A Study of Peter the Great and His Church Policies

In 1682 a new chapter in Russian history was inaugurated with the accession of Peter the

Great (r.16821725), who vigorously pursued four basic policies during his 43-year-long

reign.: fFirst, he wanted to Europeanize or Westernize his people.; sSecond, he wished to

open a window on the sea.; tThird, he proposed to secularize the Church.; and fFourthly, he

desired to consolidate and make absolute make his ruling power absolute and consolidate it.

But correctly speaking, Aall the above four projects contributed to one ambitious grand plan:

the modernization of Russia. Thus these four policies were inseparably linked or duplicated

to one another.

Peter Alekseevich Romanov was born in Moscow at around one in the morning of

Thursday, on May 30, 1672, on the same day as the feast of St. Isaac of Dalmatia.1

According to Feofan Prokopovich, archbishop of Pskow and vice-president of the Holy

Synod, Peter expired between four and five in the morning of January 28, 1725 in his study

on the first floor of the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg. Thus Peter lived, as official records

excrpulously pointed out, for fifty-two years, seven months and twenty-nine days,and ruled

for forty-two years, seven months and three days.2

As the fourth monarch of the illustrious Romanov dynasty (1613-1917), Peter the

Great is probably the most widely celebrated and the most extraordinary of all the Russian

czars. At the zenith of their rule later, the Romanov family reigned over one-sixth of the

earth's land surface. The foreign traveller must readjust his watch as many as ten times in

journeying the nearly 6,000 miles from the Gulf of Finland to the shores of the Bering Strait.

Never in the worlds history has one family wielded so tremendous power in such a colossal

territory. A Russian proverb appropriately says, "Our greatest enemy is our own space."3

The foremost Oxford historian George Clark wrote, "No one man since Charlemagne
(742-814) had made so deep an impression on the political history of the world, and

possibly none except Napoleon (1769-1821) had done so since."4 As one of history's most

forcible reformers, Peter radically transformed his semi-Asiatic Russian society into an

advanced Europeanized modern state, whose reform policies included virtually every

dimension of the administration, warfare, society, economy, education, religion, and culture

of the country, and so on. Few would deny the fact that Russia was a diametrically

different place in 1725 when Peter died from what it had been in 1682, some four decades

before, when he came to the throne. Because this paper focuses on Peter's policies toward

the Church, suffice it to say that only military reform is to be discussed briefly here. This

information is, however, greatly helpful and necessary in our discussion of Peter's religious

policies.

It is argued by most historians that in the second half of the seventeenth century when

Peter was born (1672) the Russian army had a dismal and miserable reputation. The armed

forces were poorly equipped, the soldiers ill-disciplined, and virtually untrained., and They

remained so until the Russian army was helplessly defeated at Narva, on November 30,

1700, by the Swedish Charles XII (r.1687-1718)., where bBetween 8,000 and 10,000

Russians were killed, and thousands captured.5 From first to last, Peter's paramount

concern was to build up his powerful military establishment.

One of Peter's most spectacular enterprises during his reign was the organization of

the so-called Grand Embassy, which was made up of as many as 270 strictly-chosen

persons, led by a prominent Genevan soldier Franz Lefort (1655-1699)., whoLefort then

served as tutor to Peter, and later became the first admiral of the Russian fleet. Lefort's

entourage often included a twenty-five-year-old inquisitive young man, traveling incognito

through Western Europe, who was none other than Czar Peter himself. The main mission

of the Embassy spent 534 days (almost eighteen months) away from Moscow, from March
 9, 1697, through August 25, 1698, which would be the longest and grandest Russian

embassy ever made.6

. The 18-month-long Great Embassy (1697-1698) was crucial for crystallizing

Peter's ambitious plan of modernizing Russia. At every stage, Peter determined to do battle

with the traditionalism of semi-Asiatic Russian society. In the Hohenzollern province of

East Prussia, Peter studied one of the world's most efficient military organizations, acquired

excellent shipbuilding skills in the Dutch Netherlands, and also learned other superior

shipbuilding, commerce, and financial knowhow in England. Peter's biographers never fail

to point out that he ended his European trip by mastering fourteen specialized technical

skills, including those of engineer, cannoneer, carpenter, boatman, armorer, drummer,

blacksmith, joiner, and tooth-puller.7

What followed Peter's return from abroad in 1698 was virtually a national

revolution; some of the earliest transformations included shaving beards, adopting Western-

style clothes, and smoking pipes. All these were entirely unheard-of phenomena in Russian

history since the Scandinavian Varangian Prince Rurik (r.862-879) founded Russia in the

second half of the ninth century.81 Peter's hatred of superstition was legendary, and

accordingly he had a strong determination to replace it with education and science. By the

introduction of advanced Western sciences, and by the employment of excellent Western

skills, Peter tried to westernize his backward semi-Asiatic people at the highest possible

speed, and indeed this factor was the one that made his reign not only unique but also

brilliant in the history of Russia.

After his returning to Moscow, Peter instituted a kind of compulsory universal

service, by which all single men from fifteen to twenty, and all married men from twenty to

thirty, were liable for military duty. Indeed, every new-born Russian male was potentially a

new soldier. Peter once wrote to his friend Alexander Menshikov about the latters newly
born son (1673-1729), "God has given him to you as a recruit.," on the birth of the latters

second son in 1711.8 By 1725 Russia had a well-drilled and well-equipped standing army of

300,000 men, then the largest in of its kind in Europe., In addition, Peter had solidly won the

loyalty ofplus 100,000 registered Cossacks,9 whose loyalty Peter had solidly won. It is

noteworthy to know that even at the time of peace in 1725 Russian armed forces engulfed

over 73 percent of the national budget. During the Great Northern War period (1700-1721),

for instance, in 1711 with 174,000 soldiers, over 90 percent of the stateState budget was

appropriated to military spending.10 From 1689 to 1725 Russia was at war continuously

except for only thirteen months.11 Nearly all the wars during the Petrine period were of

Peter's own making, undertaken to expand Russian territories and to gain seaports on both the

Baltic and the Black seas that would be usable all the year round. The critical problem up to

that point Peter felt this aggression was necessary because was that the only Russian seaport,

Archangel, lay on the White Sea far in northwest corner, and where its harbor was frozen for

nine months of the year.12

Peter's newly-strengthened military achievement was approved and culminated in his

overwhelming victory in the battle of Poltava, Ukraine, on June 27, 1709, which routed the

Charles XII's Swedish army, who then were regarded as the best military in the world.13

Historians evaluate Tthis battle is usually evaluated by historians as one of the great

punctuating events in world history. Although the battle was over in half a day, the Russian

victory at Poltava had significant diplomatic effects. Not only did Peter gain recognition

among the European states for Russia as a de facto continental power that could now no

longer be overlooked or ignored, but the victory also the victory made Peter's power and

position absolute at home.14 It is no exaggeration to say that without such radical military

and other reforms instituted by Peter at that time, the twentieth-century's Soviet Union

(1917-1991) would never have become such a great superpower able to cope with the
United States during the Cold War period.

Of all the Peter's reforms, probably the most carefully planned and most enduring

part, and the one that endured the longest and toughest, concerned the Church, namely, the

Russian Orthodox Church. Because the Orthodox Church seems quite unknown and exotic,

even awesome and mysterious to most Westerners and Americans, a brief introduction to this

remarkable Christian branch is helpful and needed here. It is highly regrettable that even

some prominent Western theologians have dismissed Orthodoxy completely and outright.

For instance, the internationally -recognized German Protestant theologian Adolf von

Harnack (1851-1930) wrote, "the Orthodox Church is in her entire structure alien to the

gospel and represents a perversion of the Christian religion, its reduction to the level of pagan

antiquity."15

The word Orthodoxy has the double meaning of "correct belief" and "correct

worship."16 Orthodoxy claims that it has maintained an unbroken continuity with the

apostolic faith of the New Testament, and regards the Orthodox Church as the church which

guards and teaches the correct belief about God and which glorifies Him with correct

worship. According to Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are opposite sides

of the same coin, and they deviated from the true apostolic faith when they introduced the

innovations such as the papacy and the doctrine of justification by faith respectively.17

As of mid-2000 A.D., Orthodox Christians stood at approximately 215 million that and

spread to over 135 countries worldwide, maintaining the third largest Christian family, next to

Catholics and Protestants.18 In Russia, with a membership of 76 million adherents, roughly

52 percent of her population claims to be Orthodox Christians.19 One recently published

statistics reveals that as many as 128 million people, or 88 percent of the total population of

Russia, is classified as Orthodox Christians.20

The Orthodox Church is not a single church but a family of thirteen autocephalous or
independent, self-governing, churches. As independent churches, they are not held or bound

together by any centralized organization, nor do they show allegiance to one particular

person, as Roman Catholics do their pope. However, Tthey are united in the matter of the

sacraments, doctrine, discipline, liturgy, faith, and government. Each Orthodox Church has its

own head, who is variously called a patriarch, archbishop, or metropolitan. The first four

patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, although reduced in size

today, occupy a special honor because of their antiquity and historical significance. The

patriarch of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey,) is esteemed as the universal or

ecumenical patriarch. Although he enjoys a special honor, buthe has no prerogative to

interfere with the other twelve Orthodox Churches.21 The incumbent Patriarch Bartholomew

I (elected in 1991), a specialist in canon law, now reigns as the 270th ecumenical patriarch,

who maintains close links with Western Christendom,22 and was the main speaker at a Mass

in June, 1995 celebrated by the Roman Catholic counterpart John Paul II (elected in 1978),23

who is traditionally regarded as the 264th Roman pope. The nine other autocephalous

Churches are, in order of size, Russia, Romania, Greece, Serbia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Cyprus,

Poland, and Albania. Except for Poland and Albania, all other seven patriarchates are in the

countries where the Christian population is entirely or predominantly Orthodox.24

Probably four of the most conspicuous characteristics of the Orthodox Church are

monasticism, icons, spirituality, and liturgy. Monasticism has always been an essential part of

the religious life in Orthodoxy. The prominent American Orthodox theologian John

Chryssavgis observes, "If you know a little about Orthodox monasticism, you know a great

deal about the Orthodox Church."25 In actuality, most Orthodox bishops are chosen from the

ranks of the celibate monastic clergy, whereas parish priests are normally permitted to marry

and have a family.

The veneration (not worship) of icons remains a standard feature of Orthodox worship
and life. The leading churchChurch fathers and theologians, such as Athanasius the Great

(c.293-373), Basil the Great (c.329-379), and John Chrysostom (c.347-407), were staunch

advocates of icons, arguing that icons are images which draw the venerator's pure mind and

heart toward the one true God as revealed in his son Jesus Christ. Because Christ took flesh,

Christian attention to physical objects like icons is logically convincing and absolutely

right.26

In the tradition of spiritual leaders like Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662), John of

Damascus (c.655-c.749), Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), and Gregory Palamas

(1296-1359), the Orthodox Church has maintained, strengthened, and glorified its unique

spirituality. Palamas argued that God was absolutely unknowable and transcendent, and no

human can ever know the inner being shared by God. He taught that only through spiritual

and rigorous devotion, including unceasing prayers, man can get a direct knowledge of God.

Some strenuous spiritual devotion was well demonstrated in the life of Archbishop Avvakum

(1620-1682), the great spokesman and leader of the Old Believers who opposed the

religious reforms of the Russian Patriarch Nikon (1605-1681).27 According to Avvakum's

well-known autobiography, his daily life ended with a recital of 600 prayers to Jesus Christ

and 100 to the Blessed Virgin Mary, accompanied by 300 prostrations.28

Ihe liturgy remains the heart of Orthodox worship and theology. Western visitors to

an Orthodox Church for the first time are confronted with many ufamiliar and even awe-

inspiring scenes of worship. Orthodox worship usually lasts two to three hours. Since there

are no chairs inside the church, worshipers variously stand, kneel, and lie prostrate,

depending on what the liturgy calls for. Professor Daniel Clendenin of Stanford University,

California, described well the scenes of the Orthodox Church worship after he experienced in

Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's third largest city,

Even before entering the church one is taken aback by the unusual
 architecture, the glittering onion domes that sparkle like diamonds on a sunny
day. Once inside, the Western Christian is likely to experience a virtual
sensory overload: the absence of any chairs or pews; the dim lighting; the
scarves worn by all the women as a sign of reverence; the multitude of icons
and frescoes that covers almost every inch of space on the walls and ceilings;
the massive iconostasis separating the priest and worshipers; the smoky smell
of incense and crackling of hundreds of candles that burn in memory of the
dead; the priest resplendent in his ornate vestments, massive beard, and
resonant voice; the worshipers who repeatedly prostrate themselves, kiss the
icons, and make the sign of the cross; and, in Russia, the chanting of the
liturgy in ninth-century Church Slavonic along with the professional choirs
whose voices echo from the balconies throughout the high ceilings of the
church. All of this is accompanied by a sense of extreme awe and reverence,
as I soon discovered.29

Probably the greatest milestone and the most successful missionary achievement in

the Orthodox Church history is the conversion of the largest Slavic people Russians into

Christianity.30 When the powerful Kievan Prince Vladimir (r.980-1015) embraced Eastern

Orthodox Christianity in 988 A.D., he "determined the destiny of Russia... . . ..The whole

Russian mind and heart were shaped by this Eastern mold."31 To the Russian masses,

Orthodoxy means much more than simply a church; it is an entire way of life, culture, and

psychology, and mentality. A Russian proverb runs, "To be Russian is to be Orthodox."32

Russia without the Orthodox Church is unthinkable and unimaginable, and vice versa.

Professor Richard Pipes of Harvard University, one of America's best-known Russian

authorities, wrote,

The fact that Russia received its Christianity from Byzantium rather than from

the Wwest had the most profound consequences for the entire course of

Russia's historic development. Next to the geographic considerations... . . ., it

was perhaps the single most critical factor influencing that country's destiny.
 By accepting the eastern brand of Christianity, Russia separated itself from the

mainstream of Christian civilization... . . .. After Russia had been converted,

Byzantium declined and Rome ascended. The Byzantine Empire soon came

under siege by the Muslim Turks who kept on cutting off one by one parts of

its realm until they finally seized its capital, Constantinople. In the sixteenth

century, Muscovy was the world's only large kingdom still espousing eastern

Christianity.33

The Russian Orthodox Church has survived for over a millennium as a vital and formidable

Christian force, and it retains a tremendous reservoir of spirituality and courage. For the

ordinary Russian masses, nationalism or patriotism originates from their devotion and

reverence toward the Church. "Throughout the Soviet atheist period (1917-1991), as many

as 98 percent of the Orthodox churches in Russia were closed, as well as 1,000 monasteries

and 60 seminaries, but the Church survived by accepting a circumscribed existence.34 Even

the dictator Joseph Stalin (r. 1924-1953) used the Church during the Second World War

(1939-1945) as a force to rally Russian patriotism.35 The Metropolitan Filaret observed,

"The role of the Russian Orthodox Church as a unifying factor is characteristic throughout

our one-thousand-year history."36 In June 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev (r.1985-1991) allowed

a week-long celebration of the millennium of the Russian Orthodox Church.37 Since 1990,

the Church has been led by Patriarch Alexy II, who is regarded as the 15th patriarch in the

Russian Orthodox Church's history.

Peter the Great was what might be best described as an incomparable super star. By

every standard of measure, Peter was indeed Great with a capital G. At six feet eight and a

half inches tall, this swaggering colossal czar literally stood a head and shoulders above his

contemporaries.54 None of the monarchs of the period had Peter the Great's terrifying energy
and ruthless resolve to strengthen his national power.55 Peter's policies, including Church

reforms, were based on utilitarian ideas of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" as

advocated by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Right after

succeeding to the crown, Peter dismissed the superfluous servants and parasite palace

officials; sold three thousand horses from the royal stables; swept away three hundred cooks

and kitchen boys; reduced the royal tables, even on feast days, to sixteen places at the most;

dispensed with formal receptions and parties; and adopted a stringent belt-tightening policy.

His father Alexis I (r.1645-1676) had left him a personal property of 28,982 acres of

cultivated land and fifty-thousand houses, bringing in a huge revenue of 200,000 rubles, but

Peter turned nearly all this over to the stateState treasury.56 In many respects, Peter was the

opposite of his contemporary Louis XIV (r.1643-1715) of France, who built a magnificent

palace in Versailles, and lived there in luxury, while many of his people lived in poverty.

Regarding In regard to the religious beliefs of Peter the Great, the Rhodes Scholar at

Oxford University Robert K. Massie observed,

In matters of religion, Peter was an eighteenth- rather than a seventeenth-

century man, secular and rationalist rather than devout and mystical. He

cared more about trade and national prosperity than about dogma or

interpretations of Scripture; none of his wars was fought over religion. Yet,

personally, Peter believed in God. He accepted God's omnipotence and saw

His hand in everything: life and death, victory and defeat. His letters are

studded with the phrase "Thanks be to God"; every victory was promptly

celebrated with a Te Deum. He believed that tsars were more responsible to

God than commoners were, as tsars were entrusted with the duty to rule, but

he did not enshrine the role of monarchy in anything so theoretical or

philosophical as the Divine Right of Kings.57

Peter's fundamental religious beliefs were imbibed in childhood, based on the Orthodox

liturgy, prayers, catechism, and particularly the Psalms and the New Testament of the Bible.

Peter enjoyed going to church, and loved choral singing, probably the only music of the

Orthodox Church service. It was his lifelong habit to push his way forward through the

standing congregation and take his place to sing with the choir. Especially during Holy

Week, the week preceding Easter, he attended church daily and took communion daily.58 He

opposed work on Sundays except in extreme emergencies, believing that "he who forgets

God and his commandments will never have any success and little benefits however hard he

works."59

Contrary to some historians arguments, Peter from a child and throughout hiPeters

life, he had a sincere reverence for God and, respected the divine laws and the essentials of

the Christian religion. In July, 1709, Peter wrote a letter of thanks to the British merchant

Andrew Styles, who previously congratulated the former on his smashing victory at Poltava

(June 27, 1709). Then Peter reminded him that "to God alone belong the glory and honor.

The victory was indeed a divine miracle, and all human minds are as nothing against the will

of God." Again Aa couple years after Poltava, Peter wrote a letter of consolation to Styles's

widow, begging her not to abandon herself to excessive grief, "but [to] comfort

yourself[herself] with the immortal glory which he had and will have."60 At the age of 21,

Peter had paid a respectful visit to the Solovetsky Monastery on the White Sea, and in 1712

he had founded the famous Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg, further showing

his devotion to God..61

Icons were an essential part of Peter's life and religion, as of most Orthodox

Christians. Her particularly venerated Aan image of 'Savior Not Made by Hands,' was

particularly venerated and it was carried on Peter's major campaigns, including Poltava. On
his sick-bed, Peter demanded that image, and it was carried in his funeral procession.62 Peter

was especially critical of blasphemers and atheists.

In the final analysis, Peter too was a product of the age of enlightenment represented

by Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677), and John Locke (1632-

1704). Peter once wrote, "Reasoning is the highest of all virtues, for any virtue without

reason is hollow."64 Again as mentioned above, Peter was extremely utilitarian and practical

in outlook and action. He disapproved of the overstaffing of the Church and ecclesiastical

timewasting. He considered many of the monks to be parasites, that they were becoming

good-for-nothing and superstitious groups, whose increase in number and decline in

spirituality threatened the stateState. Foreign travelers of the seventeenth century are in

agreement that the Russian clergy owned a third of the land, which endangered national

economy and social stability. When he visited the house of Martin Luther (1483-1546) in

Wittenberg, he praised Luther for his great usefulness to his sovereign but laughed at the old

tale of the devil and the ink-pot.65 Like many of his sixteenth-century Christian masses,

Luther was also known as a superstitious monk.

Peter was extremely tolerant and open-minded toward other faiths and denominations.

This view was greatly reinforced during his visit of to Amsterdam, the mecca of all free

faithfuls, in 1697, where people of all nations were allowed to practice their religion as long

as they did not disturb the established church or the churches of other foreigners. In the

Baltic provinces conquered from Sweden, Peter allowed the Lutheranism to remain maintain

as the official church, and in the vast khanate of Kazan and other central Asian regions where

the majority of the people were Muslims, Peter made no effort to convert them to

Christianity.66 This tolerant religious policy extremely dismayed many of his countrymen,

especially the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is a well-known fact that

intolerance toward other faiths and non-Orthodox Christian denominations was the traditional
policy adopted by most Russian czars. On this matter, Peter was an opposite, and a tradition-

breaker. Again tTo a considerable degree, Peter was even tolerant of the Old Believers,

whom the official Church vociferously condemned and persecuted. For the ruler Peter, the

crucial point was whether their others religious beliefs helped or harmed the stateState; he

never touched on the doctrines or theology of the Church;, and whether the believers joined

two fingers or three in making the sign of the cross mattered completely little or nothing to

him.67 Peter also turned to God at the last moment of his career. In preparation for death, he

is said to have taken communion three times and to have asked for the final prayers to be said

in church. Because of the severity of his illness, there is no way to ascertain whether this

was of his own volition or by the decision of other attendants.68

As mentioned above, Peter the Great's most carefully planned reform was on the

Church, and its impact wa s simply enormous and long-lasting. The relationship between

Church and State after Peter's reform changed to a degree that can be regarded as

revolutionary and cataclysmal. By abolishing the highest ecclesiastical office, the

patriarchate, in 1721, Peter radically secularized the Church, and thus the Russian Orthodox

Church became just another branch of the civil administration. Probably no church in all

Christendom allowed itself to be secularized as completely and graciously as the Russian

Orthodox. But we have to keep in mind here that this process of de-Christianization could

not be possible through Peter's reform alone, but through the famous Nikonian reform in the

middle of the seventeenth century. Correctly speaking, Peter the Great did carry out or only

finalized successfully the reform movement that Nikon (r.1652-1658) initiated half a century

before. The Nikonian reform led to the Schism, which desperately weakened the official

Church and eventually made it easier for Peter to subordinate it to the State. Since space is

not enough to discuss every dimension of Peter's religious reform, this article selects three of

the most significant aspects only: shaving of beards, change of Russian calendar, and the
highlight of all the reforms instituted by Peter, abolition of the highest ecclesiastical office,

the patriarchate.

Beard-shaving was one of the most shocking and revolutionary religious reforms

which had a tremendous impact on the Russian life and psychology. On August 26, 1698, the

very day after his return from abroad, Peter personally cut off the long beards worn by the

nobles of his court. This was the first act of all Peter's later reform movements, even before

he settled with the urgent streltsy's problem. The first to be shorn was General Aleksei Shein,

the supreme commander of the Russian army, who was too astonished to resist. Next came

Prince-Caesar Fedor Romodanovsky, whose deep loyalty to Peter was a legend. The others

followed suit one by one until every boyar present was beardless and none could dare to

laugh or point a shocked finger at the others. Only three were spared at that time: the

Patriarch Adrian (r.1690-1700) who was exempted by 'superstitious awe for his office,'

Prince Michael Checkassky because of his extremely advanced age, and Tikhon Streshnev, in

deference to his role as guardian of the Czaritsa.70 Robert Massies description of Russian

transformation after this reform is informative and graphic.,

The scene was remarkable: at a stroke the political, military and social leaders

of Russia were bodily transformed. Faces known and recognized for a

lifetime suddenly vanished. New faces appeared. Chins, jaws, cheeks,

mouths, lips, all hidden for years, emerged, giving their owners a wholly new

look. It was comical, but the humor of it was mixed with nervousness and

dread.71

Aside from the fact that Peter could raise no beard of his own, he thought that the

beards were the foremost symbol of Russia's backwardness and religious superstition.

Michael Farquhar of the Washington Post observed, "To Peter, beards were uncivilized and

ridiculous adornments that symbolized Russia's insular barbarity and made his kingdom a
laughingstock in Europe."72 Peter regarded beards as unnecessary and even annoying. They

were, in his own judgment, a visible sign of all he meant to change.

To many Russian Orthodox Christians, however, any sort of shaving was an

appallingly sacrilegious act, and the faithful believed that the long, bushy beards were God's

precious gift to men, which was absolutely inalienable and should be kept well. The beard

was a fundamental symbol of religious belief and self-respect. One of Peter's royal

ancestors, Ivan the Terrible (r.1533-1584), expressed the traditional Muscovite religious

mentality when he declared, "To shave the beard is a sin that the blood of all the martyrs

cannot cleanse. It is to deface the image of man created by God."73 The incumbent

Patriarch Adrian said, "God did not create men beardless, only cats and dogs. Shaving is not

only foolishness and dishonor; it is a mortal sin."74 One Orthodox tradition says that a

natural growth of beard hair conformed with the image of God, although the notion that the

Christian God was bearded may be dated fairly late. There are no references of beards or

whiskers in the New Testament, and even the Old Testament rulings are ambiguous on this

matter. But the Council of Stoglav in 1551 clearly stated that "the sacred rules to all

Orthodox Christians warn them not to shave their beards or moustaches or to cut their hair.

Such is not an Orthodox practice but a Latin and heretical bequest of the Greek Emperor

Constantine V (r.741-775)."75

One Orthodox treatise points out some intriguing interpretations based on the Biblical

teaching.,

The beard marked out men from women, underlining the superiority of the

former to the latter: He made man and woman, providing a visible difference

between them... . . .. The man, as the leader, he allowed to grow a beard as an

adornment, but he did not give this adornment to the woman, as an imperfect

and subordinate being, so that seeing her husband's beauty and being herself
 deprived of that beauty and perfection she will be humble and always

submissive.76

It followed therefore that by cutting off beards a man became effeminate and came to

resemble dogs and beasts, which, as the treatise revealed, could grow whiskers not beards.77

An old history says, "There were many old Russians who, after having their beards shaved

off, saved them preciously, in order to have them placed in their coffins, fearing that they

would not be allowed to enter heaven without them."78

Peter realized that he could not personally shear every Russian man and keep him

shorn. Thus, on January 16, 1705, a decree was promulgated, when men of all ranks,

including merchants and artisans, were ordered to shave, with the exception of those in the

clergymen and the peasants. But there was an option, in which any man desiring to keep

his beard and whiskers could do so, provided he paid a tax and received a beard license.

The license required that he wear a bronze medallion picturing a beard as evidence that the

tax had been paid. Any man without this cerfiticate who was found wearing was to be

shaved on the spot. This unusual scene was a completely unprecedented phenomenon in

world history. The tax was paid on grade system: for instance, 60 roubles for nobles,

military officers, and chancellery officials; 100 roubles for merchants of the first guild; 60

roubles for middle guild merchants and artisans; and 30 roubles for members of the third

guild, boyars' bondslaves, postal drivers, coachmen, and Moscow residents of all ranks.79

Through the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, all public

officials, and the army officers, and soldiers were required to be shaved. In the 1860's and

1870's, under Alexander II (r.1855-1881), this rule was relaxed and many government

ministers and military men, with the exception of the Imperial Guard, again began to wear

beards. All the Russian czars who followed Peter were clean-shaved except the last two

Romanov rulers, Alexander III (r.1881-1894) and Nicholas II (r.1894-1917), who both
kept beards and whiskers to manifest their strong Slavophile tastes.80

The change of Russian calendar was one of the most epoch-making and long-lasting

religious and cultural reforms. One of the most rational measures to catch up with the

advanced Western European nations was, to his judgment, to adopt the same calendar that

they used. Peter himself was also obsessed with time and its passing, believing that

"wasted time, like death, cannot be reversed."82 Since the earliest times, Russians had

calculated the year not from the birth of Jesus Christ but from the moment when they

believed the world or Adam had been created (Genesis 1:26-5:5), following the Byzantine

practice that the world was created in 5509 B.C. Consequently, contemporary Russian

chroniclers recorded the year of Peter's birth as not 1672 A.D. but 7180., following the

Byzantine practice, as mentioned above, of numbering years from the notional creation of

the world in 5509 B.C.83 Also Futhermore, Russians celebrated the New Year not on

January 1, but on September 1, again after the Byzantine practice. Accordingly, the year

7181 was due to begin not on January 1, 1673, but on September 1, 1672. again following

the Byzantine practice. This stemmed from their traditional belief that the world was

created in beautiful autumn when the grain and other fruits of the earth had ripened to

perfection and were ready to pluck, rather than in the middle of dreary winter when the earth

was covered with snow. Traditionally, Muscovite New Years' Day, September 1, was a

strictly religious occasion, when the czar and the patriarch walked in a procession of crosses

and icons through the courtyard of the Kremlin and were seated on two thrones side by side

surrounded by crowds of high clergy, boyars, and distinguished people.84

In November 1699, the year after he returned from Amsterdam, Netherlands,

Europe, where Peter had celebrated New Year's Day on January 1, 1698, in Amsterdam,

Netherlands, the czar declared in a brief personal decree, "The year is to be written from the

birth of Jesus Christ in all business matters."85 More detailed official edicts dated
 December 19-20, 1699, emphasized the fact that not only many European Christian

nations, but also other Orthodox Slavic people followed the new calendar.86 Anxious to

bring the year and New Year's Day into line with the Western world, Peter decreed that the

new year would begin on January 1, not September 1, and that the coming year would be

numbered 1700. In his decree, the czar candidly made it manifest that the change was

made in order to conform to Western practice.87 On January 1, 1700, the Russian people

were ordered to celebrate the New Year's Day and observe the Julian calendar for the first

time.

In 46 B.C. the Roman statesman Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.), upon the advice of the

Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes (fl.lst century B.C.), declared that to use a purely solar

calendar was to be used. This calendar, known as the Julian calendar, fixed the normal year

at 365 days, and the leap year, every fourth year, at 366 days. The first Julian year then

began on January 1, 45 B.C. The Julian year of 365 1/4 days was 11 minutes and 14 seconds

longer than the solar year. This discrepancy accumulated until by 1580 the vernal equinox

occurred 10 days and consequently church holidays did not occur in the appropriate seasons.

To prevent further displacement, the then Roman Pope Gregory XIII (r.1572-1585)

instituted a new calendar in 1582, known as the Gregorian calendar.88

To celebrate the historic change and impress the new day on the Moscovites, Peter

ordered special New Year's services held in all the Orthodox churches on January 1. He

further instructed that festive evergreen branches be used to decorate the doorposts of every

house, and commanded that all citizens of Moscow should "display their happiness and joy

by loudly congratulating" one another for the New Year. All houses were to be illuminated

and open for feasting for seven days. Huge fireworks displayed on Red Square on January 1,

1700, which were augmented by well-to-do citizens setting off rockets and firing celebratory

rounds from muskets, while poorer residents pooled their resources and provided a few flares
and beacons. The decree contained no warnings about fire risks on this special occasion.89

As anticipated from the beginnings, many Orthodox Church members began to shake

their heads as they learned about orders to replace the old Biblical calendar with the Julian.

Some radical religious traditionalists cried and exclaimed that the God Almighty created this

world in autumn, when there was an abundance of produce and clement weather for the first

man and woman in the Garden of Eden. Again some die-hards continued to gather together

in secret to celebrate the New Year's Day on September 1. As for counting the years from

the birth of Jesus Christ, even clerks in government departments continued to use the old

creation-based calendar for many years to come, since there were no sanctions against using

both versions. Moreover, the decree had no retrospective effect. The fact that the new New

Year's Day, January 1, fell in the middle of the winter Yuletide festivities also contributed

why traditionalists disapproved of the change of date.90

In choosing to follow the Julian calendar then in use in England, Peter brought Russia

into line with the Western Christian nations just before they themselves changed. For

instance, in 1752 England adopted the Gregorian calendar, but Russia refused to change a

second time, partly because Peter's prejudice against the papacy was too great to do so, with

the result that until the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution the Russian calendar was behind the West,

11 eleven days in the eighteenth century, 12 twelve in the nineteenth century, and 13 thirteen

in the twentieth century. In 1918, the Soviet Union finally adopted the Gregorian calendar,

along with all Greek Orthodox nations, and by 1950 that calendar gained worldwide

recognition, which is now standard the world over.91

Of all the changes brought about during Peter's 43-year-long reign, the most

unprecedented and cataclysmal was the destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church's

ecclesiastical independence, that is, the abolition of the patriarchate, which was the

culmination and climax of all his reform policies. As ruler of the stateState, Peter's
paramount concern was the structure and role of the churchChurch as an institution and its

relation to the stateState. Although the ChurchChurch had been weakened by the Schism

which resulted from Patriarch Nikon's reforms in 1650s, the patriarchy still wielded

considerable autonomous power when Peter came to the throne in 1682. The office of the

patriarch judged all questions of marriage, adultery, divorce, wills, and inheritance, as well as

disputes between husbands and wives, parents and children, clergy and laity, and so on. The

patriarchate still had sufficient authority to intervene in a national problem or crisis, as when

Patriarch Joachim (r.1674-1690) helped to engineer Peter's election to the throne in April,

1682, and supported him in 1689 when Peter's powerful half-sister Sophia Alekseevna

(r.egent from 1682 to 1689) was overthrown.

The Church still remained rich, in spite of the fact that repeated injunctions had been

made against additional acquisitions of land. There were more than 557 monasteries and

convents in Russia in Peter's day, housing more than 14,000 monks and 10,000 nuns,92 but the

number was constantly growing, as Russian noblemen and wealthy merchants competed to

give money and land to monasteries in order to secure their own salvation. Indeed, the

custom of making provision for the Cchurch in one's will remained strongly ingrained among

rich Orthodox Christians., and pParticularly the czars themselves continued making generous

gifts and donations to their favorite monasteries even after they the czars had decreed such

practices illegal for ordinary landlords.93 The 1678 census showed that 148,997 peasants,

with about 525,000 souls, were owned by the patriarch, higher clergy, monasteries, and

cathedrals.94 By the time of Peter's first census of 1719-1721, the number of the Church's

male souls had increased to 791,085. The ecclesiastical order of the monastic (black) and

secular (white) clergy numbered about 86,300 persons. During Peter's reign there was a total

of twenty-six bishoprics, including four in Ukraine.95 Christianity seemed especially suited

to the Russian character. The Russian calendar was filled with saints' days to be observed,
and with innumerable rites and fasts. Literally, to be Russian was to be Orthodox. In the

last decades of the seventeenth century, the Church continued to exert a powerful, dominant,

and decisive influence over the everyday lives of all Russians, from the rulers down to their

humblest subjects, not only in matters of religious devotion and morals but and also in

appearance, eating habits, working, traveling, and all other customs.

But the nature and power of this Church's influence were already being redefined.

Patriarch Joachim (r.1674-1690) left as a bequest to Peter the injunction, "May our

sovereigns never allow any Orthodox Christians in their realm to entertain any close friendly

relations with heretics and dissenters -- with the Latins, Lutherans, Calvinists and godless

Tatars (whom our Lord abominates and the Church of God damns for their God-abhorred

guile); but let them be avoided as enemies of God and detainers of the Church."96 These

words signalled an inevitable clash between the czar and the Church. Peter was not only

tolerant toward other faiths and denominations, but also determined to open Russia to

Western Europe in order to modernize his people, while the Russian Orthodox Christians had

strong objections to all these Peter's ideas and policies. Peter spent his childhood in Foreign

Quarter, a few miles from Moscow, which was originally founded by some adventurous

Englishmen and a group of soldiers of the Austrian General Albrecht van Wallenstein (1583-

1634) famous for his defeat of Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632) and the Swedish forces in

the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Later some 3,000 Scottish refugees, who fled from their

homeland following the imprisonment of Charles I (r.1625-1649) of England, joined the

community. With the passage of time, the population of this community became exceedingly

cosmopolitan. The Russian Orthodox Church naturally regarded the colony as a resort of

heretics and an abode of evil and reluctantly tolerated its existence.

Joachim's successor Adrian (r.1690-1700) also rejected and repudiated all 'newly

introduced foreign customs' and tried to protect the Orthodox faith from 'Latin and Lutheran
heretics.'97 Patriarch Adrian reiterated the Byzantine concept of harmony between the

spiritual and the temporal power, "God has established two higher authorities on earth: the

priesthood and the czardom."98 Although the royal authority had power on earth, the

priesthood had power on earth and in heaven. All Orthodox Christians were the patriarch's

'spiritual sons,' including the monarch himself. Adrian's missive said, "All Orthodox

Christians are my sheep and know me and obey my voice," which was close to that of his

powerful predecessor Nikon (r.1652-1658).99 In an anecdote in connection with the

negotiation of tobacco contracts in London in 1698, Peter declared that the patriarch would

do well not to interfere, "He is only the guardian of the faith, not a customs inspector."100

The same source points out that Peter was deeply conscious of the troubles his father Alexis I

(r. 1645-1676) experienced by allowing Patriarch Nikon too much power at the beginning of

his patriarchate, and said, "The bearded ones, monks and priests, are the root of much evil.

My father had to deal with just one of them, but I with thousands."101

Peter's policies toward the Church were still not formulated and less implemented; he

did not intervene in 1689-1690 when Patriarch Joachim increased some restrictions on

foreigners and also took no action when his preferred candidate was not accepted as patriarch

in 1690. Cracks began to appear during the 1695-1696 Azov campaign, which revealed

potential conflict between the Church and the State in respect to vital resources. One of

government decrees said, "No superfluous buildings are to be constructed and no expenditure

made without the great sovereign's orders."102 By the so-called ship tax introduced in 1696,

priests were required to contribute funds to building the fleet, and under the provisions of a

decree of November, 1699, they were obliged to supply recruits for the army.103 Duty on

stamp papers, introduced in 1699, was applied to the Church too.104 Monasteries were

required to supply annual returns on their revenues to the department of the Royal

Household. For his part Peter resented the diversion of manpower into the vast and
innumerable monasteries, and coveted the enormous revenues these institutions enjoyed.105

Peter personally facilitated the transfer of funds from the Church to the State and not ensured

it would not be paid back.paying it back.106 The Church also lost various exemptions and

privileges: for instance, its share of the income from trade duties collected from markets and

fairs on Cchurch land was restricted, as was the right to distill spirits which had been already

curtailed in the 1680s. Now the clergy realized that Peter's reform would lessen their prestige

and power.

On October 16, 1700 Patriarch Adrian (r.1690-1700) died, then when Peter was

preparing for the siege of Narva. Because the resistance of religion was his greatest obstacle,

Peter wanted a man who could not challenge his own supreme authority and who would

support the policies he might wish to employ in the nature and structure of the Church. In

actuality, Peter deliberately postponed and refrained from appointing a successor to Adrian,

and he himself, like Henry VIII (r.1509-1547) in England, became head of the Cchurch.

For as long as twenty-one years (1700-1721) the office of patriarch remained a vacant,

which was an unheard-of phenomenon since the establishment of Russian patriarchate in

1589. He preserved the office of patriarchate, but declared the throne temporarily vacant.

Whenever the clergy urged, as it did strongly and persistently, that a new patriarch be

appointed, Peter replied that he was too occupied with the war to give deep thought to the

selection of that position.107

Then Peter appointed as temporary Guardian Exarch a learned but spineless Ukrainian

divine, the forty-two-year-old Metropolitan of Ryazan named Stephen Yavorsky, who had

been educated in Jesuit schools in Poland and who had strayed from Orthodoxy to

Catholicism and back again.108 As professor of theology at the academy and a frequent

orator in the Constantinople's magnificent Santa Sophia Cathedral, Yavorsky was an

impressive and outstanding figure. His eloquent, sonorous voice, his dramatic gesture, and
his brilliant scholarship moved his large audiences easily from laughter to tears, and from

tears to laughter. Peter had never heard such fabulous oratory in a Russian church, and

whenever possible he asked that Yavorsky preach at church ceremonies, public dedications,

military triumphs, and special events.109 But Peter did not provide him with the power and

authority formerly held by the patriarch. The actual administration of churchChurch

properties as well as the taxing of all inhabitants of ecclesiastical lands was turned over to the

newly-created Monastery Department, whose office was under the supervision of a secular

official, the czar's close friend and relation Ivan Musin-Pushkin. This new department was

to supervise all churchChurch courts and to act, except in spiritual matters, as the sole master

of all the churchChurch estates and their population.110 Thereafter, most ecclesiastical

income went directly into the Sstate Ttreasury, which, in turn, paid the salaries of all

churchChurch officials.111

Yavorsky was, however, was never really happy and satisfactory in his Guardian's

office. Soon he requested Peter to release him from his assignment. Peter always refused

Yavorsky's appeals, because there was no one to replace him with, until, with the passage of

time, Yavorsky began to grow stronger in his position. Then he began not only to support his

fellow churchmen in their confrontation with government authorities, but also he himself

protested the diversion of churchChurch revenues from religious purposes to supporting the

army and the war. Even hHis sermons began to hurt Peter's feelings and policies. For

instance, he preached against husbands who had persuaded their wives to enter a convent in

order for them to remarry; his most prominent target was obvious, the czar himself. In 1712,

Yavorsky said, "the Czarevich Alexis (Peter's son, 1690-1718) as our only hope," on the

occasion of the Feast of St. Alexis.112 Although Peter was not present there, he later received

a copy of the sermon. Unwilling to make Yavorsky a martyr, he did not retaliate, but sent

admonition not to do anything against the sovereign. Yavorsky apologized and remained in
office, although for a while Peter prohibited him from preaching.

Thereafter, Peter looked for a new instrument with whom to reform the Church more

radically and thoroughly. Another Ukrainian savant from Kiev, the forty-one-year-old monk

Feofan Prokopovich (1681-1736), was the man, who was a modern eighteenth-century

intellectual, more practical, more sophisticated, and infinitely more forcible than . Historians

agree to the fact that Prokopovich was an efficient administrator, a powerful reformer, a

persuasive polemicist, and a systematic propagandist. Especially, hHe conformed

completely with Peter's ambitious plan to modernize and secularize the Russian Orthodox

Church. For a Russian divine of the eighteenth century, Prokopovich was a man of

exceptional learning and expertise; he had read Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, Galileo, Kepler,

Bacon, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke. He was educated in Jesuit colleges in Poland and

then attended a special school in Rome, where he studied theology and, took Catholic orders.,

and aAt the age of twenty-two, in 1700 he witnessed the coronation of Pope Clement XI

(r.1700-1721). But his Prokopovichs three-year sojourn in Rome was to plant in

Prokopovich's mind a planted a permanent dislike of the papacy and the Roman church., just

like Martin Luther's (1483-1546) visit to Rome at the age of twenty-seven did. Returning to

the Kiev academy, he taught philosophy, rhetoric, poetics, and literature, giving lectures not

in Greek but in Latin, the official language of Catholicism. His introduction of arithmetic,

geometry, and physics into the curriculum was regarded as a pioneering work. His

"Epinikion," a lengthy celebratory ode on the Russian's victory over Charles XII's Swedish

army at Poltava (1709), was famous, and a reflection of the period represented by French and

German panegyrists.

In 1706, Peter visited Kiev and heard Prokopovich preach in the famous Santa Sophia

Cathedral. And again following Peter's smashing victory at Poltava, the czar returned to

Kiev, where Prokopovich welcomed him as "His Most Sacred Majesty, the Czar of All the
Russians" and preached a sermon filled with the highest laudatory remarks. At the age of

thirty-one, he was appointed rector of the prestigious Kiev academy, becoming the youngest

ever to occupy that position, and Ten five years later in 1716, he Prokopovich was summoned

by the czar to St. Petersburg, and Prokopovich left Kiev then, never to return.

Unlike the Guardian Yavorsky, Prokopovich strongly supported Peter's ambitious

attempts to subordinate the Cchurch to the Sstate. On Palm Sunday, April 6, 1718, when the

churchChurch leaders were being asked to judge the Czarevich Alexis, Prokopovich stood on

the pulpit and delivered a spellbinding oration, "The clergy, like the army, the civil

administration, doctors and artisans, is subject to the Sstate. The clergy is another order or

rank of the people and not a separate state. The supreme authority is established and armed

with the sword of God, and to oppose it is a sin against God himself."114

In the years since Patriarch Adrian died in 1700, Peter traveled abroad and saw much

of other Christian nations, both Catholic and Protestant. The Roman Catholicism was

administered by a single powerful man the Pope, while in many Pprotestant countries

the churches were administered by a synod or assembly or board of administrators., and Tthis

latter idea extremely appealed to the czar. Having already reformed his civil administration

by putting government affairs in the hands of different ministers or colleges, Peter was now

ready to impose a comparable structure on the Cchurch.

The idea of the abolition of the patriarchate was first appeared specifically in a

memorandum to the Guardian Yavorsky dated November, 1718, "For better administration

henceforth I think it would be convenient to have a spiritual college."115 Thus, in December

of 1718, Peter gave orders to Prokopovich to draft a churchChurch charter called the

"Ecclesiastical Regulation" or "Spiritual Regulation," which was to promulgate a new

administrative structure for the Russian Orthodox Church. Prokopovich worked many

months, and so that he is chiefly known in Russian history for the architect of this
exceedingly important document. But Peter himself read, revised, and sometimes rewrote

every section of the document.116 This new Regulation, officially published on January 25,

1721, was the culmination of Peter's churchChurch policies, and the new relationship of

churchChurch and stateState as conceived by Peter was clearly and minutely set forth and

justified in this charter. On February 14, exactly twenty days after the publication of the

Ecclesiastical Regulation, the Spiritual College was inaugurated.

The most crucial feature of the new Regulation was the abolition of the patriarchate as

the governing body of the Church, and its replacement with a bureaucratic institution called

the Holy Synod. The Synod board was organized based on the same model as the colleges

of the civil government; it was manned by a president, two vice-presidents, four

councillorscouncilors, four assessors, and a twelfth man, 'an honest, right-thinking person of

secular rank.'117 In Cchurch services where the word 'patriarch' had been used, the name

'Holy Synod' was now to be substituted.118 In a lengthy preamble of the document,

Prokopovich and, through him, Peter, through Prokopovich, explained the motive and

decision to abolish the one-man rule of the patriarchate and replace it with collective

administration.,

From collegiate government in the church there is much less danger to the

country of sedition and disorder than may proceed from rule by a single

spiritual ruler. For the common people do not understand this difference

between the spiritual power and that of the autocrat. Instead, dazzled by the

splendor and glory of the highest clergyman, they think he is a second

sovereign equal to or even greater than the autocrat, and that the spiritual

power is of another and better realm. If then there should be any dispute

between the patriarch and the czar, they might take the part of the patriarch in

the belief that they were fighting for God's cause.119

Although Yavorsky offered a strong opposition to the new institution, he was appointed by

the czar to the highest post, as president of the Holy Synod; probably Peter thought he would

be far less dangerous involved in the new machinery than opposing it. Yavorsky tried to

decline that assignment in order to finish his days in a monastery, but after being appointed,

he remained in his post until his death in 1722. Prokopovich, despite his junior position in

the churchChurch hierarchy annd as well as his comparatively young age (then forty-one),

was appointed to second vice-president, the third-ranking position in the Holy Synod. From

this office, he did a brilliant performance in administering the cChurch affairs along the lines

he himself had drawn. He survived Peter by ten years and continuously dominated the Holy

Synod, until eventually he was appointed to the glorious post of Archbishop of Novgorod.

Synod salaries were very generous, comparing with those of civil officials. The president

received 3,000 roubles, vice-presidents 2,500 roubles, councillors 1,000 roubles, and

assessors 600 roubles. But like civilian officials, Synod members were subject to deductions

and fines.120

The Ecclesiastical Regulation proescribed in detail all the duties and responsibilities

of bishops, priests, and monks. For instance, ordained priests were obliged to swear an oath,

pledging themselves "to defend unsparingly all the powers, rights and prerogatives belonging

to the High Autocracy of His Majesty."121 They were required to keep a record of

parishioners' fulfilment of their religious duties, their regular attendance at communion and

confession. They had to administer oaths of loyalty to the stateState, and to keep up to date

the church members' registers of births, marriages, and deaths. The appointment of bishops

was made subject to governmental approval. The jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts was

severely curtailed. Further edicts forbade the ordination of mystics or fanatics, and limited

the number of good-for-nothing miracle-working centers.

In respect to monastic institutions, Peter was guided by two principles: first, monks
must do useful service by making some contributions to society, and second, their numbers

must be restriced. On March 19, 1722, all monasteries with populated estates were ordered

to set up hospices.122 A census of monastic properties and revenues was taken by the

government; a part of this income was allotted to the monasteries, and of the rest of this

income, a large portion should be devoted to the establishment of schools and hospitals.123

Men were not allowed to take monastic vows before the age of thirty, and in the case of

women were not allowed to take final vows as nuns before the age of fifty was absolutely

prohibited.124 Peter especially hated monasteries, not only because they provided a refuge

from sState obligation, but also because he suspected them of harbouringharboring

opposition. Monks are were dangerous groups individual because they were literate and

capable of writing the notorious and destructive 'anonymous letters' by which rebels might

disseminate subversive propaganda. In many cases, monasteries also attracted delinquent

elements, such as drunkards, brigands, debauchers, and ruffians.

Professor Geoffrey Hosking of London University observed made an intriguing

comment on the new Regulations:, "The tone of the Spiritual Regulation could have come

straight out of Thomas Hobbes's (1588-1679) Leviathan. It claimed that autocracy was

necessary because human beings were naturally evil and would constantly make war on one

another were they not restrained by an unambiguous and undivided authority, which was not

the case when Patriarchal authority seemed to rival that of the Czar."125

By abolishing the highest ecclesiastical office, Patriarchate, and transforming the

administration of the Church into a branch of secular government, Peter had achieved his

long-wished goal. There was no further danger from a second competitive focus of power,

at least not in all Russian domain. The Hholy Russian Orthodox Church now officially

ceased to be an institution independent of government; its administration, through the office

of the Holy Synod, became a function of the stateState. The Holy Synod was nothing more
or less than a ministry of religious affairs; its president, called Chief Procurator, need not

have been a pious theologian or monk, and indeed in the course of the eighteenth century he

was normally a military man.126

Probably the most striking feature of the Ecclesiastical Regulation was that it met

almost no opposition, either inside the Church, or among the general populace. Professor

Richard Pipes of Harvard University described well the desperate situation of the Russian

Church:, "The coup de grace (=a decisive event or blow) was dealt a victim so drained of all

vitality that it hardly twitched; there were no protests, only silent submission. No church in

Christendom allowed itself to be secularized as graciously as the Russian."127 The foremost

biographer Robert Massie provided a plausible comment on the Russians' silent submission,

"In large part, this was because Peter had not tampered with the elements which mattered

most in the Russian church, the sacred ritual and dogma. Who administered the

churchChurch was of overriding concern to Peter; the form of the liturgy and sacraments did

not interest him, and so he did not touch it."128 Indeed, most of the Russian clergy resigned

themselves to this institutional change without any objections, which, like the case of Henry

VIII (r.1509-1547) in England, left doctrine and rituals unchanged.

Some oOld bBelievers or dissenters, however, denounced Peter as Antichrist, and

urged the people not to obey the czar or pay taxes. Like his usual fashion, Peter arrested

their leaders; some were knouted, some were banished to Siberia, some were imprisoned for

life, some were died of tortured, and some were immolated to death. He tried to protect the

old believers or any dissenters from persecution as long as they stayed away from political

affairs. But Peter was, on the whole, abreast of the Western Europe in religious toleration.

He tried to protect the Old Believers or any dissenters from persecution as long as they stayed

away from political affairs. In St. Petersburg (founded in 1703), for instance, to encourage

foreign trade and culture, Peter allowed Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists to build their
churches on the city's main thoroughfare and artery Nevsky Prospekt, which came to be

called the "Street of Tolerance."129 Some three-mile-long Nevsky Prospekt from the

Admiralty to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery was called by the Russian novelist Nikolai

Gogol (1809-1852) "Russia's most famous and magnificent street."130 He Peter protected the

Capuchin monks who entered Russia, but banished the Jesuits as too sedulous in propaganda

for the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, Peter welcomed all foreigners with the exception of

Jews, for he was bitterly anti-Semitic. By a proclamation issued in 1702 and published in all

over Europe, Peter invited and welcomed Western military personnel and craftsmen to join

the Russian service, not only offering to pay transportation but also promising high wages,

extraterritoriality, and, particularly religious, toleration.131

The foremost historian James Cracraft hit the right nail on the head, when he

concluded that, "Of all the achievements of Peters' reign, his church reform constituted the

most decisive break with the past."132 But Peter's secularization of the Church differed

fundamentally from that of the twentieth-century's Soviet Communists, whose leaders even

declared religion to be the "opium of the people." They introduced a completely new type of

religion to the people. In 1920 the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote, "Vladimir Lenin

(2870-1924) is like a prophet of Israel, and what he preaches is a lay religion."133 The world-

renowned economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), visiting Russia in 1924, observed "I

feel confident of one conclusion that if communism achieves a certain success, it will achieve

it not as an improved economic theory but as a religion."134 Soviet atheists demolished the

Russian Orthodox churches, imprisoned priests, and persecuted believers. Church and

monastic land was completely nationalized without any compensation. The clergy, together

with capitalists, criminals and imbeciles, were deprived of right to vote or to hold civilian

office. In fact, this denied the clergy the right to food rations and their children to education.

In other words, the Russian Orthodox Church was, at a stroke, stripped of all its legal
privileges, its land, and its source of income. Soviet Communists demolished Orthodox

churchs, imprisoned priests, and persecuted believers. In sharp contrast, Peter just firmly

subordinated the Church to the czardom, a process which had already been started under his

predecessors, such as Ivan the Great (r.1462-1505), Ivan the Terrible (r.1533-1584), and

especially his father Alexis the Quiet (r.1645-1676).

For the next two centuries until the end of Romanov dynasty (1613-1917), the one-

time powerful Russian Orthodox Church was governed by the principles set down in the

Ecclesiastical Regulation. One of Peter's most outstanding successors was Catherine the

Great (r.1762-1796), whose rule was in many respects an extension of the reforms instituted

by Peter. Of the three Russian monarchs who have been anointed with the glorious

appellation "the Great" such as Ivan, Peter, and Catherine, Catherine was the only female

ruler, whose 34-year-long reign was heralded as a golden age for the Russian nobility, but she

is chiefly remembered for Peter's most ardent follower and faithful imitator. Indeed, in most

Russian annals her reign stands second in importance to Peter the Great.135 Like Peter,

Catherine also began working at five o'clock in the morning after lighting her own fire, and

her workday usually lasted fifteen hours.136 Continuing and finalizing the policies of Peter,

she tried to stamp out any remaining traces of insurbodination in the Church to the state. At

the time of her coronation in 1762, the Church was still wealthy, and records reveals that

some of the monasteries owned more peasants than all but the richest lay landlords. For

instance, the monastery of Trinity-St. Sergei, the largest proprietor of serfs in Russia, housed

more than 106,000 male peasants.137 By a decree of 1764, she ordered the nationalization of

all eccesiastical properties, closed about half the monasteries in the nation, and switched

about two million Church peasants into the state. Now the upper clergy and monks were to

be paid by the state treasury. Catherine openly publicized to the European nations that all

these religious measures were the triumphal signs of Enlightenment over superstition.138
But oOn November 5, 1917, that was to change. Aafter the passage of a 196-year-long

period, the Russian Orthodox Church bishops finally freed themselves from the yoke of

synodal government imposed by Peter the Great in the name of modernization of Russia.

Again Professor Clendenin wrote about the topsy-turvy events following that dramatic

moment,

At long last a new day had dawned for the Church, but one much different

from what they had expected. An ominous new foe had appeared on the

horizon. Just two weeks before the new patriarch, Tikhon, was elected from

three nominees., Nikolai Lenin and the Bolsheviks had taken control of

Petrograd.; Oonly two days before Tikhon's election they overpowered

Moscow. As if the Eastern threat of Islam was not enough, now Orthodoxy

faced a new foe -- the Western heresy of radical Marxism. Moscow, once

the Third Rome, now became the most powerful purveyor of a new religion

-- scientific atheism.

Now this paper doesn't need to go further than that point of history. As mentioned

earlier, Peter's four basic policies, such as the Europeanization of his people, opening a

window on to the sea, secularization of the Church, and making his ruling power absolute and

consolidate it, all these focused on one ambitious grand plan: the modernization of Russia.

Judging from today's point of view, after the passage of three centuries, Peter's achievement

sas well as his plan was exceedingly positive and praiseworthy. It is no exaggeration to

conclude that the Russian Federation of today, in terms of all fields such as the political,

military, diplomatic, commercial, industrial, educational, literary, religious, and even

psychological, is the very creation of Peter the Great. With regard to this point, I am

completely in agreement with the historian M.P. Pogodin's appraisement.140

The first prominent Russian critic to study seriously the exploits of Peter's legacy was
Mikhail Shcherbatov (1733-1790). He knew the Petrine period better than most of his

contemporaries and frankly concluded that without Peter, Russia would have needed another

two hundred years to catch up with the level of development she had attained.141 On the

other hand, the first major professional historian Nikolai Karamzin (1766-1826) evaluated

the impact of Peter's reform policies more radically than Shcherbatov. In his assessment,

without Peter Russia would have needed as long as six hundred years to reach the level

today's Russia had achieved.142 This paper is closed Well close with the comments made by

one of Russia's most brilliant intellectuals and 1970 Nobel Prize winner Alexander

Solzhenitsyn (1918- ), who wrote that "Russian history would have been incomparably

more humane and harmonious in the last few centuries if the Cchurch had not surrendered its

independence and had continued to make its voice heard among the people, as it does, for

example, in Poland.143