(Redirected from Stoglav)The 'Stoglavy Sobor' () (translated variously as ''Hundred Chapter Synod'', ''Council of a Hundred Chapters'', etc.) was a church council (''
sobor'') held in
Moscow in
1551, with the participation of
tsar Ivan IV,
Metropolitan Macarius, and representatives of the
Boyar Duma. It convened in January and February
1551, with some final sessions as late as May of that year.
The Stoglavy Sobor was called under the government’s initiative which aspired to support the
church in struggle against anti-
feudal heretical movements and simultaneously to subordinate its secular authority.
The name “Stoglavy Sobor” comes from the collection of cathedral decisions divided into 100 chapters (or "Sto glav"), commonly referred to as the '''Stoglav'''. The full name was "Соборное Уложение Собора Русской Православной Церкви" (Synodal Code of the Russian Orthodox Church Synod"). It was formatted as a record of questions of
Tsar to
clergy with answers.
The Stoglavy Sobor proclaimed the inviolability of
church properties and the exclusive jurisdiction of church courts over
ecclesiastics. At the demand of the church hierarchy the government cancelled the tsar's jurisdiction over ecclesiastics. In exchange, members of the Stoglavy Sobor made concessions to the government in a number of other areas (prohibition for
monasteries to found new large villages in cities, etc.).
By decisions of the Stoglavy Sobor, church ceremonies and duties in the whole territory of
Russia were unified, and norms of church life were regulated with the purpose of increasing the educational and moral level of the
clergy to ensure they would correctly fulfill their duties, such as creation of schools for preparation of
priests.
[1] The church authorities' control over the activities of book writers,
icon painters, and others, was firmly established.
During the second half of the 16th centuries The ''"Stoglav"'' Council was the basic code of law for the internal life of religious estate and its mutual relations with society and the state (there are many hand-written editions of ''"Stoglav"'').
[2]
References
1. Jack E. Kollmann, "The Stoglav and Parish Priests," ''Russian History'' 7, Nos. 1-2(1980): 65-91.
2. Jack Kollmann, ''The Moscow Stoglav ('Hundred Chapters') Church Council of 1551'' (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1978).
External Links
★
an article about the 455th anniversay of Stoglavy Sobor