Пинская генеральная конгрегация православного духовенства 1791 года как первый опыт враждебных действий Фанара в отношении Русской Православной Церкви

Abstract

The article examines the little-known event in the Church history of the Western Russian region – the Pinsk General Congregation of 1791, which put on its agenda the issue of the subordination of the Orthodox population in Poland to the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The author traces the premises, course and significance of this meeting of the Orthodox clergy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as the role of the Patriarch of Constantinople Neophytos VII in its holding and his guiding motives. It is concluded that: 1) the Pinsk Congregation was an unlawful assembly from the canonical point of view, and it served to intensify the actions of the Russian Empire against the Polish statehood; 2) the motives for the support of the Congregation on the part of the leadership of the Patriarchate of Constantinople were the idea of the universal power of Constantinople in the Orthodox world, and also the Greek nationalism; 3) the assistance to the separatist movement of the Orthodox clergy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealths in 1791 became, chronologically, the first experience of Phanar’s hostile actions against Russian Orthodox Church.