Ober-Procurators of the Holy Synod on the Synodal System of Church Administration

The article is devoted to the problem of characterizing the position of the Church in the Russian Empire. The historiography of the Synodal Period, as a rule, is based on the thesis of the complete subordination of the Church to the state. This opinion appeared in the journalism of the mid-19th–early 20th centuries and was widely involved in historical research in the 19th–20th centuries. Starting in the last decades of the 20th century, active work with sources showed the limitations of the concept of “state captivity” of the Church. The authors believe that the reconstruction of the official concept of church-state relations can play an important role in developing new approaches to the history of the Russian Church during the Synodal Period. The article provides examples of the assessment of church-state relations by the Ober-Procurators of the Holy Synod in the 19th century, presented in government documents. In the course of interdepartmental disagreements, the heads of the synodal department often appealed to the thesis about the freedom and independence of the Church, its exceptional position, incomparable with any other state institution. The outcome of the case could be different, but such an assessment of church-state relations was not questioned, and, therefore, was recognized by the government.