Thus, without any ecclesiastical unction, even if only ceremonial and ceremonial, the will of the secular absolute monarch, under the habitual appearance of the will of the Orthodox tsar in an Orthodox state, was given a prescription to the church. Not by some conciliar, ecclesiastical act, even if only ostentatious, but in the ordinary, purely state order, by a legislative manifesto of the emperor signed by the Senate. The Church, which is within the framework of the Russian state, was prescribed to abolish the old traditional canonical system of government, and a new collegial administration was introduced, unusual for the Church, but already usual and generally accepted in the state. Instead of the hoped-for patriarch, at the head of the church is placed an ordinary state institution among others, even with an ugly Latin name: "Collegium Spiritual." Officials, executors of the supreme monarch's will, appointed members of the Collegium to it, just like to other collegiums. The members of the Ecclesiastical Collegium are enjoined to take an oath of allegiance in the Senate, according to the text that has already been prepared, just as it was done when all the other collegiums were established. Service is service. No thought of any bifurcation of powers under a single absolute monarch is allowed. On the next day, January 26, in the usual legislative order, the Senate submitted for the highest approval and approved the standard staff of the new collegium: a) President from metropolitans – 1, b) Vice-presidents from archbishops – 2, c) Counselors from archimandrites – 3, d) Assessors from protopopes – 4, e) Yes from Greek black priests – 1. The personnel was also proposed for approval: "In the Spiritual Collegium, the bishops are: President Stephen, Metropolitan of Ryazan; Vice-Presidents: Archbishops: Theodosius of Novgorod, Theophan of Pskov; The advisers were archimandrites: Peter Simonovsky, Leonid Petrovsky, Hierotheos Donskoy, Gabriel of the Ipatsky Monastery. The assessors are archpriests: John of Troitsky, Peter Sampsonievsky, and the Greek black priest, and about the fourth, whom the Ecclesiastical Collegium pleases." Peter put down a resolution: "Summoning these to the Senate, to declare. Also, the decree should be handed over to them and the oath." From January 25 to February 14, all the appointed 11 members of the Collegium gradually appeared in the Senate, received a decree and took the oath, as was customary for all collegiums serving the Tsar and being under one Senate "cap" covering them.

After the signing of the Spiritual Regulations by the entire hierarchy, which was successful for Peter, the tsar-reformer must have felt satisfied and ready to give up some of the Protestant excesses of his projects. Such, for example, is the proposal made by Theophan in Part I of the Rules of Procedure under Point 5, that it should be "impossible for everyone to form secretly" in the Ecclesiastical Collegium (i.e., in order to avoid political conspiracies). These should be "persons of various ranks and ranks: bishops, archimandrites, abbots and from the authorities of the white priesthood; and what is more pleasing to this fear, if honest and prudent persons are added to the spiritual rank from the secular rank." These lines, underlined by us and not put into effect by Peter, are nevertheless present in all white and draft official copies of the Regulations. But already in the text kept in the Chamber of Sessions of St. These words are enclosed in square brackets not by the scribe's hand, but, judging by the ink, apparently by Theophan himself, of course, with the permission of Peter himself. The list includes the Spirit. of the Rules of Procedure, which was kept in the Synodal Archives, the words were crossed out by Theophanes. And in the list of the Senate, they remained untouched. But in all printed publications of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries these lines are missing. And only for the first time were they promulgated with historical accuracy in the first volume of the monumental publication of the Synod in 1879: "The Complete Collection of Resolutions and Orders on the Department of the Orthodox Confession of the Russian Empire." This means that the original idea of the construction of the Ecclesiastical Collegium was sharply Protestant.

Manifesto and Oath

The texts of these two founding documents, dated "the 25th of January, in St. Petersburg" sounded extraordinarily characteristic and innovative to the ears of the old Moscow church, as they do to ours now.

In the manifesto, the "Autocrat of All Russia" directly declares his power and duty to correct "the disorders of the spiritual rank, on the same grounds as the "military and civil ranks." The Church here is reduced only to a "spiritual rank" subject to the monarch "by the image of the former pious tsars." But the former tsars acted through church councils. In fact, Peter does not act "in their image" at all. Odin, by his secular power, prescribes a new government to the Church, without deigning to mention the abolition of the old, patriarchal one. The tsar simply declares: "Seeing no better way to correct the order of the spiritual order than a conciliar government, since it is not without passion in a single person, moreover, it is not hereditary power, for this reason we are negligent, we establish the Spiritual Collegium, i.e. the Spiritual Conciliar Government." That the "council" (the representation of free votes) and the "collegium" (appointed bureaucratic officials) are essentially antipodes of power, this is either naïveté or cunning camouflaged by playing with the vague word "conciliarity." Peter established this pseudo-conciliar governmental authority in the Russian Church, as supreme, peremptory, i.e., even excluding an appeal to the court of the Council of Eastern Patriarchs. This is said cunningly and covertly, in vague terms, by no means accurate. But the trend is clear:

"And we command all Our faithful subjects of every rank, spiritual and temporal, to have this for an important and powerful Government (how "important and strong"? is not directly defined; one cunning hint) and from him the extreme affairs of the spiritual administration to ask for decisions and decisions" (does this mean sovereign power?!) and to be satisfied with his definite judgment" (i.e., without appeals to any higher authority that no longer exists or is forever closed to the clergy). But the final phrase of this paragraph is striking in its sophistry. If the Spirit. The collegium is presented as the supreme and state authority (for the existence of any ecclesiastical authority is here tacitly simply denied), then, it would seem, that it is necessary to compare the newly-invented organ of supreme ecclesiastical authority with the supreme state one, i.e., with the peremptory, i.e., the Senate, which is not subject to the jurisdiction of anyone except the monarch. And the manifesto reads:

"and to listen to his decrees in everything, under great punishment for resistance and disobedience "against the other Colleges" (!!). If the Spirit, the Collegium, does not legally exceed the rank of Collegiums, and the Collegiums can be complained to the Senate, then it means that the Spirit is also complained about. Collegium, as it is to appeal to the Collegium (no more) to the Senate. If, in addition to the Senate, it was directly addressed to the monarch, then it was necessary to have the courage and sincerity to write so directly in the law. But this was not done. And this, as we shall see, was the reason for the heated struggle of the future Synod for its dignity with the Senate, which logically remembered the original sin of the Synod, which was imprudently conceived as one of the Collegiums, i.e., bodies of general administration, subordinate to it – the Senate.

Even more bitter is the oath for the members of the Spirit. Board. The whole meaning, spirit and letter of it to the point of insulting rudeness emphasize the purely state nature and task of this institution. The members of the Collegium vowed extensively to the members of the dynasty of "faithful service" to the members of the dynasty, to the interest of the state only, to inform ("announce in a timely manner") "about the damage to His Majesty's interest, harm and loss" and to keep official secrets. They also swear allegiance to the anti-canonical leadership of church power by a secular monarch: "I confess with an oath the ultimate judge of this Spiritual Collegium to be the All-Russian Monarch Himself, our All-Merciful Sovereign." Undoubtedly, as a purely state body, within the borders of Russia, over the Dukh. The collegium has no supreme power, except for the autocratic-monarchical one. But if the Spirit. At the same time, the collegium is also a substitute for an ecclesiastical body (in the absence of another, more canonically correct one), then in the church the monarch cannot be the "extreme", i.e. the supreme judge.

For almost 200 years, this oath was humbly experienced by the Russian hierarchy, as a bleeding wound that did not heal, as an undeserved punishment on the part of the secular authorities of the always loyal clergy, as a gloomy monument to Peter's bitterness against his son, until it became completely intolerable even for the consciousness of such a famous conservative as K. P. Pobedonostsev. In February 1901, the Synod, correcting the rite of the episcopal oath at consecration, drew attention to the "obsolescence of the form of the oath of bishops summoned to the Synod for attendance." Referring to the fact that in the Governing Senate newly appointed senators are not sworn to such an oath, St. The Synod does not see the need to take the oath of the Bishop. Bishops summoned to the Synod to attend." On February 23, 1901, Pobedonostsev made a report about this to Emperor Nicholas II, who put a sign of consent with a blue pencil, and from that moment the nightmarish oath was silently buried in the Archives of the Synod, and the excess scab flew off the conscience of the Russian Church.

Reform of the Reform itself

On February 14, 1721, the opening ceremony of the new State Collegium was scheduled. A prayer service was served in the Trinity Cathedral, and the members of the new Collegium gathered for the first meeting in the modest wooden house allotted to them by the recently deceased Lieutenant General Bruce. This is the first, it would seem, only ceremonial, non-business gathering of the Spirit. The Collegium, unexpectedly both for the Tsar and for the members of the Collegium themselves, became truly historic. The conscious and responsible members of the Collegium, and above all, of course, before Theophan himself, faced the absolute necessity, without any self-deception, to admit the impossibility of identifying themselves, within the circle of their department, with other, not so universal, but only special collegiums. Simple common sense said that the business outlook of the church could not be driven into the narrow framework of an ordinary college. And simple collegial vanity dictated to the members of the Collegium the desire not to humiliate themselves and the church they were called to serve. The virtue of obedience, which the hierarchs had sacrificed to Peter to the end, gave rise to in them the bold hope that henceforth, having unconditionally submitted to and trusted the state power, they had the right to expect from it the graces and favor they deserved. They drove away the ghost of the patriarch. But they remained in his place. And this place, in terms of the breadth of real and material power, is second in the state after the power of the monarch. The usual hierarchical self-consciousness even emotionally felt an obvious humiliation. The Church, which, according to tradition, trustingly entrusted its fate to the hands of the Christian monarch, suddenly found itself not in the immediate vicinity next to him, but "under the hat" of the Senate, which was not chrismated (like the tsar), a purely lay collective, and consequently deprived of the right of any kind of supremacy over the Church. As soon as the newly established hierarchical collective posed a number of urgent practical questions to itself and to Peter, it became clear that it was impossible to pull the narrow costume of the collegium over the broad body of the church. It was necessary immediately, so to speak, on the move, to adapt the unfortunate features of the reform plan to the essence of the matter. And Peter, in turn, satisfied and reassured by the law-abiding hierarchs, as a man of outstanding common sense, readily and positively responded to the reforming questions and assumptions put to him. So suddenly a huge and sensible reform took place. You can say a whole coup. Suddenly, on the day of his birth and baptism, the Ecclesiastical Collegium, on which Theophan had spent ink together with Peter, died, disappeared, and a new institution was born: the Holy Synod. The renaming is significant. This upheaval did not, of course, arise from the accidental perplexities of this meeting on February 14, 1721. Here all the conciliar objections of the hierarchy were concentrated, which, in an intimate exchange of opinions and in the reports of Lieutenant Colonel Davydov, who had traveled all over Russia, took definite shape.

The first perplexing question asked of Peter was elementarily self-evident to every clergyman. It was impossible to open one's mouth in church without bumping into it: how can one make a prayerful exclamation about the church government if one does not call it either a patriarch or a locum tenens? Not to proclaim some alien, Latin "collegium"? Timidly, they offered to translate it with a vague word - "Meeting". In addition, the canonical title "Most Holy" is also appropriate for the supreme ecclesiastical authority. It would be wild to combine this epithet with a Latin word. As if apologizing for the question, the new collegium timidly made the following proposal: "On the Most Holy Governing Assembly, the honorable presbytery, etc... And this title "Most Holy" will be assigned to no one in particular, but only to the entire Assembly." Who helped, prompted Peter to formulate answers, is unknown. Most likely, it was the same Theophanes, who now conscientiously reflected the broad church opinion. Peter's common sense and instinct met this halfway. Instead of the timid and ridiculous name of the ruling body "Sobranie," Peter surrenders to the ecclesiastical-canonical term "Council." This is a term consonant for the Greeks with both a real church council and the deliberative semi-bureaucratic environment of each head of the autocephalous church, in Russian – "consecrated council". Peter's resolution: "On the Holy Synod or on the Holy Governing Synod." By this resolution, the "collegium" was buried forever, and logically its "Charter" should have lost the name of the "Rules of Procedure" corresponding to the collegium. "Governing", i.e. performing government functions temporarily and on someone's behalf, and not by nature. A ruler who "performs the office" of a ruler, but does not have the nature of a ruler, is not yet a ruler himself, a monarch. In Latin: only regens (from rego – I rule), and not the ex itself. There can be several such régеntes under the ex. And the clever and bold Peter understood this perfectly well, and, to the envy of the senators, in an instant generously called the Synod "Governing", at the same time shrewdly shielding the Synod with this state title from the temptation of dualism of the supreme powers, as it was thought de jure in Byzantium and in Ancient Russia. In order for the Synod not to turn into a narrowly ecclesiastical institution, Peter generously allowed it to be called the Governing Synod, i.e., according to Peter's idea, having state powers from the supreme power in the likeness of the Senate, which in the same sense bears the same title. But this is not yet an equation with the Senate. However, the very nature of the newborn ecclesiastical authority of the Synod, unexpectedly for Peter, pushed the Synod to equality with the Senate. This equality seemed to be prescribed by the sameness of the sound of their title. The word Collegium disappeared, but the collegial rank of the Synod, laid down in the Rules of Procedure, like a heavy stone tied to a leg, dragged for a long time behind the Synod, which was fighting for its dignity.

The second question, put to Peter under the guise of a clerical formality, interceded for the most important thing: the legal formalization of the new institution, which was incomparable with the competence of the collegiums of power.

They write: "And no decrees have been sent to the Patriarchal name from anywhere, but the Spiritual Collegium has the honor, power and authority of the Patriarch, or almost greater, since the Council." Characteristically, having abolished the principle of the council by adopting a collegial form in principle, at this moment yesterday's "anti-conciliarists" are seizing upon the idea of a council, which is honorable and essential for the Church. Peter was not afraid to take a fresh look at the brainchild he had born, to understand its high nature and to mentally place it on a high level next to the Senate in the state system. Institutions of equal rank communicated with each other not by orders and instructions, but by "reports", i.e. "messages for information". Peter, understanding the whole legal meaning of this formality, put a resolution: "to the Senate with the knowledge and signing of everyone, and in the collegium - as they write from the Senate and signed only by the secretary." With this stroke of the tsar's pen, the Synod in an instant rose to the height of formal equality with the Senate. Another thing is the question of real equality with the Senate. For this equality, the Synod had to fight for a long and painful time. The pρώτоν ψεύδоς, laid down in the structure of the Synod, as one of the Colleges, all the time made itself felt in the life and work of the Synod.