Church Slavonic is our language for conversation with God
Divine services constitute the soul of church life, and such it is in the understanding of the Orthodox Russian people, for whom the very life of the Church is completely equivalent to what happens in church.
Orthodox Church Slavonic worship is one of the main ways of expressing love for God, developing prayerful communication with Him, and the best school for mastering the highest forms of patristic theology and spiritual experience. Calls for a transition to both the liturgical Russian language on the part of neo-renovationists and to Russified Church Slavonic on the part of supporters of “modernization through tradition” have recently been tried to be justified by the “missionary necessity” to bring almost all 80% of the Russian population of the Russian Federation to the Church. And it is the Church Slavonic language, according to other adherents of the “mission without borders,” that is supposedly the main obstacle to the coming of new people to the Church.
A logical question arises: why, in order to achieve missionary “comprehensibility of worship,” are there calls only for reform of the liturgical language, while calls for reform do not extend to other aspects of the liturgical action, such as icons, liturgical utensils, and, above all, liturgical vestments?[ 1] After all, to a modern person who has entered an Orthodox church for the first time, a lot is incomprehensible, and not only in prayers and chants in Church Slavonic.
First of all, the incomprehensible and archaic vestments of clergy are striking: neither on the street, nor in the subway, nor at stadiums and rock concerts, no one appears in these “strange” and incomprehensible phelonions and sakkos with golden trim, or in armbands and stoles, and even more so in a miter with a cross. But for some reason only the language of worship is proposed to be revised.
Liturgical vestments, like liturgical language, are sacred
, i.e.
allocated only
for temple prayer use. Sacred vestments and sacred liturgical language reflect the concept of the otherworldly nature of the Church, testify to the other nature of what is happening in the temple - and outside its walls. Liturgical vestments, intended only for the glory and splendor of Divine services, cannot be worn or used in everyday life. The Lord also commanded the Old Testament priests, when leaving the Temple into the outer courtyard to the people, to take off their liturgical robes and place them in the barriers of the saints, putting on other clothes (Ezek. 44:19). In the Orthodox Church, at the end of the service, sacred vestments are also removed and left in the church.
The same fully applies to the liturgical Church Slavonic language - the language of the Church and prayer. This language, directly related to the performance of church rites and serving as a verbal vestment
liturgical actions, cannot but be a sacred language, holy, i.e.
separated
from everything everyday. Therefore, due to its sacred nature, liturgical language should not coincide with the language used outside the temple.
Church Slavonic language is sacred
(from the Greek “hieros”, i.e. separated from the ordinary) liturgical language because it was created by Cyril and Methodius for a higher purpose -
for liturgical use
, for the church glorification of God and communication with Him, as well as for translations of Greek church books , in particular, liturgical books.
Cyril and Methodius, based on the South Slavic dialect, created a new
language that was never spoken and whose grammar and vocabulary adequately conveyed the meaning and structure of the Greek language. Therefore, it can hardly be said that in the 10th century Church Slavonic worship was more understandable than it is now.
No modern spoken language used in the Orthodox worship of some local Churches is sacred or sacred (in the Greek Church they serve not in spoken Greek, but in the ancient Greek language “Koine”, used in the period from the 4th century BC to the 5th century). century after Christ, and which differs from modern Greek much more than Church Slavonic from modern Russian).
But they will ask: why are Orthodox Americans, Japanese, French, Germans, Finns allowed to serve in their native language, but Russians are not? For the simple reason that the Slavic peoples
Having accepted Orthodoxy and become engaged to the Divine Bridegroom, they received as a “dowry” a shrine - the Church Slavonic liturgical language. The Russian Orthodox Church has its own local church tradition, part of which is the Church Slavonic language, sanctified by thousands of years of use in worship.
Therefore, it is our duty to carefully preserve this precious pearl of the Orthodox Church - Church Slavonic worship, which has been enlightening the Russian Orthodox world and the souls of believers for more than a thousand years.
Those who are now trying to translate Church Slavonic services into Russian (primarily the “translation group” of the St. Philaret Institute) testify either to their ecclesiastical ignorance and complete loss of the spirit of churchliness, or to completely definite political (primarily anti-Russian) goals and tasks that these tireless “workers” simply do not want to inform the uninitiated environment about for the time being.
* * *
Several years ago, in the Greek Orthodox Church, for missionary purposes and, above all, for the sake of attracting young people to churches, an experiment was conducted to introduce a modern language of worship, which ended in complete failure.
“In 2004–2005. The Greek Orthodox Church conducted a nine-month “pilot project” to use modern Greek when reading passages from the New Testament during services in a number of Athens parishes.
According to the Archbishop of Athens and all of Greece, Christodoulus, the trial period showed that the innovation did not arouse noticeable interest among young people. Meanwhile, attracting young people to a better understanding of worship was the main goal of the failed program, recalls the Greek newspaper Kathimerini.
Representatives of older generations, on the contrary, believe that there is no point in changing the sound of biblical texts that they have heard so many times during their lives" ( Interfax.
27.06.2005).
* * *
Holy Mountain Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)
talked about the imaginary problem of misunderstanding of the Church Slavonic language as follows: “Everyone, without exception, spends enormous efforts to master the complex terminologies of various fields or technical knowledge... For such a person, mastering a very small number of words uncommon in everyday life is a matter of several hours.”
The Church Slavonic language does not pose any difficulty or, much less, an insurmountable barrier to understanding the meaning of liturgical texts. The effort to study any foreign language is incommensurably higher than the effort that a person should expend on simply becoming familiar with the Church Slavonic language. And yet, almost everyone here speaks English.
And in fact, now, in the age of universal computerization and global communications, when a modern Russian person, in order to visit other countries, easily masters two or three foreign languages and no less easily masters the language of the modern multimedia community, such euphonious Russian words as “tolerance”, “diaper”, “summit”, “populism”, “pluralism”, “moratorium”, “homosexual”, “supermarket”, “rating”, “briefing”, “shopping”, “monitoring”, “tuning”, “marketing” "", "consulting", "holding", "piercing", "roaming", "blockbuster", "sponsor", "rights provider", "barter", "blogger", "dealer", "killer", "broker", “realtor”, “biker”, “newsmaker”, “speaker”, “producer”, “distributor”, “prefect”, “ombudsman”, “mayor”, “futures”, “security”, “community”, “publicity” "", "brand", "trend", "referendum", "copyright", "paradigm", "image", "bonus", "quorum", "racket", "default", "kamikaze", "deposit", “mainstream”, “consensus”, “boutique”, “remake”, “impeachment”, “municipality”, “mentality”, “management”, “dress code”, “top manager”, “media market”, “gay pride”, “talk show”, “prime time”, “know-how”, “barter”, “quota”, “service”, “city”, “overtime”, “dividends”, “convergence” "", "presentation", "indexation", "ratification", "prolongation", "corporation", "inflation", "stagnation", "rotation", "privatization", "exclusive", "adequate", "innovative", “liquid”, “politically correct”, “erotic”, “xenophobic” ( abused.
), “homophobic” (
rugat.
), “missiophobic” (
rugat.
), and even such wonderful “creative” as “budget discomfort”, “glamorous drive”, “biased promotion” and other similar barter tranquillization and crap do not represent for him, a modern Russian person, there are no difficulties in understanding this elegant literature.
Memorizing one and a half dozen
obscure Church Slavonic words evokes a violent civil protest among the same modern citizen: the divine service must certainly be sounded in modern and understandable Russian! For some highly educated Christians, these fifteen hundred Church Slavonic words represent a serious obstacle to their salvation: well, it has simply become impossible to save one’s soul when a priest at a service pronounces “life” instead of the word “life.”
As a last resort, say less radical lovers of God, salvation is possible in Russified Church Slavonic. However, “the last will be worse than the first”
, which was demonstrated by the works of the Liturgical Commission of the early twentieth century under the leadership of Archbishop Sergius (Stragorodsky), which Russified the Lenten and Colored Triodion: this Russification will become that “intermediate stage” of the liturgical language, with which the final transition to the Russian language will be greatly accelerated and facilitated.
As a result of the work of this commission, the language of the main liturgical books (Lenten Triodion, Colored Triodion, Octoechos) was noticeably Russified and deprived of its former beauty. Let us cite the testimony of B.I. Sove: “The corrected editions of liturgical books, especially the Lenten Triodion and the Penticostarion, spread rather slowly, encountering opposition in many places (for example, in the Valaam Monastery)” (Theological Works, 1970, collection V). The corrected texts of the irmos almost never took hold, since the choristers used old books, and the newly corrected irmos and stichera were not accepted by the established church singing tradition, because it was already a New Slavonic (that is, slightly Russified) language, different from traditional Church Slavonic. Despite all the apparently successful actions of the Synodal Commission headed by Archbishop Sergius for the correction of liturgical books, the new printed products caused a certain resistance in church circles and, as Bishop Nikolai (Muravyov-Uralsky) writes, the next one, carried out even before the revolution, was the publication of the Lenten and Colored Triodion published in the previous, uncorrected edition.
Archpriest Sergiy Pravdolyubov
writes: “Before the revolution, there was a translation of the Lenten Triodion into a modernized Slavic language. This translation was prepared by a special commission headed by Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), the future patriarch. In 1912 this book was published. And here is the question: why did this translation not take root either in the choirs or among the clergy? This is a burning question. You understand what’s the matter: it’s a colossal amount of work to prepare such a translation. People worked for almost five years, and not the worst people did this work! But for some reason it didn’t catch on, for some reason I didn’t like it. It was a terrible disappointment, such bitterness for Metropolitan Sergius when the people did not accept the translation of his commission. Moreover, Professor of Liturgics at the MDA A.I. Georgievsky once told us about how the people did not accept the new edition of the Triodion in 1912.
After many years of work spent on translation, Metropolitan Sergius went out to read the Great Canon on Monday of the first week of Great Lent: “When will I begin to mourn my accursed life and deeds...”
. And after the service, the people did not disperse and stood silently. And when the future patriarch began to leave the church, one of the people said: “Your Eminence, when will the Canon of Andrew of Crete be read?” Metropolitan Sergius grunted, got upset, and on the second day, Tuesday, he read from the old text - and he himself had been translating for five years!
The people did not want to listen, and this was not because of self-indulgence, not out of some kind of protest. This is a much more serious mystery that should be addressed and understood: why? From a philological, linguistic, rhythmic, church-literary, that is, hymnographic, spiritual-ascetic point of view, why was this not accepted? As a liturgist, I did this: I compared the translation of the Great Canon, which was made in 1912, with the traditional Slavic text, with two other Slavic translations and with the Greek original. Paradoxically, it turned out that the traditional Slavic translation is much closer to the Greek text, its rhythm, its spiritual and ascetic intensity than all the newest translations. That's the problem! There was some kind of insensitivity and lack of understanding among the translators; there was no organic closeness to the original Greek text - and the people did not accept this translation!” (https://www.pravmir.ru/article_4229.html).
Here are two statements from Internet forums that give a very sober assessment of this proposed new translation: “Due to the specifics of the translation problem, those who are critical of the Church Slavonic language will deal with it more. Along with “unfreezing” the Church Slavonic language, it will be necessary to create an icon on the right, because Church Slavonic language and the language of icons have a common basis. A feature of any redistribution process, large or small, is the arrival of unscrupulous pragmatists on the wave of “romantics” (in our case, translators of the Church Slavonic language). Remember all the revolutions and our year 1991. The same thing will happen with Church Slavonic.”
“Those who demand translation into Russian not only do not understand the complexity of the task, but also understand the service not traditionally, but as a lecture
, which must be understood immediately, otherwise you will not understand what will happen next, and you will fall hopelessly behind.
This “method of mastering the material” is clear to them from the institute bench, but the church method, understandable to a simple granny, was not taught to them. The service is not a lecture addressed to us, but our appeal to God
, which we have been studying for years.”
“God forbid,” St. Philaret said as his dying testament (Amphitheaters)
, Metropolitan of Kiev (†1857) - if from the translation of the Bible they come to the translation of liturgical books..., the content of which, meanwhile, is predominantly in the Slavic language and is full of both instruction and grace-filled inspiration.”
But the words of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church K.P. Pobedonostsev
, said in 1906: “Our Church Slavonic language is the great treasure of our spirit, the precious source and inspirer of our folk speech... After all, it is native from time immemorial, native to our people, the normal, classical structure of the Russian language was formed on it, and the further it deviates from this the root of the language of literature, the more it deteriorates, loses its definition and clarity, and the less it becomes native and understandable to the people... After all, no Church except the Orthodox has such a treasure as we have.”
Let us give a number of other statements about the Church Slavonic language.
Saint Nicholas of Japan (Kasatkin)
:
“I believe that the translation of the Gospel and liturgy should not descend to the level of the masses, but, on the contrary, believers should rise to the level of understanding the gospel and liturgical texts.”
Archpriest Valentin Sventsitsky
(† 1931) in one of his sermons said wonderful words about the Church Slavonic language: “The question, which seems so simple and clear to many who think that the Slavic language is some kind of antiquity and relic and that they simply do not have the courage to admit the obvious truth, that it is better to pray in a language that everyone understands. This question is not so simple. And this decision of his is not the truth at all, but the deepest delusion. Divine services must be performed in the Slavic language. The reason for this statement is clear to those who decide the issue not on the basis of worldly reflections, but on the basis of spiritual experience. This spiritual experience showed people that the spoken language in which our worldly conversations are conducted, transferred to worship, entails worldly memories and our thoughts, already wandering God knows where during prayer and going about our worldly affairs, from this worldly language with During worship, one is even more carried away into the sphere of worldly concerns.
This spiritual experience further showed that the Slavic language is the most perfect form for expressing prayerful states.
In matters of faith, reason is not as important as the entire totality of spiritual forces that comprehend these truths, and in prayer it is not the literal translation and knowledge of each word that is important, but the completeness and perfection of the linguistic form, containing the entire content.”
According to the rector of the church of St. Apostles Peter and Paul in Shuvalovo Archpriest Nikolai Golovkin
“Parishioners need to be raised to the level of knowledge of the Church Slavonic language, but in no case should the language of worship be changed; it has been for a thousand years and must remain now. Nowadays, many people are studying foreign languages, and not one at a time, but two at a time, studying completely alien words. So is it really impossible to remember a dozen incomprehensible words in Church Slavonic? Basically, the Slavic language is understandable. If you begin to read it constantly - in the psalter, in home prayer - then gradually, even without specially studying it, you can understand most of the liturgical text. For example, many, reading “I will take out my praise to the Lord,” understand that “I will take out” means “always.” This word does not need to be changed in worship. You just need to learn obscure words. Compared to foreign languages, the Slavic language is much more accessible to us. The liturgical language cannot be changed; the Church Slavonic language must remain. After all, translation always loses the depth of disclosure of a particular concept. Some clergymen begin to arbitrarily translate during services, for example, the word “belly”, replacing it with the word “life”, apparently taking parishioners for fools. But you don't have to do this! A person, even entering a church for the first time, if he is a thinking person, then, having served the service, having become accustomed to worship, he will gradually begin to understand its language. It is impossible to translate the liturgical language, bringing it closer to the modern Russian language.”
And here is what Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin)
: “Supporters of linguistic reform of worship argue that in a new, modern language the liturgy will be more understandable. But the liturgy itself is a mystery. It cannot become understandable at the verbal-semantic level, otherwise it would be possible to understand and assimilate liturgics with a book in hand at a desk.
Here is the mysticism and charm of language: the ancient sacred language touches the human heart, makes the innermost strings of the soul sound. Modernists do not know or feel this; they want to replace the ancient language with new languages in order to make the semantics of the word clearer, which does not make the mystery of worship clearer.
The sacred Church Slavonic language seems to testify that in church we communicate with another world, with another reality that is unusual for us.
The sermon in the temple is delivered in modern language. But prayer cannot be mixed with preaching or theology. A sermon talks about the spiritual world, and prayer includes us in this world; theology shows the way, and prayer leads along that path.
Let us carefully read the psalms aloud in the new and ancient languages, what difference will we see in our inner state? A new language is like water, which can quench thirst, but leaves the soul cold, and an ancient language is like wine, which gladdens and gladdens the human heart.”
Hegumen Sergius (Troitsky)
: “It is absolutely fair to say today that the tendency to switch to the Russian language in worship is not only a mistake, but a serious blow to church culture,
a kind of act of anti-church vandalism and barbarism
. And this tendency should clearly qualify as renovationism. The Church of Christ, even during the heyday of Byzantium, when Constantinople was the spiritual center of Orthodoxy, introduced barbarian peoples to its rich cultural heritage, and did not descend to its own barbarization. Moreover, in our time, when the people are experiencing a spiritual and serious economic crisis, liturgical reforms will inevitably cause great confusion among the people of God, both monastics and clergy. And it is precisely at this time that His Holiness Patriarch Kirill is obliged, like the apple of his eye, to preserve unity among the people of God, stopping the unhealthy tendencies of thoughtless and confused reforms for the people of God. And it was precisely this duty that His Holiness recalled in his speech after his enthronement. God grant that the words spoken from the pulpit be confirmed in practice.”
* * *
We were especially pleased that extremely sober words regarding the far-fetched problem of Russification of the Church Slavonic language unexpectedly came from the lips of a person with whose opinion the magazine “Blessed Fire” had a very tough polemic: Abbot Peter (Meshcherinov)
expressed an opinion that completely coincides with the position of the editors of our magazine.
“A change in the liturgical language will entail a change in the structure of the service, and this is extremely undesirable. If we touch the divine service now, we will not do anything better, but harm will be done,” said Fr. Peter in Moscow at the presentation of Olga Sedakova’s “Dictionary of Difficult Words from Liturgy.”
As the abbot said, he had little experience of participating in divine services, where much was read in Russian. “I spent time in this environment and realized that a change in language inevitably entails a change in the structure of worship,” admitted Father Peter. “No one is ready to remake the structure of worship now, and I consider changing the structure of worship extremely undesirable in our postmodern cultural space. Now, just touch something and everything will fall down,” he believes. According to the abbot, with regard to Orthodox worship in our time, “the only thing left is truly reasonable protection.”
In addition, as the priest emphasized, “worship is a very important thing, but our biggest problems are in life outside the church: we are Orthodox in the church, but we are not very good at being one in some public space. This is precisely what explains the “heightened sensitivity” to issues of liturgical language and translation” (https://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=29583).
The editors of the magazine “Blessed Fire” fully share the point of view of Abbot Peter on this issue. Probably, among our deeply respected opponents there must be differences of opinion, so that among them, according to the words of the Apostle, the most skillful ones will emerge.
* * *
And finally, let us recall the order of the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky)
dated September 14, 1925 to all the faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church,
which remains in force to this day
and which speaks of “the introduction of various innovations that often confuse the conscience of believers when performing divine services...”, in particular, “p.
13) Introduction of the Russian language into liturgical practice... I resolutely declare
- wrote Metropolitan Peter -
about the inadmissibility... of such phenomena in church liturgical practice... and I warn that persistent innovators will be subjected to penalties by me
.
Let us remember this instruction of the Hieromartyr Peter and, guided by his order, carefully preserve the Tradition of the Church.
Used materials
- Brockhaus and Efron, article Church Slavonic language
- Encyclopedia "Around the World", article "Church Slavonic language"
- A.Yu. Musorin, Church Slavonic language and Church Slavonicisms, Science. University. 2000. Materials of the First Scientific Conference. - Novosibirsk, 2000. - P. 82-86
- Larisa Marsheva, PRASLAVIAN, CHURCH SLAVIC, RUSSIAN...,
[1] Khaburgaev G.A. Old Slavonic language. Textbook for pedagogical students. Institute, specialty No. 2101 “Russian language and literature”. M., "Enlightenment", 1974
[2] N.M. Elkina, Old Church Slavonic language, textbook for students of philological faculties of pedagogical institutes and universities, M., 1960
