“May We not Appear Ungrateful to God, unless We Neglect the Correction of the Holy Orders...”: Church Reforms by Peter the Great in the Context of the Absolutism Concept

The article is devoted to the analysis of the Emperor Peter the Great’s church reforms from the point of view of the ideas of early modern period monarchies about the absolutism. The modern historiography of absolutism asserts that in the 16th–17th centuries European political thought the monarch’s sovereignty was understood not as unconditional, but as limited by God’s commandments. The ideological basis of Peter’s synodal reform was fully consistent with such a theory. In the Ecclesiastical Regulation, the Church Council was called the model of the Ecclesiastical Collegium, established to resolve church matters. The Chief Procurator who oversaw the activities of the Synod was neither its member, nor considered as a representative of the emperor. In Peter the Great’s era, the process of reducing the role of the Church in state life, of course, accelerated, but the state itself, as before, was positioned as a Christian society.