Church reform of Peter the Great

Issued in the context of Peter's overall Westernizing reform programme, it replaced the office of the patriarch of Moscow with the Holy Synod and made the church effectively a department of state.

The ruthlessness with which he implemented his governmental and tax collection reforms, and the forced buildup of his new capital city, Saint Petersburg, augured poorly for the independence of the church.

As a result, monasteries became the main nests of opposition, and in order to fight them the government prohibited monks to keep in their cells pen and paper.

Among the Russian clergy, however, Prokopovich was perceived as a Lutheran and a pietist who studied Protestantism and who did not mature in the culture of the Eastern Orthodoxy.

Peter unintentionally caused the "Ukrainization" of the Russian Church, inviting Ukrainian and Belarusian clergy (mostly graduates of the Kiev Academy) from the buffer regions of the empire into Russia.

All the members of the first session of the Most Holy Synod in 1721 were Ukrainian churchmen, including the Metropolitan Stephen Yavorsky, who had been the administrator or locum tenens of the Patriarchate of Moscow for over twenty years (1700–1721), and Theophan Prokopovich.

[6] Monasteries lost territory and were more closely regulated, resulting in a reduction in the number of monks and nuns in Russia from roughly 25,000 in 1734 to around 14,000 in 1738.

A new ecclesiastic educational system was begun under Peter the Great and expanded to the point that by the end of the century there was a seminary in each eparchy (diocese).

This resulted in more monks and priests being formally educated than before, but receiving poor training in preparation for a ministry to a Russian-speaking population steeped in the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy.

After the February Revolution and the abdication of the emperor on 15 March, the Synodal higher church authority under the provisional government convened the council, which opened on 28 August [O.S.