Canon Law and Local Practice: The Resolutions of the 1551 Stoglav (Hundred Chapters) Church Council

This article addresses the relationship between religious local practice and Byzantine canon law in mid-sixteenth century Muscovy, by analysing the Stoglav [Hundred Chapters] treatise. The Stoglav was the product of a local Church council, and its mission was to provide a unified ecclesiastical practice in the emergent empire. Its compilation was consistent with the midsixteenth century Muscovite attempts to codify various aspects of public and private life. I argue that the Orthodox “tradition” the council’s resolutions aimed to restore was, in fact, an attempt to find consensus between the canon law of Eastern Christianity and locally generated practices aimed at issues specific to the East Slavic space. The article has two parts. The first one assesses the usage of local secular legislation on ecclesiastical issues and the reworking of texts such as the Donation of Constantine. The second part focuses on the letters and decrees of previous metropolitans of Rus’, some of them recognised as saints by the time the treatise was compiled, as the basis of decisions recorded by the Stoglav. By exploring the introduction, usage, and adaptation of local sources, I discuss the resolutions on issues such as the status of widower priests or the authority of Church courts as having been perceived in terms of continuity rather than as a shift from the Byzantine models.