Сповідь у житті православних мирян Лівобережної України (30-70-і рр. XVIII ст.)

Ключевые слова: исповедь, духовник, исповедующийся, исповедная практика, исповедная роспись, грех, епитимия.

Summary

Romanova O.O. The Confession in the life of the orthodox laity of the Left-bank Ukraine (the 30-70^th XVIII c.). - The Manuscript.

The thesis for competition of science degree in history sciences on specialty 07.00.01 - History of Ukraine. - Institute of history of Ukraine of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine. - Kyiv, 2009.

Using different sources this work analyzes the role of the confession in the life of orthodox laity of the Kyiv Metropolitanate in the 30^th-70^th of XVIII^th century. It studies the church and secular law, which ordered the importance of the confession in the life of the person. It is proved, that the Russian Orthodox Church tried to control the conscience of the inhabitants of the Russian empire to prevent the spreading of the Old believers. In the Ukrainian lands the problem of the Old believers was not so prevalent as in Russian lands. In 1737 year, Synod ordered the priests to compose the confession lists of the all parishes and to send them to the Kyiv Spiritual Consistory every year. The persons who missed annual confession had to pay a fine. Afterwards, the demand of regular confession just in the parish was applied to the territory of the Kyiv Metropolitanate. Neither the Church nor the laymen of Kyiv Metropolitanate understood the importance of the control of the regular confession. Nor did the Hetmanate secular administration try to help the clergymen with that control. Kazaks administrations regarded the control of the regular confession as a limitation of their old rights and privileges. However, secular administrations slowly extended their power into the ecclesiastical field, such as decision about degree of the penance.

It is proved that a professional ability of the practicing confessors was not completely satisfied for requirements of Church law. After having changed the Confession Books and reduced the rights of the priest to excommunicate under Peter's reforms, confessors did not have enough possibility for real influence at the spiritual and moral level of society. Priests had to grant everyone communion regardless of the severity of their sins. Cases of excommunication were the results of quarrels between the priest and parishioners. Clerics were not interested in the using of the confession lists for the real control of the regular confession of the laymen. A number of typical and repeated mistakes in the confession lists (such as names, ages and social status of the same people during a period of several years) are evidence of this fact. According to the priest's opinions, the necessity of composing the confessional lists was for the control of the priests' profits.

The administrative structure of Kyiv Metropolitanate is considered in the thesis. The regular alterations to the administrative jurisdiction of some churches, “duxovni pravlinnia” (spiritual rules), as well as the coming into being of new parishes and the existence of “domovi tserkvy” (house's churches), “khrestovi tserkvy” (cross churches) and national churches did not facilitate the establishing of a system of effective control over parishes. Laymen could freely change their places of residence. However in the second half of the 18^th laymen had already realized that they were fastened to the parish.

The main problems of developing of a system of the governmental control for the annual confession of the laymen and its main achievements are analyzed in this work. It ascertains the attitudes of laity towards the demand of the regular confession for the parish confessors. As a rule, laymen made a confession at least once a year during Lent. At other time, they visited the confessor just in case they needed to prevent hardships or unexpected death. Frustrations in the popular mentality towards the meaning of sin were researched. Necessity of annual confession in the parish caused the extenuation of the filling of sin by laymen. They preferred to not to tell the whole truth during confession. They preferred to pass over some sins in silence instead of losing their good reputation among society.

This thesis emphasizes that the governmental control of annual confession caused the secularization of the popular mentality instead of the expected the confessionalization of the Orthodox Church and the catechization of the congregation.

Key words: confession, confessor, penitent, confessional practise, confession list, sin, penance.

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