Political Symbols in Russian History by Lee Trepanier

Author:Lee Trepanier [Trepanier, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7391-5913-2
Publisher: Lexington Books

5

State Secularization and

Church Subordination

(ca. 1676–ca. 1917)

Tsar Theodore (reign 1676–1682) continued his father’s policy on church-state relations: Land grants were given, monasteries were renewed, and the patriarchate immunities remained.1 When Theodore died, a power struggle occurred between the boyars, who wanted the church subordinated to the state, and the clergy, who wanted to have ecclesiastical independence; neither side won. Patriarch Joakim (reign 1674–1690) fought the boyar class to a standstill, and his successor, Patriarch Adrian (reign 1690–1700), continued to defend the interests of the Church by invoking the Kormchaia Kniga as a defense of church prerogatives and privileges. But when Patriarch Adrian died on October 16, 1700, the new tsar, Peter the Great (reign 1682–1725) launched his secular campaign of church subordination with his vision of Westernization.2

Peter’s policy of Westernization was vast, ranging from the reorganization of the military to the centralization of governmental administration, from the development of a national economy to a radical revision of educational and cultural practices. Peter the Great and his policy of Westernization still continues to be a source of controversy among both scholars and ordinary Russians. Was he an enlightened liberal who tried to break Russia free from the chains of its backward past? Was he a reactionary conservative who needed Western military technology to protect Russia from her enemies and maintain power at home?3 I do not intend to resolve these issues concerning the legacy of Peter the Great; rather, I want to focus on his vision of Westernization and how as a public policy and a political symbol it fared to organize Russian society.

Peter’s wars against Turkey (1695–1700, 1711), Sweden (1700–1721), and Persia (1722–1723) compelled him to levy increasingly heavier taxes in order to finance his military campaigns. But unlike Henry VIII, who secularized ecclesiastical property, Peter permitted the economic structure of the Russian Orthodox Church to exist as long as it was under secular control. According to Peter’s policy of Westernization, the Russian Orthodox Church was categorized like any other institution that became subject to a series of taxes to raise troops and supply requisitions according to the number of “souls,” whether alive or dead, that were under its jurisdiction.4 Peter also enforced the Ulozhenie’s prohibition on any further clerical acquisition of property, and he refused to issue new charters or to renew charters that had granted privileges to monasteries and other religious institutions.5 Finally, in January 1701, Peter revived the Monastyrsky Prikaz to govern all patriarchal inhabitants and revenues, and in a series of decrees in 1706, 1711, and 1716, he gave the Monastyrsky Prikaz full authority to govern all clerical persons and crimes, such as “schism, heresy, and opposition to God’s church.”6 Peter abolished the patriarchal Razryadnyi Prikaz that used to govern ecclesiastical cases and replaced it with Monastyrsky Prikaz led by Metropolitan Stefan Yavorsky.7

A former monk of the Monastery of the Caves, Yavorsky was conversant with both Orthodox and Roman Catholic theologies, making him an attractive candidate to Peter.8 As someone who knew the West, and a member

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