THE SECULAR AND THE RELIGIOUS IN THE REFORMS OF PETER THE GREAT

The article is devoted to the study of the church reform carried out by Peter I in the context of the Russian society modernization in the first quarter of the XVIII century. The prerequisites for the church reform and the prehistory in the development of its relations with the state power since the era of Ivan the Terrible are considered, a brief overview of the historiography of the issue is given. Religiosity of Peter the Great which was traditional for that era was influenced by the Western system of values through the environment of the future emperor in his youth in the German Quarter. At the same time, he consistently continued the policy of his father, who sought to restore the priority of secular power. An important factor was Peter’s ambiguous personal relationship with Patriarch Adrian, who stood up for the Strelitz and refused to make tsaritza Evdokia a nun. Undoubtedly, an important role in the church policy was played by the desire to limit an uncontrolled transfer of state resources, primarily land, to the church-monastery system. The Synod was based on the collegial principle of governance, as in other secular institutions of the empire, which emphasized the primordial superiority of the secular power over the spiritual one. Despite all the apparent inconsistency of Peter the Great’s actions, the former set of traditional religious practices was preserved, supplemented with the functions necessary to build the trajectory of a long process of social modernization.