Regulation of liturgical practice in the legacy of hieromartyr Veniamin of Petrograd

Abstract

The article describes the peculiarities of the regulation of liturgical practice in the churches of the Petrograd diocese in the early 1920s. The liturgical department of the «Society of Orthodox Parishes of Petrograd and the Province» prepared liturgical recommendations for parish practice with the participation and blessing of the future Hieromartyr Veniamin (Kazan)  Metropolitan of Petrograd and distributed them as part of the Church Calendar for 1921 and 1922. In general, the recommendations on the celebration of the Divine Liturgy correspond to the approaches to the regulation of the liturgical practice of the profile department of the Local Council of the Orthodox Russian Church of 1917–1918. The liturgical recommendations of Hieromartyr Veniamin, suppressing certain parish customs, gives an idea of the most common abuses in the parish worship of Petrograd. Many of these abuses were later perceived by the «progressive clergy», who participated in the organization of the Renovationist schism in the Russian Orthodox Church. The liturgical heritage of the Holy Martyr Veniamin is in connection with the principles set forth in the «Address» of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. But unlike him, Holy Martyr Veniamin gives specific recommendations for the ordering of parish worship, which became an essential stage in the development of the practice of regulating liturgical practice in the first half of the twentieth century.