The academy preparing theologians, clergymen, singers and icon writers for the Eastern Orthodox Church and grants bachelor, master, candidate and doctorate degrees.

[2] On July 11, 1721, Archbishop Theodosius (Yanovsky) of Novgorod, in pursuance of imperial decrees, ordered to "establish for the common benefit at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, for the teaching of young children reading and writing, a Slavonic school".

Initially, the school studied the alphabet, writing, arithmetic, grammar, listened to the interpretation of the Decalogue, the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes.

If the Slavic school provided only elementary literacy, then the seminary aimed to give future ministers of the Church both general and theological education.

Finally, by the decree of Empress Anna Ioannovna of March 22, 1738, the senior pupils of this school were assigned to business, and the rest (in the number of 21 people) were transferred for further study to the Alexander Nevsky Slavic-Greek-Latin Seminary.

By order of the authorities or at their own request, many graduates of the Slavic-Greek-Latin Seminary could enroll in other higher and secondary educational institutions, in particular, in the gymnasium and university at the Academy of Sciences established in 1724 by decree of Peter the Great.

On behalf of Metropolitan Ambrose (Podobedov), Bishop Eugene (Bolkhovitinov) drew up a outline for the establishment of Theological schools in 1805.

In 1821, the academic journal "Christian Reading" was established, which published translations of the Holy Scriptures from Hebrew and ancient Greek into Russian, theological, ecclesiastical and historical works of professors and teachers of the Academy.

Since the 1840s, the Academy began to accept representatives of other Local Orthodox Churches to study: from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and other countries.

In June 1918, members of the corporation and students of the Academy solemnly welcomed Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and All Russia, who came to Petrograd.

On October 14, 1946, on the Day of the Intercession of the Theotokos, the grand opening of the Leningrad Theological Academy and Seminary took place in the presence of Patriarch Alexy I.

After the beginning of new anti-religious persecutions in 1958, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church stopped any attempts to increase the number of students in seminaries and academies and expand their premises.

On July 17, 1959, it was decided to gradually close the only correspondence sector of Leningrad theological Schools in the country, although its actual functioning in an abbreviated form continued until 1967.

On the initiative of the rector, Bishop Kirill (Gundyaev) of Vyborg, in 1979 the first enrollment for the Regency Department (formally formed in 1983) took place, where girls were admitted for the first time in the history of the revived theological schools.

At first it acted as an educational center for laypeople, then as a circle with a workshop and a repository of icons that were restored and used for the needs of the academy, and later as a class with teachers who worked on a voluntary basis.