THE REGULATION OF ISSUES OF PERFORMING BAPTISM AND OCCASIONAL CHURCH RITUALS IN THE CONTEXT OF RUSSIA-ARMENIA INTERFAITH RELATIONS (1828–1905)

Abstract

The article attempts to analyze the regulation of situations in which, for the commission of the sacrament of baptism and other church demands, persons of Orthodox confession were forced to turn to the priests of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and persons of the Armenian confession to the Orthodox priests. However, it was not a question of a change in religion. It was established that such situations occurred due to forced circumstances and often entailed negative consequences of state-legal, church-canonical and domestic nature. For example, the fact that an Armenian priest baptized a child born to Orthodox spouses was regarded as "seduction from Orthodoxy", even if it was caused by a dangerous disease of a newborn. The baptism of an Armenian child in the Orthodox rank led to intra-family religious strife: the child was now considered a member of the Orthodox Church, while his parents continued to belong to the Armenian Church.
 It is concluded that, firstly, the entry of Eastern Armenia and the Armenian Apostolic Church into Russia played a significant role in the emergence of church-practical situations and the need for their regulation by Russian law and the governing bodies of both Churches. Secondly, the decree of the Echmiadzin Synod of 1854 granted the Armenian priests the right to perform all church sacraments in respect of children baptized in their infancy in the Orthodox rite, provided that the parents, being of Armenian religion, did not give a written obligation to raise their children in the Orthodox religion. Thirdly, the patronizing policy of the empire regarding Orthodoxy and the dominant position of the Russian Church led to a complication of relations between the Orthodox clergy and the clergy of the Armenian Church. In cases where representatives of both Churches had equal initial rights to perform public church actions (for example, the rite of blessing of water on the feast of the Epiphany within the same city), primacy, and in some cases (as, for example, in 1858 in Astrakhan) exclusive right granted to the Russian Church.