This study aimed to investigate the research resource of the textbook written by academician of RAS N.N. Pokrovsky for students on history of the Russian Orthodox Church and state in XIII-XVI centuries. This book was published in 2013. It is a last work done by the famous Russian scientist and archeographer Nikolay Nikolaevich Pokrovsky which was published during the life of the author. It was based on a series of lectures were given to pupils of the Orthodox School in Novosibirsk (Russia). N.N. Pokrovsky studied a problem of history of the Russian Orthodox Church and its experience of communication with a state in different historical periods. This article shows the aspects of practical use of material of this textbook in courses of teaching the historical disciplines in different types of educational organizations. The skills and capacity on creativity in historiography and a wide specter of analyzing the historical sources are studied. N.N. Pokrovsky united the well-known sources on historical science with the documents found by him in Siberia and made a big complex of visual sources.