Stoglavy Cathedral and Ivan the Terrible

The Hundred-Headed Council of 1551 marked a certain stage in the development of the state, society, religion and culture. At the time of the cathedral, the tsar of all Russia, Ivan Vasilievich was twenty years old, but he was the king "in force." Thanks to his young age, Ivan Vasilievich was burning with a thirst for reform, so that the country would become a powerful power and Holy Russia.

The middle of the 16th century is considered a time of modernization, when Russia, from an unsettled state, turned into the strongest country in Europe and Asia. The Kazan and Astrakhan kingdoms were conquered, there was a war with the Crimean Khanate. The zemsky land of the Russian land began, when zemstvos were formed, who took part in the government of the state through their representatives. The army was modernized, and the nobility was formed, a new system of taxation was introduced.

In the 15th century, the Byzantine Empire fell , a blow was struck against the stronghold of Orthodox Christianity, and Rus took upon itself the burden of defending Orthodoxy. The task was set to equip Russia according to Orthodox laws, and for this, church reform was required. The religious consciousness of the laity was very high, for the Russian people the soul was always in the first place, but the higher ranks of the clergy, by their example, destroyed all the pillars of morality.

The cathedral began with the appeal of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich to the assembled clergymen. In his speech, which is described in the first chapters of the cathedral office (a hundred-domed cathedral), he spoke about how bad everything is in Holy Russia: the higher hierarchical circles of the clergy were mired in drunkenness, debauchery, sodomy, which was promoted by property rights, that is, possession of populated lands .

Not only did the priests live off the lands attributed to the monasteries, they also received a "rugu" from the state treasury: wine, honey, food, clothing.

Ivan Vasilyevich asked the clergy to help in the maintenance of the alms-house, to buy out captured people and to give part of the monastic lands to the servicemen, but the higher priesthood did not want to let go of their possessions and treasury, and answered the tsar with a refusal.

Stoglavy Cathedral is the 100 chapters of the cathedral office, which describe all the speeches, discussions and answers to the king's questions, of which there were 69. The result of this council was the adoption of the following decisions:

- to lead to deanery all the church texts, that is, to use only the canonized ones;

- the service must be conducted under the complete Charter;

- To overshadow yourself with a double sign;

- write icons on samples (according to Rublev and the Greek);

- to eradicate ritual paganism;

- the wedding was allowed from the age of 15 to boys and from the age of 12 to girls;

- the hundred-headed cathedral forbade eating douches and blood (animals and birds caught in snares);

- baptism should be carried out by a three-time immersion in water, and not by pouring;

- the issue with ransom polanyannikov was resolved;

- Supervision of the monastery treasury is imputed to the people of the tsar, etc.

But Stoglavy Cathedral was not able to equip the life of the higher church nobility, which continued to live in sin and sodomy.

Stoglavy Cathedral is the most important document that shows how civilized was Russian society in the 16th century. Many historians, not attaching importance to such important reforms of those years, denigrated and degraded the events of the Russian Middle Ages.