Background
The origin of Prokopovich is unclear: although he was born in Kiev, his parents were from Smolensk.
The origin of Prokopovich is unclear: although he was born in Kiev, his parents were from Smolensk.
One of the founding fathers of the Saint St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Prokopovich wrote much religious verse and some of the most enduring sermons in the Russian language. From a Smolensk merchant family, he distinguished himself at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy of Kiev, subsequently completing his education in Poland (for which purpose he turned Uniate), and at Rome in the College of the Propaganda. Primed with all the knowledge of the West, he returned home to seek his fortune, and, as an Orthodox monk, became one of the professors at, and subsequently rector of, the academy of Kiev.
He entirely reformed the teaching of theology there, substituting the historical method of the German theologians for the former Orthodox scholastic system.
In 1709 Russian Emperor Peter I, while passing through Kiev, was struck by the eloquence of Prokopovich in a sermon on the Battle of Poltava, and in 1716 summoned him to Street St. Petersburg. From henceforth it was Prokopovich"s duty and pleasure to explain the new ideas and justify the most alarming innovations from the pulpit.
He became so invaluable to the civil power that despite the determined opposition of the Russian clergy, who regarded the "Light of Kiev" as an interloper and semi-heretic, he was rapidly promoted, becoming, in 1718, bishop of Pskov, and finally, in 1725, archbishop of Novgorod.1
Penetrated by the conviction that ignorance was the worst of the inveterate evils of old Russia, a pitiless enemy of superstition of every sort. A reformer by nature, resourceful, Prokopovich continued to be a reformer after the death of Peter the Great.