The article deals with the process of formation of the jurisdiction of the Orthodox ecclesiastical court in Russia in the period from the adoption of Christianity at the state level to the end of the XVII century. The author concludes that the process of narrowing the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church began long before the reforms of Peter the Great and was connected with the centralisation of state power and the growing need to correct the shortcomings of the church judicial system. Cases of normative interference of sovereigns in the jurisdiction of the church at all stages of pre-Petrine Russia, beginning with the church statutes of Princes Vladimir and Yaroslav, have been identified. It was the stronger, the more the state in the course of centralisation needed an orderly court. The special role of unconvicted literatures in the process of centralisation of justice is also shown.