Saint Petersburg
City on the Neva, the capital of Peter I of Russia. The manifesto that put the Russian church under the Spiritual College was signed there in January 1721, and the Regulation was first printed there that September.
The manifesto of Peter the Great establishing the Spiritual College is dated “in Petersburg” on 25 January 1721 (Spiritual Regulation, manifesto, closing lines, in the Russian edition of 1904), and the title leaf of the Regulation says that it was first printed at St Petersburg on 16 September of that year (Spiritual Regulation, title leaf (p. 2)). The nineteenth-century church historian Muravyov calls the city the tsar’s new capital, built on the banks of the Neva (Muravyov, History of the Church of Russia, p. 281). See Peter the Great Replaces the Patriarch with the Holy Synod.
What happened here
- 25 January 1721 (Old Style), firm datePeter the Great Replaces the Patriarch with the Holy Synod
In January 1721 (Old Style) Tsar Peter I puts the Russian church under a board of clergy sworn to him as its supreme judge. It takes the patriarch’s place and the name of Most Holy Synod, and in 1723 the patriarch of Constantinople recognises it.