The priesthood and the reign: on the issue of the state and church relations in Moscow period

In the article, the process is viewed of the new state-and-law-relations model formation. The ideologic roots of this model are found in the “Moscow – Third Rome” Concept, developed during the centralized state establishment period. In accordance with this idea, Moscow State becomes the successor of Byzantium, acting as New Constantinople and the Third Rome. Looking to Byzantium should have led to the fixation of the church-and-state-relations model adopted in it. Within this model, the mutual relations of the church and the law rested on the symphony principle, which meant that the church and the state formed one complicated and inseparable organism. However, with the Russian interpretation, the Byzantium idea forms out something completely new. This happens to the fact that only the outer form is adopted (the presence of the tsar and the patriarch), while the contents get quite another meaning. The monarch’s administrative functions which in Byzantium were defined by legal regulations, are understood in Russia as the manifestation of the governor’s charisma. The tsar starts to interfere into the internal church affairs, he directly participates in the elections of the patriarch and the bishops. Realizing the specific liability for the moral life of the lieges leads to the fixation of the criminal punishability for religious offense and so its transfer to the temporal law competence. In its turn this influences the relations between the church courts and the temporal courts concerning these offences. The logical result of all these changes is appearing of the Cloistral Order – a special body for managing the church organizations, and the tsar becomes the chief initiator for the church orders regarding the lieges and the church itself. The vivid manifestation of such attitude to the church is the so-called “Nikon” Reform. So, the result of the centralized state development in the second half of XVI–XVII is the fixation of the new model of the state and the church relations, which served the basis for the final integration of the church into the state mechanism as its subordinate and additional part.