The tone of the emperor's letter is respectful, the information about the reform is clearer, although not entirely accurate. And the main purpose of the appeal to the Ecumenical is expressed quite humbly and directly: this is a petition for the recognition of a new institution and a request to communicate with him in the future on the affairs of the Church:

"As the most obedient son of our Mother of the Orthodox-Catholic Church, always maintaining reverence for Your All-Holiness, as the first Orthodox-Catholic Archpastor of the Orthodox Catholic Church, in the spirit of our father, judged it necessary to be notified... Between many, according to the duty of the authority given to us by God... By much sound reasoning and consultation, both with the spiritual and secular ranks of our state, it has been decided to establish a Spiritual Synod with the authority equal to the Patriarch, i.e. the Supreme Spiritual Conciliar Government for the administration of the all-Russian state of our Church, from a sufficient number of worthy spiritual persons, both bishops and cynoviarchs...

To the same Spiritual Holy Synod we have determined through the instructions that the Holy Church should be governed in all things according to the dogmas of the Holy Synod. Rights. Kafol. The Church of the Greek confession is irrevocable; and these dogmas would have as a rule the infallible rule of their rule; in which they and by oath in the Holy Catholic Church by kissing the holy cross and signing it with their own hands.

And we hope that Your All-Holiness, as the first bishop, is right. Kafol. Eastern. To the Church, please acknowledge this institution of ours and the work of the Spiritual Synod as a good thing, and inform the other Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem about it. And since we most mercifully commanded this Holy Father. Spirit. To the Synod and Your All-Holiness to have relations and correspondence on all spiritual matters, and so we ask Your All-Holiness to deign with this Synod to maintain correspondence and relations concerning spiritual matters concerning the benefit of the Church, as the Patriarchs of All Russia had beforehand, and, if in any way he desires from His All-Holiness any good advice for the benefit and better order of the Church, in this they are of no use for general Christianity, for which we, with our special inclination towards Your All-Holiness, promise to show every condescension in your demands... And so, however, Your All-Holiness, in the spirit of our father, the Supreme Ecumenical Archpastor, we always abide in spirit as a son and ready."

This imperial letter is full of inaccuracies and diplomatic vagueness. "Long and thorough discussion" with lay and ecclesiastical officials does not correspond to the conditions of secrecy in which it took place. Instead of a report on the original name "Collegium and on the "Regulations", there is only a dull mention of the "instructions". The content of the oath of the members of the Synod is different: not loyalty to dogmas, but loyalty only to the monarch. The composition of the Synod is said deliberately vaguely: "the number is satisfied." From this report it was impossible to form a clear idea of the new institution. The patriarchs, of course, could sufficiently clarify the question through the intermediary of couriers and their agents in order to make their decision. To the epistle addressed primarily to Pat. The Patriarch stipulates that at the moment there are no other fellow patriarchs with him, but they will soon arrive and, he hopes, will join in his positive answer. However, the most motivated answer came almost two years later, with the date 23/IX. 1723. The text of the letter of the Patriarch's Patriarchate was duplicated by an almost identical letter of Athanasius, Patriarch of Antioch. An additional letter from Patriarch Jeremiah announced that the Alexandrian cathedra was currently vacant, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem was ill. Over time, the Patriarch of Constantinople will also receive the signature of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, if necessary, but "this is enough." The affirmative charter reads as follows: "Our measure, by the grace and power of the All-Holy, Life-giving, and Sacredly Ruling Spirit, affirms, consolidates, and declares that the Synod established by the most pious autocrat, the holy Tsar of all Muscovy, Little and White Russia, and all the northern, eastern, western, and many other countries, the Sovereign-Sovereign, Tsar Peter Alexeevich, the Emperor, beloved and beloved brother in the Holy Spirit [14], the Synod in the Russian Holy Great State is and is called our brother in Christ, the Holy and Sacred Synod of all pious and Orthodox Christians, sacred and profane, principal and subordinate, and of every dignitary. He has the right to perform and establish the same as the four Apostolic Holy Patriarchal Sees. We advise, encourage and enjoin him to preserve and keep unchanged the customs and rules of the Holy Ecumenical Holy Seven Councils and other contents of the Holy Church and will remain unshaken forever." It was probably very easy for the Patriarch to confirm this self-abasement of the Russian Church, bearing in mind how difficult it was in 1586 for Patriarch Jeremiah II of the Patriarch of the Patriarchate to recognize the patriarchal title for Moscow. Now, to the relief of the Greeks, Moscow with its own hands took off the honorary patriarchal mitre with cherubs. Peter and Theophan were also happy in their own way. The Synod immediately ordered that the Patriarchal gramota be sent to the dioceses to be read aloud to the silent people in the churches.

Thus, the church reform of Peter V., uncanonical in its conception, in its principles and in the way it was put into practice, was formally legalized by this affirmation of the Eastern patriarchs. Thus falls away the accusation of heterodox agitators, which sometimes confuses the weak conscience of the Orthodox laity, who are inexperienced in theological science, that the Russian Church has lived a lawless life for 200 years. And all the great hierarchs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who carried in their hearts sorrow over the canonical defectiveness of the Synodal system and the hope for its correction, carried out their service to the Church with a clear conscience, knowing that their canonical position was formally quite legitimate.

Reflection of the reform in the state legal consciousness

Peter the Great's abrupt church reform, introduced in spite of almost universal psychological opposition, in fact proved to be unusually strong, stable, and deeply rooted in the consciousness of all the governmental generations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The ideology of enlightened absolutism, totalitarianly subjugating the church to its control, became adequate to the state legal consciousness of the ruling class, which was quickly re-educated in the European spirit under the name of the Orthodox ruling class. In spite of the personal piety of the individual bearers of the crown, the new fundamental laws which were gradually being formed formulated almost crudely and cruelly formulated the new position of the Church in the absolutist state. The Orthodox Patriarch sitting next to the Tsar disappeared, and the idea of a special autonomous canonical legislation disappeared. The source of all law, including for the church, is the only one: the power of a secular monarch. The Church in the subordinate apparatus of ministries and departments is only one of the ministries or departments, namely the "Department of the Orthodox Confession," abbreviated: "V. P. I." — the classic stamp on all official papers of the entire church administration of the Synodal period.

From this state-absolutist point of view, there was no place within the framework of the Russian State for another parallel source of legislation. This closed canonical lawmaking for the Russian Church. Extraordinary bodies of canon legislation, church councils, were forbidden by their complete silence in the Spiritual Regulations. And the current petty legislation in the manifesto accompanying the Rules of Procedure was submitted to the Synod, but not uncontrollably, "not without Our permission," as Peter put it. Thus, the only source of law-making for the church was only the supreme secular power. And not once did the law-abiding Russian hierarchy, and under the control of the chief procurators, and in rare moments of personal reports to the tsars, even try to break through this blockade. A clear formulation of this canonical lack of rights of the Russian Church and absolutely all the right to absorb the authority of the Russian emperors was later given by the bright mind of Speransky, together with his precise pen. Speransky also had a clear awareness of the need for Russia to have the so-called "Fundamental Laws." Speransky's formulas include dated references to the former supreme legislation, beginning with Peter. This is what was written in these Fundamental Laws in 1832, only slightly modified in their new edition of 1906 after the manifesto on the State Duma. The power of our emperors in relation to the church is thus stated in articles 42 and 43, ed. 1832:

"Art. 42. The Emperor, as a Christian sovereign, is the supreme defender and guardian of the dogmas of the prevailing faith and the guardian of orthodoxy and every holy deanery in the Church." the following note is appended to this article; "1721 Jan. 25 (3718) Part I, introduction. In this sense, the Emperor in the Act of Succession to the Throne of 1797 Apr. 5 (17810) is called the Head of the Church."

"Art. 43. "In the administration of the Church, the Autocratic Power acts through the Most Holy Governing Synod, established by it."

Note: "1721 Jan. 25 (3718) introduction. and Part I, 3".

The dated references here refer, in addition to the reference to the decree of Paul I on the succession to the throne, to the Spiritual Regulations. This is the meaning attached by the letter of the law to the Spiritual Regulations, both logically and on the basis of the past century of practice. All the rights ascribed to the emperor by Article 42 are literally applicable to the supreme hierarchical power and, of course, more accurately and literally express its rights, and not the rights of the secular power. But it is no accident that the presence of ecclesiastical authority is silent here. It was necessary to emphasize the totality of autocratic power. The rights and duties of the hierarchical power proper are enumerated, but they are ascribed to the secular autocratic power, so that there is no doubt that it controls all these rights and duties, as the only supreme power, even if it is secular. In Article 43 this is explained indirectly, namely, that the Holy Synod, which practices the above-mentioned rights and duties, was established by none other than it, i.e., by the autocratic power, as the only supreme power from which alone can derivative ecclesiastical authority flow. Speransky was a believing Orthodox theologian. But at the same time, a brilliantly clear-thinking mind. He conscientiously reflected the legal reality with mathematical accuracy. Speransky did not silence the crude formula of Paul I "head of the church". This is a logical conclusion from Peter's legislation and it formally justifies the captious Roman Catholic polemics, mercilessly castigating the former system as Caesar-papism. In the 1906 edition of the Basic Laws, Articles 42-43 are repeated literally under numbers 64-65. But in the context of the new constitution, which limited the autocracy in the legislative sphere to the participation of the State Council and the State Duma, the words of Articles 64 and 65 acquire a new limited meaning, corresponding to the self-limitation of the autocratic power in the field of legislation. Therefore, the expression of Article 65 that "the autocratic power acts through the Holy Scriptures. Rules. of the Synod, established by Her, in the administration of the Church" acquire a new restrictive meaning. "Management" henceforth became limited, "subordinate". Consequently, from this moment on, two higher legislative institutions are also thought to be accomplices in the legislation on ecclesiastical affairs: the State Council. The Council and the State. Duma. But the old Petrine principle, revealed by Speransky, remains untouched: there is no purely ecclesiastical authority, independent of the secular, in the Russian State, the Fundamental Laws do not know it. Only in the draft of a new concordat law on the relations between church and state, worked out by the All-Russian Council of 1917, the canonical right of self-government, legislation and court, inalienable to the church, was again affirmed.