Orders of admission to the Orthodox Church from the Renovationist Schism. Documents of Patriarch Tikhon and Patriarch’s locum tenens Petr, 1923‒1925
Abstract
This publication introduces the earlier unknown documents of Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ Tikhon (Bellavin) and his Holy Synod, as well as of his successor, Patriarch’s Locum Tenens Metropolitan of Krutitsy Petr (Polyanskiy). They deal with admission to the Orthodox Church (Patriarchal) of repenting renovationist clergyand laymen. These documents were found in the archive of archbishop of Uglich Serafim (Samoilovich) kept at the Church-Historical Archive of St. Tikhon University for the Humanities. Archbishop Serafi m probably received these documents as the administrator of Yaroslavl diocese. The fi rst of these documents is a combination of two statutes of Patriarch Tikhon’s Holy Synod and dates to December 1923 and March 1924. The second document, which, in fact, develops the theses of the preceding one, is not in its form a statute of the higher church authorities. However, there are suffi cient grounds to regard it as refl ecting the position of Patriarch’s Locum Tenens Petr and church hierarchs close to him as to the order of admission of renovationists. The exact date of this document is not given, but judging by its content, it is approximately midsummer and early autumn 1925. The order deals in quite a detailed way with various cases related to falling into the renovationist schism and going back. Moreover, the approach to ordinations made in the schism was rather strict, whereas such ceremonies as baptism, church marriage, funerary service were looked at not as strictly: they were complemented in a certain way, rather than repeated. The documents published here are of signifi cant historical value; besides, they can be of practical interest in preparing ecclesiastical and law norms as to some present-day schismatics.
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