The Novgorod bishops’ school and the “breaking up” of clergy in 1736-1738

The article discusses how the story about the “breaking up” of the clergy during the reign of Anna Ioannovna, not unknown in historiography, was reflected in the history of the Novgorod bishops’ school. The diachronic approach to the sources that have already been involved in the presentation of the history of the “breaking up”, as well as their comparison with sources on the history of the bishops’ school, show that the question of the education of the children of clergy in the second half of the 1730s was actualized during the “breaking up” of the children of the clergy and turned out, in particular, to be connected with the fact that, by order of the Novgorod vice-governor, several students of the Novgorod bishops; school were taken into military service. In the course of overcoming the conflict that arose between the provincial administration and the rulers of the bishops’ school, the connection between the education of church children, their age and exemption from military service is affirmed in the administrative consciousness. The imperial decrees of September 7 and 25, 1737, which consolidated this connection, created a situation in which it became profitable for clergy to send their children to school, which led to an increase in demand for educational services, the emergence of a network of schools and seminaries for the children of clergy, created according to the model Jesuit collegia, and to the wide dissemination of education among the clergy, which the edicts of Peter’s time could not achieve. In the Novgorod bishops’ school, the number of students increased several times during the “breaking up”.