Canons of the Orthodox Church on Sacrilege

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of sacrilege as a punishable act in the canon law of the Orthodox Church and the determination of the composition of this offense. The purpose of the study is to conceptualize sacrilege as a way of protecting res sacrae and other res divini iuris in canon law. The author studies sources in Greek and Latin, as well as translations, and concludes that interpreters of the canons on sacrilege consider, first of all, the 72nd and 73rd canons of the holy apostles and, complementing them, the 6th and 8th canons of St. Gregory of Nyssa, the 10th canon of the Protodeutera, while canons contain other references to sacrilege. The methodology chosen by the author allows us to expand the list of canons under study, following the words «ἱεροσῡλία» and «sacrilegium» and its cognates which were used to denote sacrilege in the Septuagint and Vulgate. Studying the texts of the sources, the author discovers and proves the dual nature of sacrilege as a punishable act — as a crime against property and a crime against God, but expressed strictly against specific objects of the material world such as res sacrae and other res divini iuris which can be both objects and persons.