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.

With question 5, the newborn synodals interrogated Peter on a point of great everyday significance, material interest and prestige of the church authorities, namely: about church patrimonies. Deeply rooted in the consciousness of the Russian priesthood and monasticism is the 700-year-old habit, which was also enshrined in the period of Mongol rule, to consider their landowning rights as an inalienable, sacred, ecclesiastical property, a pillar not only of satiety, but also of nobility and moral freedom in the face of the state. Prep. Joseph of Volokolamsk, as well as Pat. Nikon, being ascetics, enthusiastically defended the land rights of the church, seeing in them the armor of church freedom. Taken away by Peter in 1700 under the state jurisdiction of the resurrected Monastic Order, now these property, together with their economy and income, according to the plan of the new bureaucratic apparatus of the state, were under the jurisdiction of many collegiums and were managed with the usual state inefficiency. Now the Spirit itself. The collegium became a state body, not an autonomous one.

And in the Spiritual Regulations it is stipulated that such a government will be due to the Ecclesiastical Collegium?" This brief resolution marked the beginning of a major turn in the way of life of the church and monasteries. The Monastic Prikaz again became an organ of church government, i.e. the same patrimonial ministry, but no longer under the authority of the state bureaucracy, but under the ecclesiastical authority of the Spiritual Collegium, which became the Holy Synod. This is far from being a complete right of property in the old Moscow sense, but only management and use, but in practice, in comparison with the state of affairs that had just been abolished, it was something that both the hierarchs and the monasteries yearned for. This opened the way not only for the masters' use, although controlled by the state in the person of the Senate, of the economic resources of the patrimonies for their direct purpose for the needs of church life, but also for the master's creative initiative, which replaced the psychologically full right of ownership.

The Synod began and successfully carried out a plan to return and uproot from the depths of other Collegiums all patrimonial and ecclesiastical affairs and functions of the former expanded Monastic Order. It was not only a matter of administration, but also of the restoration, according to old laws and practice, of judicial cases over the people of the former tsarist department. Several hundred thousand patrimonial souls again became subject to the jurisdiction of the Synod not only in civil cases, but also in part of criminal cases related to the economy. All this logically began to contradict the bureaucratic system of Collegiums, which embodied the unity of state power. Auxiliary bodies subordinate to it began to grow up around the Synod, and the Collegiums, which were losing part of their competence, turned for help to the Senate, which, as far as possible, restrained this unstoppable growth of the broad competence of the Synod, which grew into a kind of double of the Senate. Such an equation was far from the consciousness of the Senate, and it began to openly "crush" the Synod, as if driving it into its collegial cradle. On this dialectical basis, the Synod began a long and stubborn competition with the Senate for its equality and, in any case, for incomparable superiority over the collegiums. In essence, he defended the very nature of church power, independent of the state. But, alas, he could motivate his rights only by state reasons allowed to him, for example, by referring to the title "Governing". And on the ladder of state institutions, after all, before the Synod and above all others, the Senate already stood. Disguised from the garb of the "Collegium" into the toga of the "Governing," the Synod could seem to the Senate to be only honorably exalted above the other collegiums, but, of course, not equal to it. As early as March 15, 1721, the Synod objected to the Senate's defense of the judicial competence of the Justits-Collegium with reference to the General Regulations: "When the General Regulations were composed, then, O Spirit. The government has not even had an initiative yet. And now... The Spiritual Government is excellent from the other Collegiums, as is the Senate." Peter felt that this confused the system of state unity of administration and court, but he partially made concessions, and the Synod gradually won the rights not provided for by the Spiritual Regulations and which really brought the synodal authority closer in the breadth of its jurisdiction to the former power of the patriarchs, violating the theoretically harmonious system of collegiums in general.

During the period of the locum tenens (from 1700), the period of Peter's wariness against the church authorities, the tsar, in all cases of his administrative work, especially in the new capital and its region, entrusted all church affairs to the Senate and the newly opened collegiums. Such, for example, are the cases of schismatics, heresies, churches for foreigners, people of other faiths, schools and printing houses. Having created a new head over church affairs (1721), Peter naturally considered it necessary to exclude from the jurisdiction of both the Senate and the Foreign Collegium the former powers relating to religious affairs, and transferred all this to the jurisdiction of the Synod. The very essence of the matter inevitably extended the competence of the Synod far beyond the framework of the Spiritual Regulations, which were chained to the category of collegiums. The Synod conducted its struggle for equality with the Senate, which ended in victory, not without tension. Even the episcopal brethren close to the Synod needed an explanation of the position of the Synod, which was higher than the level of collegiums. In March 1721, Metropolitan Ignatius of Sarsk and Podonsk asked: on what basis should he now be in charge of the former patriarchal diocese – is it according to the Senate decree of 1718? The Synod explained that Ignatius did not understand the loftiness of the new Governing Synod: "And in the reports sent to the Governing Spiritual Synod, the honor given by the Tsar's Majesty to this Synod is to explain to it without any derogation and to obey it in everything without question, since this Synod has honor, power and authority of the Patriarch, or almost greater, since it is a council." Taking off his head, the Synod wept over his hair. Having indicated in the same lines that he received all his power from the head of state, he is already hiding in vain only with the beautiful word "council" without real content. It is not surprising that the Senate, in whose interests it was not in the interests of elevating the Synod, bent the line of returning the Synod to the rank of collegiums, if even the metropolitan close to the center did not understand the honor and rank of the newly-minted deputy patriarch.

In a number of conflicts over specific current affairs, the Synod lectured to the Senate about its legal state, if not ecclesiastical, competence, which at times it designated with a rude word of the Peter the Great era: "command." In its polemics, the Synod repeatedly developed several theses: 1) that it was "not subordinate to the Senate"; 2) that it is an "important and powerful government", which was also recognized by the Senate, having signed the Spiritual Regulations; 3) that the source of the Synod's loftiness and importance is the will of the monarch that gave rise to it, that it is the monarch who is the "highest" "power" for the Synod, its "ultimate judge," and no one else, including the Senate. Conducting a polemic with the Senate on the small question of the right to appoint officials (and in the collegium they were appointed by the Senate), the Synod fought off the lower rank of collegiums and apologized for its powers as equal to the Senate. In this peculiar construction of the theory of Synodal authority, the thought of the creator of the Synod, Theophanes, appears to us transparently. By elevating the Synod above the collegiums and equating it at least with the Senate, this "jurisdiction" of the Synod, not without the sophistic subterfuge characteristic of Theophanes, at the same time elevates the Synod above the former patriarchate. He admits that the patriarchal authority was "as if it were his own." This expression hints, of course, that the patriarchal authority considered itself to flow from its own, i.e., ecclesiastical source, and not from the tsar's, with which it was parallel, "symphonic." That is why the form of paperwork was created in the name of the patriarch alone. And now it is as if the power of the Synod (and this is a sophism) has become higher than that of the patriarch, for it does not claim to be "as if it were its own," but depends on the only truly supreme power of the monarch. For us, this conclusion is unconvincing, false. But then, from the point of view of the philosophy of "natural law", and under the fireworks of loud, attention-polluting words and epithets, this blocked the mouths of all objectors. The Synod wrote to the Senate: "And now the Spiritual Government, by the graceful discretion of His Imperial Majesty, has been established, not in a power similar (i.e., 'equal') to this patriarchal rule, but in an excellent (i.e., 'excellent') power, and consists not of one person, and corrects his office not in his own name, but in the lofty decrees of His Imperial Majesty, who, as the Most Pious Monarch, in the image of the ancient Christian kings, To Himself to this Holy Synod for the Supreme President and Judge, he presented the honor, power and authority of the Holy Synod. Ave. To the Synod of his own royal hand he confirmed by signing an equal agreement with Pr. Senate." For this reason, "the Synod, which was established after the General Regulations, was honored with an honor equal to that of the Senate... demands that all the importance be determined by the Ultimate Judge, His Imperial Majesty."

In the end, the Synod finally obtained from the Senate a formal receipt recognizing its formal equality with the Senate. But at what cost? At the cost of renouncing his ecclesiastical dignity and the ecclesiastical nature of his power. He reduced it to the source of the state, to the will of the Monarch. And this was logical for this immediate defensive target. But at the same time, the otherness, the incomparability of church power with state power was forgotten. A new scheme of administrative state dualism has emerged. Two supreme bodies under a single head of the sovereign, the "ultimate Judge", both for the Senate and for the Synod, both for state and ecclesiastical affairs. Through this, the church became only an "Department" in the state.

This dualism of equality violated the original supremacy of the Senate. And it was necessary to come up with some formal way out of the newly clarified situation. A special conciliation body was invented in case of disagreements between the two supreme, fundamentally equal state institutions. Namely, on 6/IX, 1721, the Highest Decree appeared on the so-called "Conferences of the Senate and the Synod". Such conferences took place, depending on the case and initiative, now in the Senate, now in the Synod, and at them two seconded members were representatives of the other side, depending on the place of the meeting. But no matter how much the Synod strove for equality, it could not be fully achieved. The original ideas of the two institutions were different, and this different nature of them constantly reminded of itself. It was impossible to obscure the essential feature of the Senate that it was established ten years earlier than the Synod for a special purpose: to replace the person of the Monarch in special extreme cases, when the orders of the Senate acquired the force of "nominal royal decrees". This alone made the Senate and the Synod incomparable. In addition, the specific essence of the Senate was that it was the guardian and interpreter of all the laws of the state. Later, in 1722, the decree on these exclusive powers of the Senate in all judicial and numerous higher and secondary administrative institutions stood in the form of a triangular gilded pedestal until the end of the days of the empire "like a mirror before the eyes of those who judge." It stood on green cloth in the Synod as well, reminding us of a certain exceptional superiority of the Senate. Being in Astrakhan on the occasion of the Persian campaign in 1722, Peter foresaw that in his absence the Synod would not be headless and unseized, and ordered that the Synod decide the most important affairs "in common with the Senate", but it did not occur to him to prescribe that any Senate affairs should be decided "in common with the Synod", since the Synod could in no way replace the person of the sovereign. Defending its dignity both from the Senate and from the lower instances (collegiums), the Synod could have the only refuge in the person of the sovereign. And all his paperwork, for all 200 years, proceeded under the stamp: "By decree of His Imperial Majesty." Peter himself personally sat in the Synod. Since then, the monumental symbol of the monarch's presence in the Synod has been the ceremonial gilded royal chair under the canopy in the chamber of meetings. Peter exercised his presidency in the Synod, handing over his personal decrees to it casually and everywhere: now in the church, now in the garden, now in the "summer palace", now in the village of Preobrazhenskoye, now in Shlisselburg, now in Kronstadt, now on a newly launched ship. Instead of the Helmsman's Book, the hierarchy got used to seeing its legislator in the living person of the monarch.