Secularization of church lands is the process of the government taking property owned by the church. Both movable and immovable property were confiscated.

Catherine's reform of 1764 was preceded by many events. For many centuries in Russian history The struggle between spiritual and secular power extended. The secular power emerged victorious.

Why did the state want to seize lands from the hands of the church? The answer is simple: the church was one of the largest landowners in the entire country. Before the abolition of St. George's Day, peasants often became monasteries, since living conditions there were much better; rich bequests were left to churches, which increased their wealth, which was not fragmented, unlike feudal estates. The state, naturally, did not like the fact that there was another land monopolist in the country. It is very important to note that the church did not pay any taxes; on the contrary, tithes were paid in its favor.

The accumulation of wealth and money-grubbing contradict the essence of all Christian teaching. The Church found a way out of this situation with the following dialectical statement; the following compromise was developed: the monk has no personal property, and he has no right to it, but he is allowed to use the property of the monastery. The Byzantine church charter Nomocanon called on the inhabitants of the monastery to spend minimal funds on their own maintenance. The Byzantine Code instructed clergy to provide funds for the construction of churches, their reconstruction and decoration, education (the creation of parochial schools) and assistance to the suffering.

During the reign Vasily III a dispute begins between the Josephites and the non-possessors. The Josephites, led by Joseph Volotsky, recognized the possibility of church land ownership. The non-covetous people, whose leader was Nil Sorsky, rejected this method of enrichment. This situation can be seen as an attempt by the church to secularize its own possessions. If the non-covetous had won, they would have given up their accumulated wealth and gone to live in monastic hermitages. But the Josephites won, and church land ownership was preserved.

The attack on the church estate began under Ivan the Terrible. At the Council of the Stoglava in 1551, he decided that new landholdings would be annexed if the tsar gave his consent. In the 17th century, during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich (1645-1676), most of the prerequisites for Peter’s absolutism took shape. The cathedral code of Alexei Romanov not only legally consolidated serfdom, but also imposed a ban on the further expansion of the church's possessions. The reform of Patriarch Nikon, which ended with his defeat and the formation of the Old Believer Church, helped secular power to further establish itself over the spiritual.

The active Tsar and then Emperor Peter I achieved a titanic effort in the forces of the state in order to crush the Swedes in the Northern War. Peter achieved his goal. However, his relationship with the church became significantly more complicated. Many Christians called Peter the Antichrist because he melted bells into cannons. The emperor struck at the church, placing a civil official (Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod) at its head. Under Peter, the supremacy of secular power finally took shape.

In history, there are two concepts that should be distinguished from each other: the first is the “Manifesto on the secularization of church lands,” and the second is the implemented secularization reform. The manifesto was signed by Peter III, a sovereign who ruled for only six months. The emperor's eccentricity embittered the nobility, and the elite of society elevated Peter III's wife, Catherine II, to the throne. Peter's manifesto called for the removal of part of the lands from church hands. The document was signed, but due to the short reign of the emperor it was not implemented in practice.

Having ascended the throne, Catherine first canceled the decree of her ex-husband. She came to power because of a palace coup, and she had to maneuver between the main ruling groups so as not to repeat the fate of her husband. Do not forget that by origin Catherine was German from a small principality. Born in 1729, she converted to Orthodoxy only in 1744. And her conversion to another faith was caused not by religious feeling, but by the desire to take advantage of the political situation. She understood that it was impossible to rule in Russia professing another faith or trampling on the values ​​of Orthodoxy. The unfortunate example of Peter III confirmed this perfectly.

In 1764, Catherine nevertheless signed the secularization manifesto. There were objective reasons for the seizure of church estates:

• Large church land ownership was an archaic relic inherited Russian Empire from the time of the first Russian princes. Hundreds of years have passed since then, and this form of land ownership is extremely outdated.
• The church was not a taxpayer. Her possessions were huge, and the state did not receive any economic benefit from it. Catherine had grandiose plans, which resulted in two Russian-Turkish wars, so money was needed here and now.
• The reform was another reason for the secular authorities to diminish the influence of the church. Spiritual authority is called upon to resolve moral and ethical issues, and not to interfere in politics, as it has repeatedly done before. The reform was started partly with this idea in mind.
• The inconsistency of the lives of some confessors with the teachings of Christ. Of course, one cannot judge an entire teaching by people who distort its meaning. But such apostates cause people to lose confidence and become skeptical of the teaching. Christianity calls for asceticism, and not for increasing patrimonial land ownership, therefore the very fact that the church has accumulated wealth and land is not very natural and correct.

In addition to depriving the church of most of its possessions, the reform also created new class peasants, called economic. They were assigned to the colleges of economy, had personal freedom and had to pay only quitrent. Several decades later, this category of peasants was included in the state peasants.

The state became the owner of the former church estates, removed confessors from managing the territories that previously belonged to them, the church hierarchy was legally established: the state divided the dioceses into three classes and provided each of them with a certain material content. There were really a lot of monasteries at that time, some were even empty. Some of them began to be supported by the state, and some had to ensure their existence on voluntary donations from parishioners. If at the beginning of the reform there were 954 monasteries on Russian territory, then by the end of the reform there remained 387 monasteries on the territory of Great Russia.

The secularization of church lands can be assessed in different ways. The government promised to engage in charity, but failed, relations between secular and spiritual authorities deteriorated, rents increased, which partly led to Pugachev’s peasant revolt. However, there were also many good things. The archaic non-profitable form of land ownership was eliminated, economic peasants received land and personal freedom until they were assigned to the state, and prospects were created for a more productive development of capitalist relations.

(lat.-secular, worldly): 1) initially – transfer of church lands and property into secular (state) ownership....

(lat.-secular, worldly):

1) initially – transfer of church lands and property into secular (state) ownership. In Russia, the largest secularization was carried out in 1764 by Catherine II, and after 1917 by the Soviet government;

2) from the end of the 19th century – the process of liberation of various spheres of public, state and personal life from religious and church influence. Characteristic features: a change in the place and role of religion in the life of society - a narrowing of the range of state and public functions performed by the church, the alienation of church property in favor of the state, the withdrawal of education from the jurisdiction of the church, the development of secular morality, etc.

Secularization

(from Latin saeculum - worldly, secular) - the process of secularization of various areas of social life and culture, the transition...

(from Latin saeculum - worldly, secular) - the process of secularization of various areas of social life and culture, the transition to a way of life in which human activity unfolds without connection with the Supreme Being and its role in human life is denied. The Gospel directs that there should be no conformity of Christians in relation to the “spirit of this age,” but the preaching of the Good News and the testimony of life according to the Gospel are addressed to everyone who lives in the midst of “this generation and this age.” Many in Catholicism and Orthodoxy have a negative attitude towards secularization. “The attitude of Protestantism towards the sphere of the secular is very positive, because, according to one of its principles, the sacred is no closer to the Supreme than the profane. This principle denies that any of these spheres has a greater right to mercy than the other: both of them are infinitely far and infinitely close to the Divine” (P. Tillich). The answer to the challenge of secularization was D. Bonhoeffer’s proposal to abandon the former and “only the external religious shell of Christianity” for the sake of a spiritually authentic and internally free “non-religious Christianity”, capable of “speaking about God in a “secular” language - without religion, i.e. without time-conditioned prerequisites of metaphysics, human mental life, etc. etc.”

Secularization

(from Late Latin saecularis - worldly, secular) - initially the alienation of the property of religious organizations in...

(from Late Latin saecularis - worldly, secular) - initially the alienation of the property of religious organizations in favor of the state, the transfer of church lands and property into secular ownership. Sometimes this is also called the withdrawal of education from church jurisdiction, the renunciation of a clergy title, etc. The constant enrichment of religious organizations and churches has often come into conflict with the interests of secular authorities, entrepreneurs, and secular institutions. This determines the desire of the secular authorities for S. The conversion of church (temple) estates into the property of the state was already practiced in ancient times (for example, in Ancient Egypt under Amenhotep IV). In Western Europe, the struggle for the liberation of the state from the control of the church and the acts of S. accompanied the entire history of the formation of centralized national states, causing persistent resistance to the Catholic Church.

S. took on a particularly wide scale in Europe, starting from the 16th century, since the Reformation, aimed at subordinating the activities of the church to the interests of the bourgeoisie. In Russia, the enormous growth of church land ownership also collided with the interests of the developing centralized state, in connection with which during the XV - XVII centuries. Repeated attempts were made to limit church land ownership. Thus, on the basis of the decree of S. Catherine II (1764), 8.5 million acres of land were taken from monasteries and bishops' houses. By decree of 1917, all church and monastic lands were nationalized, but after 1990 the church in Russia regained the right to own land. Since the end of the 19th century. in Western sociology, the concept of socialism began to be understood more broadly, namely as desacralization, any form of emancipation from religion and church institutions. In Marxist literature, S. is understood as various historical stages of liberation from religious influence of all spheres of life of society and the individual, as well as the process of deprivation of religious institutions social functions, crowding out religious ideas and replacing them with atheistic views. S. can also be understood as emancipation from sociocentric religions (cults of personality, chosen people, parties, etc.).

D. V. Pivovarov

Secularization

(Latin “saeculum”, “age”) – a scholastic term denoting the transition from the “city of God” to the “city...

(Latin “saeculum”, “age”) is a scholastic term denoting the transition from the “city of God” to the “earthly city”, in the Augustinian understanding. Separation from the sacred source, transition to the “secular”, “this age”. In the archaic forms of the Russian church language, the equivalent of the term “secularization” was the little used word “secularization” today, from the word “world”. The concepts of “this age” and “this world” in the language of Christian theology are synonymous.

Secularization

The process of liberating all spheres of public and personal life from the control of religion (from the Latin saeculum - life span, characteristics...

The process of liberation of all spheres of public and personal life from the control of religion (from the Latin saeculum - life span, characteristics of a transitory, temporary existence as opposed to the divine, eternal; starting with Augustine, “secular” is worldly, secular). In wide! In the sense of the word, S. begins with the distinction between the sacred and the profane, with the desacralization of some areas of life. Actions, phenomena, things become profane when the sacred ceases to appear in them, and they turn into episodes everyday life people eat to be satisfied, sing and dance for joy! pleasures are secular actions, i.e. HI having magical or religious meaning.

In antiquity world philosophical-rationalist! criticism of sacred in-ts and mythology substantiated the “independence” of a person within the limits of ordinary life; he should not ask the gods for what he can achieve himself. Already from the 11th - 12th centuries. In Europe, legal proceedings, education, and health care are gradually moving from the jurisdiction of the church and clergy into the hands of secular authorities. The Reformation gave a powerful incentive to distinguish between the functions of the state and the church ()