Church justice in diocesan practice during the synodal period (based on the example of the “Sedmiezerny case”)

The article is devoted to an overview of the legal aspects of the resonant investigative process initiated in 1908 by Archbishop Nikanor (Kamensky) of Kazan and Sviyazhsk in relation to the prominent devotee of piety of the Kazan land, the abbot of the Kazan Hermitage of the Mother of God of the Seven Lakes Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Zyryanov) and his spiritual disciple, the future hieromartyr Hieromonk Tikhon (Buzov). The totality of these events, which lasted from 1908 to 1910, was named “The Semiezersky Case” and was introduced into historiography by the author of this publication. On the basis of archival material, as well as published sources of state and ecclesiastical law in force during the period of the late Empire, a complex and ambiguous picture of the implementation of diocesan justice is revealed, opening the veil over one of the sides of the synodal system.