Classification of documentary sources on the history of parish churches of the Tobolsk eparchy of the 18th - early 20th centuries

In the research a critical analysis of various types of church documents systematization is carried out. Similar and distinctive features of scholars' opinions are given. Among experts in the history of church there is no consensus about the classification of church sources. The only thing scholars agree on is the classification of church books, confession lists, clerical lists, marriage searches and census records about sacred and clergymen, their families as a group of documents of the church account and mass sources. The author's classification of the documentary sources of parish churches of the Tobolsk eparchy of the 18th - early 20th centuries is presented; it was developed as a result of the analysis of the documents stored in the Russian State Historical Archive, in the State Archive in Tobolsk and in the State Archive of Kurgan Oblast. Official documentation of parish churches of the Tobolsk eparchy of the 18th - early 20th centuries has been conditionally divided into four categories by the functional criterion: assembly documents; registration documents; reporting documents; parish chronicles; correspondence; documents on economic activity. Documents of legal and standard character belong to the first group, assembly documents; they include three categories: 1) acts of the supreme authorities; 2) departmental acts of the Holy Ruling Synod; 3) regulations of local bodies of the church power. The second group of documents includes documents of the church accounting of the population which began at the end of the first quarter of the 18th century. The third group of sources is reporting documents. Parish chronicles are classified into a separate, the fourth, group. The fifth group of documents of parish churches of the Tobolsk eparchy is correspondence; the sixth is economic documents. Most often archives have account books (receipts and expenses books could be kept separately) and property registers of parish churches. This group can also contain notebooks of profit, expenses and surplus of prayers of absolution and paper bands; profit registers of church priests; books for records of donation money or butts; books of auxiliary salaries; justificatory monetary documents; registers of parishioners depositing funds for the maintenance of the temple; cases of church repairs; documents on the opening of parish guardianship and renovation of church iconostases; books on candle sales; paper band and prayer books.

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