The Church Postgraduate School and Doctoral School named after Equal Apostles Cyril and Methodius with the assistance of the Teaching Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church has published a new textbook — «History of the Russian Orthodox Church. Synodal period». The author of the publication — Professor St. Petersburg Theological Academy and A.I. Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University Doctor of Historical Sciences S.L. Firsov.
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The publication covers a 300-year period of church history of the Russian Empire: from the beginning of the reign of Peter the Great and the death of Patriarch Adrian to the tragic events of February 1917.
This period, called the Synodal period, was marked by complex and ambiguous relations between the state power and the Church. Nevertheless, by the 20th century the Russian Church had become the most influential local Orthodox Church in the world, actively and extensively engaged in missionary work and church building.
In preparing this manual, the author used a wide range of sources, including legislative acts, church documents, materials of the church and secular press, etc., a lot of documents from the Russian Orthodox Church. The funds of the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg, the manuscript departments of the Russian State Library and the Russian National Library, the funds of the State Museum of the History of Religion in St. Petersburg, the Synodal Archive of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in New York, the Archive of the Svyato-Trinity Theological Seminary of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (Jordanville, USA), and others. This made it possible to create the most complete and objective picture of historical events.
The purpose of the manual — to form in students and readers an idea of the main stages and the most important events in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Synodal period.
The publication will be useful to students in preparing for seminars, scientific and practical classes, credits and exams, as well as in writing reports and term papers. For qualitative assimilation of the material at the end of each chapter there are control questions and tasks.
The textbook is intended for students of state and spiritual educational institutions, studying in the direction of «Theology», «History» and others.
OCAD Press Service/Patriarchy.ru
