4. Peter the Great: the East looks West
Peter the Great: the East looks West 1. Peter's politics Peter the Great was one of Russia's most colourful and powerful tsars, influencing his country's character and destiny in profound ways, not least in religion. Although he officially became tsar in 1682, he was only 10 years old, and his elder sister Sophia ruled as regent. Peter also had an older half-brother Ivan, who was recognized as co-tsar. In 1689, however, Peter managed to sideline his sister and her chief minister by a coup. Although his half-brother Ivan continued to be co-tsar until his death in 1696, he played no part in government; Peter now controlled the Russian empire in his own name. A giant of a man (nearly seven feet tall), he radiated both physical energy and mental restlessness. His thirst for personal control of government could have led to paralysis and disaster, had it not been allied to a hugely capable intellect. A self-taught individual with wide learning, a successful military commander, a ruler who knew how to take advice but ultimately followed his own independent judgment, Peter took hold of his country and devoted his extraordinary powers to remaking it in his own image.
Once government was firmly in his hands, Peter set about reforming Russia on a massive scale, largely with the aim of "Westernizing" it—i.e., bringing its social and political life into harmony with the norms of Western
European nations. Some of this may seem superficial to a modern student, such as forcing the Russian nobility to dress in Western clothes and forbidding the men to sport the traditional Russian beard (there was a "beard tax" for any who refused). However, in other areas Peter's reforms were aimed at the structures of Russian society. It is not the purpose of this book to investigate them, but they embraced educational, cultural, administrative, financial, military, and religious dimensions which together brought Russia into the family of Western nations in important ways.
2. Peter's Church policy It is Peter's religious reforms that command our interest. He took a strong interest in the Russian Church and the role in played in society. In harmony with his desire to conform Russia to Western ways, he at first promoted
Peter Moghila's conception of Orthodoxy (see section 2): in other words, an Orthodoxy Westernized along Roman Catholic lines. The Russian tsar therefore put disciples of Moghila in positions of power as bishops.
Opponents of Moghila were frowned upon. For example, the Likoudes brothers, Joannikos (d.1717) and Sophronios (d.1730), monks whom
Patriarch Dositheos II of Jerusalem had sent to Moscow as theological advisors, were expelled by Peter in 1704 and banished to a remote monastery. Through their printing press, the Likoudes brothers had poured out treatises opposing Moghilan Romanized Orthodoxy, especially its doctrine of the eucharist (where it switched the key moment of consecration from the Eastern epiclesis prayer to the Catholic formula "This is My body").
However, Peter began to see problems in Moghila's form of Orthodoxy.
Chiefly, it had a too militant hostility to Protestantism, at a time when Peter's Westernizing policy required a spirit of openness to the Protestant culture of leading Western nations like Prussia, Saxony, Denmark, and Britain. So Peter ultimately abandoned his support for Moghilan Orthodoxy, transferring his patronage instead to the non-Moghilan Feofan
Prokopovich (1681–1736). Prokopovich, a native of Ukraine, had become a Uniate in order to complete his education in Poland and Rome, but reverted to Orthodoxy on his return to Kiev. Here he became a lecturer, and finally rector, of the theological college founded by Moghila. Prokopovich, however, had turned against Moghila's Romanized Orthodoxy; he thoroughly reshaped the college's outlook into one resembling the vision of Cyril Lucaris—an Orthodoxy that saw Rome as the chief enemy and corrupter of Orthodoxy, and was ready to borrow Protestant weapons to combat the papacy.
Prokopovich was well read in Lutheran theology, and had a real sympathy for some Lutheran ideas. In his mission to purify Orthodoxy of Roman elements, he drew inspiration from the weapons forged against Rome by Lutherans, especially the great Lutheran divines Martin Chemnitz,
Johannes Quenstedt, and Johann Gerhard (Prokopovich's favourite).25
However, Prokopovich was not motivated by purely theological concerns; he was equally driven by the same passion as Peter the Great to Westernize
Russian culture, which included subordinating the Russian Church to the government along the church-state model of Western Europe. This was the man whom Peter chose to spearhead his anti-Moghila campaign in Russia.
Prokopovich was brought to St Petersburg in 1716, and appointed Bishop of Pskov in 1718, and then Archbishop of Novgorod in 1724.
Prokopovich's Westernized version of Russian Orthodoxy swung it behind a more Protestant attitude to the canon of Scripture, favouring the Hebrew Old Testament, with the apocrypha being downgraded to a secondary status ("deuterocanonical"). He also took a more Protestant slant on the authority of extra-biblical tradition: the fathers and councils were not on a par with Scripture, but gained their value as faithful expositors of Scripture which alone was the infallible Word of God. Prokopovich taught a Protestant-leaning view of salvation too; it was through faith alone, albeit such faith is always accompanied by holiness. The Church was the whole body of believers who accepted the truth revealed in Scripture, as expounded by the fathers and councils. In Prokopovich's Lutheran view of church-state relations, the tsar became the divinely appointed head of the church.
It would be going much too far to say that Prokopovich transformed Russian Orthodoxy into a Protestantized body. Many clergy distrusted him; some dared to denounce him. The spiritual and theological character of Orthodoxy was too deeply rooted to change quite so drastically or globally.
Prokopovich's influence was limited. Even so, the next two centuries would undeniably see flourishing in the Russian Church a form of Orthodoxy which had, like Prokopovich, drunk deeply of Protestant sources. Not everyone shared it; but among many who did, the result was not so much a loss of historic Orthodoxy, as a realignment of its attitudes along the lines envisaged by Cyril Lucaris in Constantinople in the previous century.
3. The abolition of the patriarchate Peter was determined that no future Patriarch of Moscow should try to repeat Nikon's attempt to create a political force in the Church that could challenge the state. His solution was to subordinate Church to state on the pattern of Lutheran Germany, where the Church was governed by a stateappointed "consistory", a board of lawyers and theologians. By Peter's time, the conflict with the Old Believers had gravely undermined the power of the Russian Church, making it relatively easy for Peter to accomplish his purpose. It was already the prerogative of the tsar to nominate a man to the patriarchate; when Patriarch Adrian (1690–1700) died, Peter left the office vacant for 20 years. He appointed Stefan Yavorsky (see section 2) to administer patriarchal affairs, but without the rank or authority of a patriarch.
In 1721, Peter officially abolished the patriarchate, replacing it with a Lutheran model of church government. Through his Spiritual Regulation, drafted by Prokopovich, he created a body called the Holy Governing
Synod to regulate the Russian Church. The Spiritual Regulation was based on the Swedish Lutheran kirchenordnung ("Church Constitution") of 1686, which had placed the Swedish Lutheran Church under a more full-blooded royal supremacy, transferring power from the bishops to the king. The Spiritual Regulation's Holy Governing Synod had 10 (later 12) members, all appointed by Peter, whom Peter could also dismiss at will. The Synod's presiding officer was a lay Procurator: he could not vote, but he controlled agenda and membership. By the 19th century the Procurator had evolved into a very powerful official, ensuring that the Russian Orthodox Church was submissive to the tsarist state. Peter himself took the title "Supreme
Judge of the Spiritual College".
The abolition of the patriarchate aroused protests, but Peter was powerful enough to ignore them contemptuously. A mere two years later, in 1723, the other Orthodox patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria acquiesced in Peter's act, and recognized the Holy Synod as the Russian Church's new governing body. The Synod was to rule for 200 years; it would not be until 1917, and the fall of the tsarist state, that the Russian Church would restore the patriarchate.
It would probably be true to say that spiritually-minded Russian Orthodox submitted to the Holy Synod, rather than actually approving of it
as a replacement for the patriarchate. In a Church already so wounded by the schism of the Old Believers, they may well have felt that any path other than submission would merely have inflicted even deeper injuries the Church could not afford to bear. In any event, the Holy Synod often worked quite efficiently; apart from the lay Procurator, the Synod's 12 members were all clergy or monks, who generally had an authentic concern for the Church's welfare. Certainly the "Synodical period" of Russian Orthodox history (1721–1917) was no less productive of brilliant theologians and heaven-breathing saints than any previous period.