Early Enlightenment in Russia and Ukraine: The Life and Legacy of Archbishop Feofan Prokopovych (1681-1736)

FAIN: FEL-281548-22

Andrey Vyacheslavovich Ivanov
University of Wisconsin, Platteville (Platteville, WI 53818-3001)

Research and writing leading to publication of the first English-language biography of Russian archbishop Feofan Prokopovych (1681-1736).

This project will fund 7 months of research leave (archival travel and writing) to complete the intellectual biography of Archbishop Feofan Prokopovych (1681-1736). Prokopovych, this book project argues, played a foundational role in introducing the ideas of the Early Enlightenment (Frühaufklärung) and many of the paradigmatic models of Europe’s Scientific Revolutions first in Ukraine, and then, in Russia. Completing the first English-language biography of this fascinating astronomer, mathematician, jurist, linguist and natural philosopher will help us understand better the impact of key Western intellectual developments in the early Russian Empire.

Associated Products

Apostle of Enlightenment: Feofan Prokopovych and the Rise of Russian Empire (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Apostle of Enlightenment: Feofan Prokopovych and the Rise of Russian Empire
Abstract: This presentation, delivered at UW-Madison, outlines three chapters of my upcoming book on Feofan Prokopovych. The first chapter argues that Prokopovych was a pioneer in promoting the ideas of Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, and Galileoin educational curriculum in Kyiv in the early 1700s. It also presents him as a pioneer who introduced such key scientific discoveries as heliocentrism and Toricelli experiments in barometry. The second chapter outlines Prokopovych’s legal theory of Empire – his adoption of Hobbes’ absolutism, his interpretation of Treuer’s organic contract theory and his transplantation of the legal concepts of Holy Roman Empire, particularly the ideas of Reichspublizistik jurists, onto Russian soil. This chapter argues that Russian Empire was founded as a juridical replica of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Third chapter documents Prokopovych’s political theories and court politics that supported the rise of women to Russian imperial thrones. His political maneuvering led to the rise of Catherine I, Empress Anna, Regent Anna and even Empress Elizabeth, making the eighteenth century a century of empresses in Russia.
Author: Ivanov, Andrey V.
Date: 03/20/2023
Location: Curti Lounge, Dept of History, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Did the Russian Orthodox Church Have a Reformation? Petrine Religious Change in Pan-European Context 1700-1761. (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Did the Russian Orthodox Church Have a Reformation? Petrine Religious Change in Pan-European Context 1700-1761.
Abstract: Although the European Reformation was an important event in the rise of Western civilization, historians have struggled to define its impact on the peripheries of Europe as well as globally. This seminar presentation will explore the changes within the early imperial East Slavic Orthodoxy (in Muscovy and Ukraine in particular) as an important case for evaluating the Reformation’s effect beyond the realms of Protestantism and Catholicism. The presentation presents a thorough analysis of ecclesiastical, ideological and political reforms of Ukrainian archbishop Feofan Prokopovych (1681-1736), extolled by Halle Pietists as Orthodoxy’s own “Luther.” Such reforms, the presentation will argue, should be viewed not in isolation from but in connection to a much wider European continuum of religious change. Such a context involved, inter alia, the systematization of doctrine, confessionalization, adoption of the principle of harmony between faith and reason, reaction against early modern Catholicism, scriptural vernacularization, sanctification of the work ethic and eventual emergence of an “enlightened” concord of church-state relations, that made the state more sacred and the church more secular. Overall, the study of eighteenth-century reforms should expand the frontiers of the Reformation and the place of Orthodox Church in Europe’s early modern religious history.
Author: Ivanov, Andrey V.
Date: 11/21/2022
Location: Muenster, Germany
Primary URL: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Geschichte/histsem/veranstaltungen/kolloquien/kolloquium_osteuropaeische_geschichte.html

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