Abstract: The subject of the research is the synonymy of religious lexis. In the course of her research Paramonova has discovered that religious lexis typically has excessive synonymy that creates more means of describing the same phenomenon. The main feature of synonymy of religious lexis is the relationship of absolute synonymy. The author describes the sources of absolute synonymy (word-formative processes, foreign vocabulary, words with different inner form, etc.) as well as particular features of synonymic pairs and rows (depending on the scope of application, styles and expressivity). The research material involved about 150 synonymic pairs and rows selected from the edition 'God, Religion' of the Russian Topical Vocabulary, analyzed and classified. Quite frequently religious lexis has been studied by researchers as part of the linguistic world-image, Orthodox discourse and vocabulary reflection, however, there are very few researches of this systemic linguistic phenomenon. Successive analysis of synonymic relations in religious lexis allows to describe features and patterns that have never been described before. 

Abstract: The subject of the research is the funeral oration said by Gabriel Buzhinsky for the death of the Field Marshal Boris Sheremetyev. It is an interesting and understudied achievement of oratory prose of the first quarter of the XVIIIth century. The funeral of Boris Sheremetyev and the funeral oration devoted to him vividly demonstrate the process of developing the positive image of the 'Country's Son' in the Russian social thought of the early XVIIIth century. The image was directly associated with the idea of the 'service of the country' which was actively developed by writers, orators and Peter the First himself during that time period. Honourable burial of the Field Marshal and funeral oration filled with th eulogistic and civic pathos were tools for creating new axiology of the society: Boris Sheremetyev's will to be buried next to his son's grave in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra was sacrificed for the sake of the imperor's intention to develop new values and to create grounds for funeral rites of military brass. In her research Paramonova has used the comparative historical and historical genetic research methods as well as the philological analysis of literary texts. Gabriel Buzhinsky's oratory prose is understudied in Russian literary studies. Never before The Speech for the Funeral of the Field Marshal Boris Sheremetyev has been a matter of individual analysis, thus this text is being analyzed in terms of the cultural, literary and social environments of that epoch for the first time in the academic literature. The analysis of Gabriel Buzhinsky's Funeral Oration for Boris Sheremetyev demonstrates the break point in the oratory prose of the XVIIIth century. Rhetoric religious text written by a preaching monk served secular purposes and developed actual political and social ideas.