Orthodox Teaching About Autocephaly

Abstract

After the revival of the theological schools of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 40-50s. XX century, the emphasis in the teaching of canon law at the Moscow Theological Academy was placed on the themes of church-state relations and church autocephaly, for which special at­tention was paid to the study of the canonical heritage of the Orthodox Church. An example is the recordings of lectures by professors of the MDA of the 40-60s. S.V. Troitsky and V.I. Talyzin, who also sought to represent the Church as an institute of sui iuris even in the conditions of a not just secular, but aggressively atheistic state. The MDA Library contains a typewritten record of in­dividual lectures by V. Talyzin on church law, dedicated to the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church, marriage, etc. Below is a record of a 1958 lecture on the Orthodox doctrine of autocephaly.