Stoglavi Sobor
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The Stoglavi Sobor (Стоглавый Собор) or Council of a Hundred Chapters was a church council that was held in Moscow in 1551, with participation of the tsar Ivan IV and representatives of the Boyarskaya Duma. It convened in January and February 1551, with some final sessions as late as May of that year.
The name “Stoglavi Sobor” comes from the collection of cathedral decisions divided into 100 chapters (or "Sto glav"). The Stoglavi Sobor was called under the government’s initiative which aspired to support the church in struggle against anti-feudal heretical movements and simultaneously to subordinate its secular authority.
The Stoglavi Sobor proclaimed the inviolability of church properties and the exclusive jurisdiction of church courts over ecclesiastics. At the demand of the church hierarchy the government cancelled the tsar's jurisdiction over ecclesiastics. In exchange, members of the Stoglavi Sobor made concessions to the government in a number of other areas (prohibition to monasteries to found new large villages in cities, etc.).
By decisions of the Stoglavi Sobor, church ceremonies and duties in the whole territory of Russia were unified, and norms of church life were regulated with the purpose of increasing the educational and moral level of the clergy to ensure they would correctly fulfill their duties, such as creation of schools for preparation of priests. Control of church authorities was established over activity book writers and icon painters, etc.
During the second half of the 16th centuries "Stoglav" was the basic code of law rules of an internal life of religious estate and its mutual relations with a society and the state (there are some hand-written editions "Stoglav").