‘The History of Russian Church’ by E. E. Golubinsky was based on his lecture course at the Moscow Spiritual Academy. The first volume was on the eldest, pre-Mongolian period and included chapters on the Christianization of Rus’, ecclesiastic administration, parish life, and clergy. There is a special chapter ‘Enlightenment’ about translated and original literature of Old Rus’. The book is not a history of Metropolitans; it is much more a historical research of the religious life of the country. The second volume was centered at the Moscow period till Metropolitan Macarius (mid-sixteenth century). In 1880, G. presented the first volume as his Doctor thesis in ecclesiastic history; he was actively supported by Metropolitan of Moscow Macarius (Bulgakov) and Ober Procurator of the Synod D. A. Tolstoy (the next Ober Procurator C. P. Pobedonostsev was strictly against the conception by G. and made much to prevent the publication of the following volumes). Opponents were against the critical method of the author, who set a question whether the sources were genuine of fake, even if they were treated without doubts (for instance, data of chronicles, church rules by Princes Vladimir and Yaroslav). By that time the ecclesiastic history was far back in comparison with laic research works, and G. wrote that contemporary ecclesiastic history ‘was not yet a scholarly discipline, completely developed and worked out, but was still in progress’; that was the reason, why he came to the conclusion, that many earlier works had been ‘insolvent and false’. It was the first serious attempt to combine modern methods and the field of the ecclesiastic history of Russia.