Primacy of State Over Church: the Variant of Peter I

Abstract

The article is devoted to the policy of Peter I directed at the subjugation of the church power to the secular one. As an integral system of measures it showed itself at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. Before that Peter’s worldview was formed I the situation of discussions of Russian Old Believers, Helenists and Catholics. The striving for the primacy of the secular power in the state was characteristic no only for Peter I, but also for the first tsars of Romanov dynasty. That idea found various realization in the Protestant and Catholic worlds. The supporters and executers of Peter’s police were found among the secular an church Russian elites. Te works and sermons of certain clerics demonstrated the transfer from the idea of the symphony of powers to proclaiming the tsar as pontifex. The rise of the secular state demonstrated itself in its claim to the church property; the introduction of the liability for military service for church-owned peasants, the establishment of monastery staff regulations and expulsion of many clerical categories from the taxless persons, the use of monasteries as material base for the formation of the social charity system. The strengthening of the secular elements in Russia demonstrated itself in the policy of religious tolerance in regard of the representatives of various Christian confessions, in the attempts to use the Christians from other countries in the interests of the state.