Church-Historical Scholarship in Russia during the Synodal Era

The article examines the phenomenon of Russian church-historical scholarship during the Synodal Period. The historiographic concepts of church historians A. P. Lebedev and M. B. Melioransky, critically illuminating the contemporary state of church history scholarship, as well as the path of its development, are considered. The factors that both contributed to the development and hindered the formation of church history as an educational and scholarly discipline are analyzed. The factor of class isolation of theological schools, which was the case up to the 1870s, as well as the obligatory confessional affiliation to Orthodoxy, is especially prominent, as a limiting framework for research for a historian dealing with church-historical problems during the Synodal Period. The role of the state and the Synodal reform in the formation of the system of theological education and training of research personnel is noted. A conclusion is made about the duality and ambiguity of these factors for the development of church history scholarship in the period under consideration and the absolute value of the scholarly base created by it.