canon law

Canon Law in a Bolshevik Courtroom: The Russian Revolution as an Orthodox Legal Revolution

This paper examines how the rapid shift in the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the state in 1917 both facilitated and under‑ mined the Church’s longstanding attempt to come to terms with its canonical tradition. Legal restrictions placed upon the Church forced Orthodox leaders to consider the value of their own canonical laws and how to apply them in an inimical context.

Moscow’s Diocesan Revolution

In the months after the February Revolution, the Church was convulsed by a general revolt against ecclesiastical authority. The Church survived this revolt, and organized an “All‑Russian Council (Sobor)” from September of 1917 until August of 1918, which re‑established the Patriarchate of Moscow and negotiated a reform of the Church’s authority structure. The ultimate success of the reform process depended on the ability of the Church’s various communities to forge a com‑ promise in the midst of a political and ecclesiastical revolution.

How to Accept the Unacceptable: Blasphemy and Atheism in the Judicial Practice of the Roman Inquisition in the Seventeenth Century

It is not possible to write the history of blasphemy, anticlericalism and religious scepticism in the Early Modern period without taking into consideration the variety of their different manifestations (not only words but also gestures), as well as the lexibility of the boundary separating blasphemy as an emotional outburst from blasphemy as a conscious act of rebellion against the Church as an institution and God as an idea. The author investigates these issues by looking at materials of the Republic of Venice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.