Teaching and professors of canon law in the first years of the existence of the Leningrad Theological Academy: On the question of succession

Abstract

The article discusses the continuity of the educational and scientific model of prerevolutionary academies and seminaries in the Leningrad Theological Academy in relation to the teaching of canon (ecclesiastic) law. Leonid Grinchenko, Archpriest John Kozlov and Pavel Ignatov taught canon law at the Leningrad Theological Academy in 1946–1966. The article examines the details of biographies and the lecture courses of Grinchenko and Ignatov found in the library of St. Petersburg Theological Academy. We conclude that Grinchenko and Ignatov were experts in the field of canon law; Archpriest John Kozlov was a “random” person in this chair. The lecture courses of Grinchenko and Ignatov seriously differed in their approach: former is interested in the Roman and Protestant Churches, course latter’s is close in content and structure to pre-revolutionary and modern ones. Continuity in the teaching of canon law at the Leningrad Theological Academy can be characterized as nonlinear. We think that the subject of a separate study will be the study of the question of how the texts of the lectures of Leonid Grinchenko and Pavel Ignatov reflected their very different educations and scientific schools.