Аннотация:This article uses the material of surviving documents and archive texts to examine the correlation of Russian, Church Slavonic, and Latin in the ecclesiastical education in the 18th century. The author con¬cludes that there were certain differences in the perception of Church Slavonic by the clergy, contrary to the secular community, whose attention in the 2nd half of the 18th century was drawn to Russian and Church Slavonic. For the clergy, the opposition of Latin as language of education and theology to Russian and Church Slavonic as 'natural' languages was more actual, which prevented them from emphasising the differences between these languages.