Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Peter the Great and Religion

So while Peter's restructure of Russian society is pretty well known, I didn't really know much about how Peter interacted with the church and religion. Before doing any specific research on Peter's relationship with the church, based on what I had learned about Peter's rule, I had assumed that Peter would have strictly imposed some sort of Russian church, but perhaps one that was more secular because of Western European trends. What I found in the book ""Peter the Great" by Robert K. Massie was not far from my assumption. I found it interesting that "he accepted God's omnipotence and saw His hand in everything", just because seeing as he was an authoritarian ruler who seemed to be primarily concerned with himself, I would have thought that his faith and belief in God would have been minimal, and for that I assumed that he would have secularized the Church (783). But in fact, Peter secularized the Church to make it more tolerant of other religious sects aside from Orthodox Catholicism. So while this act was a pretty bold move, the most impressive action on the part of Peter the Great would undoubtedly be in the 1721 enactment of the Ecclesiastical Regulation. This regulation linked the church with the state (big surprise that Peter the Great wanted to control the Church too), established an institution called the Holy Governing Synod and abolished all aspects of the Church that Peter didn't agree with, inforcing that all bishops and priests were schooled in religion to terminate ignorance within the Church.
Essentially, Peter simultaneously loosened the regulations of the Church while tightening his personal control over the Church, what I see as sort of killing two birds with one stone because he allows for more enclusion within the Church (which rallies support for his actions) while he gains control over the establishment that now has a larger membership. I have to ask AGAIN...did he do it for the Russian state or for his own reputation?

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