Lawsuits about Dishonour in the Post-Reform Court: The “Navigation” of the Orthodox Parish Clergy in the Legal Space of the Russian Empire (1860s–1880s)

Abstract

The article is focused on the legal strategies of the Orthodox parish clergy in the post-reform court. Using material from trials of insults to honour, it considers the practice of the clergy’s “jurisdictional jockeying”, which implies a choice between parallel instances of ecclesiastical and secular courts in order to find the most advantageous variant of dispute resolution. The article demonstrates that the duplication of articles about dishonour in the Statutes of the Ecclesiastical Consistories and the Judicial Statutes contributed to the formation of a space for clergy to manoeuvre in the legal field. The analysis of the legal strategies of the litigants and the actions of the institutions involved in the disputes calls into question the thesis typical of historiography about the mainly negative impact of the Court Reform of 1864 on the legal status of the clergy. On the contrary, the post-reform legal uncertainty created gaps in the system of legal proceedings, which gave litigants a chance to obtain a more favourable outcome. At the same time, there was another side to the situation described: like the participants in the disputes, the consistory officials tried to use the intersection of the competences of the secular and diocesan court in their own interests. In conclusion, it is suggested that by resorting to the practice of “jurisdictional jockeying” to achieve their own goals, both the participants in the cases and the consistories helped to limit the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical court and the clergy’s “exploration” of the secular legal space. The author proposes that these processes were, at least in part, an unintended and unwanted consequence of the Synod’s policy.