opening of the altar curtain and the holy doors, as a result of which the entire interior of the sanctuary became accessible to the gaze of the people. But during the period of full development of the catechumenate and the doctrine of the non-disclosure of the secrets of faith and cult before the uninitiated (disciplinae arcanae), various classes of catechumens were deprived of the right to see the throne - the Holy of Holies of the Christian church. Even after the institution of the catechumens had completely weakened and the disciplina arcana had completely changed, in later Byzantium, for example, on major holidays, when the liturgy was preceded by a lithium, the entire first part of it, as not containing anything specially eucharistic, merged, so to speak, with the last part it was sometimes performed not only outside the altar, but also outside the church. The Small Entrance, which in such cases began the liturgy, was not only the first entrance of the clergy into the altar, but also the first appearance before the church meeting of the Patriarch of Constantinople, who did not always participate in the procession, but usually entered the church and altar at the same time. Traces of this old order can be noticed even in the present situation of the small entrance, which was in ancient times, it should be noted, nothing more than the removal of the Gospel to the middle of the church, when the time came to preach it, but not from the altar, as is done now, but from a special side compartment that did not then form one whole with the altar. All of it, with the content of prayers and verses that precede and accompany the rite in question, is addressed to the very act of entry, and not to the gospel presented in it, as one would expect in view of what has been said. Before entering the altar, the priest prays to God to create holy angels at his entrance. The deacon says: Bless, lord, the holy entrance and the lord answers: Blessed is the entrance of your saints... But what kind of motivation did the compiler of this prayer and verses have to concentrate the entire essence of their content on the entrance, if this entrance were not the first into the altar and if it were not associated with a special meaning for the celebrant approaching the holy. the throne? The Prayer of the Trisagion, immediately following the entrance to the altar, represents the priest already standing face to face with the latter and thanking God for allowing him to stand at this hour before the glory of His holy altar, before which, obviously, he appears for the first time. After this, the canonical prohibition “for presbyters to enter and sit in the altar before the bishop enters” during the rite becomes clear. Comparing with these data the peculiarity of the bishop's official, who appoints the bishop to remain among the church until the small entrance and only with him to enter the altar, it will be impossible not to see in it a happily surviving remnant of the early Christian liturgy, regardless of whether it was performed by a priest or a bishop. Having retained the ancient and simple form of entrance in the movement of the bishop, the bishop's service presents next to it another, also ancient, but somewhat richer than before, furnished at the exit of the clergy with the Gospel. With great ceremoniality, however, and with no less number of sacred utensils than we have now, the small entrance into Byzantium took place on great holidays, especially in those cases when the emperor himself opened it with his banners, squires and retinue in a short scarlet phelonion and with a lit candle in his hand; but this was not always the order of entry there, much less the order of entry everywhere. Usually in ancient times in the east, a priest - either a senior or a junior, who performed the proskomedia and began the liturgy, alone with the deacon, in the presentation of two lamps and a censer, passed with the gospel and the cross to the western gates of the church, in front of which the bishop or patriarch was already waiting for the latter with the clergy, who at the same time met almost here the king, who kissed and together with him accompanied the gospel and the cross to the throne. Greeted by the clergy in the same way as the king by his synclitum, during the denational singing of Come, we will worship either the festive stichera by the singers, the people, or the servants themselves, as was done in ancient times at large cathedral services in Byzantium and here in Rus', with the autumn candle, or even more often without it, venerating the saint for the first time. doors or icons on their pillars, the bishop entered the altar,, according to custom, burned it incense and, after bowing and praying three times before the throne with a dikiri in his hand, met the emperor. While this one was praying and bringing his gift to the altar, the domestic or deacon from the pulpit exclaimed: Lord, save the king or kings, and then on behalf of the people, who also asked God through the mouth of someone from among them to hear him too, he gave many years to the sovereign, serving the bishop and to everyone whom the latter ordered, probably then, as now, at the small entrance, imprinting each of the good wishes (present praise) by the overshadowing of your hands. After the departure of the king and the prayer of the Trisagion, the bishop took the trikiria and, while the latter was chanted by singers or concelebrants, made the cross three times in front of the saint. the throne, even more often above the saint reclining on it. Gospel, each time praying to himself: Lord, Lord, look down from heaven and see, and visit your grapes..., sometimes he would cast a candle to the west with an unspoken repetition of the same words and go to a high place, from which he always blessed the people with his hand or trikirium. The prayer, which was read quietly at first in the altar, has long moved to the middle of the church and here, in connection with the overshadowing of the upcoming dikiriy and the cross, which, perhaps, replaced the once existing “two lights and two fingers sign of the saint of people” 2, constituted one of the most remarkable in content and grateful for the execution and wide application of church rites. But it is difficult to say with certainty what caused this transition: whether it was the reading of the Gospel on the pulpit, to the preaching of which the prayer was directly related; whether by the construction, instead of the low ancient Christian or through Byzantine altar barrier, of a high continuous iconostasis, which hid the altar with what was happening in it from the eyes of those present, or most likely by the general historical movement of the liturgical rite, due to the power of which the omophorion, for example, was placed in ancient times during the reading of the Gospel, like air, on the frame of the chief deacon, now prostrate in the arms of another, the analogy is ceremoniously carried around before the evangelist; or the initial exclamations of the Eucharistic canon: Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ..., Woe are our hearts and We give thanks to the Lord, spoken in ancient times, as still in the east, by the bishop from his place from the throne, are pronounced in our country from the solea or pulpit, and are accompanied not by a simple blessing of the people with the hand, but by the threefold overshadowing of them with dikiri and trikiri. The bishop washes his hands at the great entrance before the royal doors. In the old days in Rus', if the priest’s consecration did not take place at the great entrance, he washed them in the altar along with all the concelebrants, as hierarchs in the east and in the Slavic lands still do, and somehow every priest and deacon do in our country near the altar before the proskomedia. For a very long time in the east, all believers from a special pool or just a bowl of water washed their hands and face at the entrance to the church, so that with clean hands, and with the same heart, they are supposed to offer a sacrifice to God, perform prayer and receive the Sacrament. For the clergyman, this symbolic meaning of ablution was always combined with a liturgical meaning; Having washed their hands, the deacon in the first centuries of the church, the priest together with him subsequently began, as they now begin, to prepare the gifts necessary for the sacrament, and to remove particles from the prosphora, and the bishop previously completed and now finishes the proskomisa they began before the liturgy, commemorating at the altar, secretly from the people, before the release of the great entrance from the altar, living and dead, whom he himself, the clergy or any of the laity and monks would like to remember. In the old days, the bishop sometimes did this at the small entrance, upon his first entry into the altar, and then he no longer went to the altar to present the vessels with gifts to those serving before the great entrance, but from his place in front of the throne, he blessed them with his hand or cross. We now solemnly perform the transfer of St. gifts from the altar to the throne, but it was distinguished by even greater solemnity in ancient times, especially in the Byzantine world, when the procession with them from the proposal was directed along the entire northern wall, reached the western gates of the church, sometimes stopped in the middle of it and only then entered the solea; when at the head of it, ahead of the numerous serving clergy, there were often one or another person and almost always with lit candles, for example: those initiated into hierarchical degrees and various titles, newly baptized adults and infants in the arms of their mothers immediately after baptism, Byzantine emperors on the days of their coronations and great holidays, children with multi-colored fronds on Palm Sunday in the east, even Kyiv students of the 17th century on church holidays of his monastery; when St. gifts with sceptres and swords, ripids and tabernacles, precious dishes and cups, arks with the relics of saints and various kinds of shrouds with their images, amid deep silence, interrupted only by the statutory exclamations of the servants and the prayerful exclamations of the sick lying on the floor, slowly rushed to the altar, at the doors of which they were greeted with secret or public prayer hierarch. But it is not this highly solemn atmosphere of the entrance in itself that is important for us in this case, but the presence in it of such details as the participation of the laity, the wearing “for the sake of decoration” of paten and bowls, which was apparently once caused by an urgent need, and finally the meeting of the gifts by the bishop before the throne - which involuntarily refer the researcher to the first centuries of Christianity and here force us to look for the fundamental principles of the rite, which occupied a prominent place between the initial acts liturgy of the faithful. The ancient Christians did not come to the liturgy empty-handed, but with everything necessary to perform it. Their offerings, which usually consisted of bread and wine, incense and wax, before the substances needed for the sacrament were separated from them, were placed on a special table or in a special compartment, and the names of the bringers, as well as those for whom the gifts were brought, were entered by the deacons in the church memorials. Images of angels writing down the names of those entering at the doors of our churches in scrolls seem to me to be silent witnesses to this ancient church custom of offerings, which have now largely deviated from their original meaning and purpose. After analysis and proper preparation, these gifts, covered or open, if necessary protected by ripids from midges, were chosen by the faithful or deacons, then together with the priests, before the start of the Eucharist in the first centuries, upon the exit of the catechumens in subsequent centuries, at first silently, later with singing, they were carried to the altar, where the primate - a priest or bishop - took them and placing them on the throne, sometimes commemorated those who brought them and first of all, out loud, the bishops and the kings who were the first to commemorate. Taking St. gifts before the royal doors with well-known exclamations, our rulers thus remain faithful to this ancient Christian order, as it was undoubtedly followed by the archimandrites and abbots of very many ancient Russian monasteries, who also did not come out with gifts at the great entrance. At the end of the bishop's service, the exclamation of the protodeacon is especially prominent, in which the bishop is remembered bringing St. gifts of the Lord to our God for the salvation of the sovereign and the reigning house, the whole chamber and their army. But it is nothing more than an extract from the prayer for the dead and living members of the church, read secretly by the bishop, like every priest, after the consecration of gifts, and in some ancient Greek and Slavic service books, it speaks in exactly the same terms about the reverent priest or hieromonk who performed the liturgy. Extending decisively to the whole world the saving action of the sacrifice of Christ, before which the saints and unsaints were, as it were, equalized, the ancient church, every time it performed it, prayed for everyone without exception, starting with the Old Testament forefathers and ending with those who brought gifts to the altar, and this universal prayer of it, leaving an integral part of all ancient liturgies, with the memorials that followed it with the names of the dead and living was pronounced then aloud, as the protodeacon pronounces at the bishop’s service and its final words are still spoken loudly: and everyone and everything. The bishop himself administers communion to the priests, leaving it to the archimandrite, or generally the first servant after himself, to administer the body of Christ and His venerable blood to the deacons. In ancient times, during the conciliar service of several priests, the same phenomenon took place, that is, the right to administer communion to the younger ones was always assigned to the eldest priest, who took precedence in the service, just as the lesser priest was charged with the duty of teaching the cup of blood to the deacons. Considering in general from the point of view of the ancient church rite the features of the bishop's service, studying them in the light of general liturgical data, one involuntarily comes to the conclusion that the order of its performance does not constitute any special type of liturgy, that the bishop's service is the same priestly liturgy, only somewhat complicated and supplemented. Some of its ritual details owed their origin to medieval Byzantium and came out of the conditions of that ostentatious ceremony that surrounded the most solemn exits to the service and the participation of Byzantine kings in it. This circumstance gave it a special imprint and gave a ceremonial character to those parts of it that, at their core, have nothing of the kind and date back to the early Christian era. Most of the features of the bishop's service essentially boil down to the simple rites of the ancient liturgy, which were initially identical between the bishop and the presbyter. Its outer side, which reached its fullest expression in the hierarchal service, developed gradually, as initially simple liturgical actions began to be given sublime spiritual significance, when, with the decline of the immediate sense of faith, the need arose to surround the Eucharistic canon with a broad ritual setting and to support it with the energy and liveliness of religious feeling. The believers of the first centuries, who stood closer than us in relation to the sacraments to their performers, who participated in the liturgy each time with their offerings and communion, for whom the Eucharist constituted a holiday, in the full sense of the word Easter of the New Testament, easily made do with home remedies during its celebration, prayed in poor calibs and dark caves without abundant light, without gold, without music - with that warmest and purest Christian prayer, which they continue to this day Abyssinians pray, for example, in their pitifully worthy churches, amidst a wretched liturgical setting, under the scream of native singing tearing apart the ears of a European. But there is a different stripe of spiritual geography and we are far from the inimitable examples of early Christian prayer. For people with a noticeable inclination to avoid the boring parts of the liturgy in the form of hours, the elevation of the spirit of which is significantly commensurate with the grandeur of the church and the beauty of its interior decoration, for whom the whole holiday often comes down in the soul to freedom from compulsory work and a certain statutory permission, for such people a solemn service with elegant surroundings and harmonious singing is as necessary as warm air and light, fertilizer and various kinds of vaccinations are necessary for gentle greenhouses plants. I feel that I have tired the attention of the venerable assembly, and perhaps I have cooled in you the warm feeling brought from the academic church... The word of scientific evaluation will always rank below those living, immediate impressions that the liturgical service gives by itself and with which we have become akin, thanks to the influence of your upbringing, family traditions and religious ideas. And modern liturgical science seeks only to elevate our reverent, but sometimes unconscious respect for church rite to the level of its historical understanding and conscious attitude towards it. Speech delivered at the ceremony of the Moscow Theological Academy, October 1, 1899. Description Slavic. handwritten Moscow Synod. bib. prot. A.V. Gorsky and K.I. Nevostruev, dept. III, part 1, pp. 96–97, no. 366 pp. 39 and 51 rev. You might be interested in: