tolerant, he supported with his authority Mogila's Orthodox Confession. But the tsar's general outlook in religious matters found expression in the words: "The human conscience is subject to God alone, and no ruler is entitled to constrain any man to change his creed."
Whereas Peter in conjunction with Theophan tended towards Protestantism, Javorskii, the other most notable ecclesiastic of those days, represented the Romanising inclinations of conservative theologians and church politicians. Theophan learned in Jesuit schools and academies to hate Catholicism, but it was there conversely that Javorskii learned to detest Protestantism.[1] Owing to his European education, however, as representative of the patriarchate he was from 1700 onwards an adherent of the Petrine policy, though only in temporal matters, for in religious and ecclesiastical affairs Javorskii was a Romaniser. His principal work (Kamen' Věry—The Stone of Faith), directed against Protestantism, was written during the years 1713 to 1718, but could not be printed until 1728, after Peter's death. Javorskii taught the primacy of the church over the state, and accepted the doctrine of Boniface VIII concerning the two sisters of the church, but without avail. Peter made an adroit use of the refractory churchman on behalf of his own ecclesiastical policy, compelling Javorskii to subscribe the new regulations (which were signed by all the hierarchs in the realm), and actually appointing him first president of the synod.
The significance of Peter's reforms in ecclesiastical administration was underlined by the profound disturbance which affected the raskolniki. They stigmatised Peter as antichrist, and in their hearts the conservatives and the reactionaries were in agreement with this designation, not excepting Javorskii, who compiled a writing upon the coming of antichrist. The conservatives' view of Peter was vividly displayed in a work upon the beard from the pen of Adrian, the last patriarch, wherein to shave the beard was described as a deadly sin. The expectations of the end of the world in 1666 having remained unfulfilled, the apocalyptic chronologers
- ↑ The way in which the Russians obtained admittance into the Catholic schools of Poland and of Europe is worthy of mention. To secure an entry they had to make outward profession of Catholicism, returning to the Orthodox faith when they went back to Russia. Both Theophan and Javorskii had constrained their consciences to this hypocrisy.
