Political Ideology in the Reign of Peter I · 2018. 11. 20. · Paul Bushkovitch Political Ideology...

ГИИМ: Доклады по истории 18 и 19 вв. – DHI Moskau: Vorträge zum 18. und 19. JahrhundertNr. 11 (2012)

Paul Bushkovitch

Political Ideology in the Reign of Peter I:Feofan Prokopovich, Succession to the Throne and the West

Abstract

The term "absolutism" has been increasingly abandoned by historians of Western Europe, but remains as an organizing concept for historians of early modern Russia. In Russia bishop Feofan Prokopovich's defense of Peter the Great's 1722 succession law, the Pravda voli Monarshei, is supposed to be the main example of imported Western absolutist ideology. The young Georgii Gurvich established this interpretation in 1915, following Otto von Gierke's interpretation of early modern political thought, especially of the writings of Hugo Grotius. In fact Grotius was not an advocate for absolutism but for the Dutch republic and his legal ideas were analytic, not advocacy. Gierke and Gurvich's classification of Samuel Pufendorf as an absolutist is also rejected in modern scholarship. Prokopovich's other writings demonstrate that he supported a strong ruler, but not necessarily absolute monarchy. In Peter's time Russia had no "absolutist" political theory.

Резюме

Сегодня ученые – специалисты по истории Западной Европы все чаще отказываются от употребления термина «абсолютизм», однако для истории России раннего Нового времени он попрежнему остается одним из структурирующих концептов. Cчитается, что епископ Феофан Прокопович, защищая в 1722 г. утвержденный Петром Великим новый порядок престолонаследия – Правду воли Монаршей −, заимствовал западную абсолютистскую идеологию. Это утверждение в русскую историческую науку привнес в 1915 г. молодой историк Георгий Гурвич вслед за авторитетным немецким ученым Отто фон Гирке, интерпретировавшим в этом направлении европейскую политическую мысль раннего Нового времени, прежде всего – труды Гуго Гроция. В действительности Гроций вовсе не был апологетом абсолютизма – он был сторонником Нидерландской республики, а высказанные им представления о праве были аналитикой, а не апологетикой. Включение в ряды приверженцев абсолютизма Самуэля Пуффендорфа, на чем настаивали фон Гирке и Гурвич, также оспаривается в современной науке. Что касается самого Прокоповича, другие его сочинения показывают, что он был сторонником сильного правителя, но вовсе не обязательно абсолютного монарха. В петровское время в России не существовало «абсолютистской» политической теории как таковой.

<1>

In 1722 Peter the Great issued a decree declaring that the succession to the Russian throne would

henceforth be at the discretion of the reigning monarch. In European terminology, the decree established

a form of testamentary succession. Shortly thereafter Feofan Prokopovich, bishop of Pskov and already

the principal figure in the Russian Orthodox Church, published a defense of the decree. His text was in

two parts, one a long discussion of Biblical precedents and the other a defense of the decree founded on

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the writings of the legal theorists of Western Europe, though he explicitly named only Hugo Grotius. Some

two centuries later (1915), an undergraduate student in his final year of the law faculty at Iur 'ev (Dorpat)

University, one Georgii Gurvich (18941965), published an analysis of Prokopovich 's text. Gurvich went on

to Petrograd University, where he received a doctorate in law, and then emigrated. In Paris as Georges

Gurvitch, he had a long and distinguished career as a sociologist. His youthful thesis has remained to this

day the basic work on Western political thought in Peter 's Russia. Gurvich believed that the bishop had

imported into Russia western theories of absolutism, as expounded by Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf,

to support Peter 's reforms, the common interpretation of Prokopovich 's tract to this day. In this belief

Gurvich was wrong.

*

<2>

Gurvich was writing about political theory, not about the reality of the state in either Western Europe or

Russia. He did not attempt to characterize the state that emerged from Peter 's reforms in any way,

"absolutist" or otherwise, other than to assume the full power of the tsar. His concern was with theory. The

main influence of Gurvich 's book came later, when historians of both Western Europe and Russia came to

use the term "absolutism" to describe the reality of early modern monarchies in both areas. His work

provided a convenient pendant to the conception of Peter 's state as absolutist, for it provided that state

with an ideology.

<3>

Gurvich was very well read in the historical and legal literature of his day. The book was a remarkable

performance, one that his older colleagues might have envied. Indeed his advisor, the Russian legal

historian Fyodor Taranovskii, was full of praise for the work (he supplied an introduction), criticizing him

only for his caution about the influence of Thomas Hobbes on Prokopovich. Gurvich correctly noted that

the bishop never cited Hobbes (or Pufendorf), and that there was no evidence that Feofan even read

Hobbes. Any ideas that were similar to those of Hobbes must have been the result of Prokopovich 's own

thinking .1 It is hard to escape the conclusion that Gurvich did want to demonstrate that his advisor was

wrong, but was skeptical about the possible impact of Hobbes. Later historians did not share his caution

and regularly cited Gurvich to show that Hobbes as well as Grotius and Pufendorf influenced Prokopovich.

Here Gurvich was right, not Taranovskii. There was one point in the young scholar 's analysis, however,

that should have seemed rather peculiar: that is the work of Grotius as a foundation of absolutist theory.

1 G. Gurvich, "Pravda voli monarshei" Feofana Prokopovicha i ee zapadnoevropeiskie istochniki", Uchenye zapiski imperatorskogo Iur'evskogo universiteta (1915), № 11, IIX, 1112, here 109110.



Grotius had a very distinguished political career, but one not serving absolute kings but rather the Dutch

republic. Modern writers on Grotius do not even raise the issue of absolutism, considering it obvious that

Grotius was entirely in sympathy with the Dutch political system. How could Gurvich make such an odd

judgment?

<4>

It seems that he was too trustful of the authorities in the field, in this case Otto von Gierke (18411921). At

the beginning of the twentieth century Gierke was at the peak of his reputation, primarily as an authority

on Germanic Genossenschaftsrecht, roughly speaking the law of associations. His idea was that the

history of German law did not take the individual alone as its subject (as in Civil Law), but rather people in

associations, private and public. German tradition was that of the Rechtsstaat, but not exactly the same

Rechtsstaat as in the countries (mainly the Romance countries) where Civil Law was dominant. The

national element is very clear, and not surprisingly Gierke was uncomfortable with the normal canon of

great thinkers of the early modern era on political and legal topics, Macchiavelli, Bodin, Grotius, Hobbes,

and so on. Gierke wanted something more German and also with a federalist aspect, which was dear to

his heart as yet another association. The solution came in his 1880 (and several times reprinted) book on

Johannes Althusius (15631638), whom Gierke claimed was a neglected genius of the early modern age

and a pioneer of federalist theory. In the process of introducing Althusius, Gierke gave a summary of early

modern political thought in which he asserted that Grotius was behind the theory of absolutism. He did this

by asserting that Grotius 's conception of natural law lay behind the absolutism of Hobbes and Pufendorf.2

To demonstrate his position he began by adducing the famous dictum of Bodin that sovereignty was

absolute, perpetual: "La souveraineté est la puissance absolue et perpetuelle d 'une République, que les

Latins appellent majestatem".3 Bodin 's notion of sovereignty also implied that it was indivisible and for a

state ("république"), not just a monarchy. Though Bodin was mainly concerned to defend the French

monarchy, his theory stated clearly that all states, not just monarchies, had sovereignty. To Gierke,

however, all of Bodin 's state forms were absolute, and monarchy was clearly the most desirable state.4

Thus Bodin appealed to defenders of "Absolutismus". This conception was not entirely inaccurate, but

Gierke 's version of Grotius was another matter. In his account Grotius asserted that sovereignty meant

that the state was not subject to the will of another.5 Again Grotius was speaking of states, not kings.

2 O. von Gierke, Johannes Althusius und die Entwicklung der naturrechtlichen Staatstheorien. 5th ed. Aalen, 1958 (originally 1880), 72.

3 J. Bodin, Les six livres de la République [1576], 6 vols., ed. Ch. Frémont, M.D. Couzinet, and H. Rochais, Paris, 1986, I, 8, 179.

4 O. von Gierke, Johannes Althusius,152153.

5 H. Grotius, De iure belli et pacis, ed. P. C. Molhuysen. Leiden, 1919 [originally 1625], I, 3, 7.



Gierke, however, asserted that Grotius only conceived of the state as an individual person or persons, and

lacked "der Begriff der Staatspersönlichkeit".6 Thus Grotius became a source for absolutism. In fact

Grotius, for example, asserted that the Dutch republic was sovereign, as well as any other fully

independent state, and he defended its sovereignty against the Dutch Reformed church as well as foreign

powers. Gierke 's sleight of hand made the republican into a theorist of absolute monarchy, a view that

was not universal, though the other leading German historian of law of the time, Georg Jellinek, followed

Gierke with some qualifications.7

<5>

Gurvich was not just blindly following an accepted leader in legal historical scholarship. He clearly wanted

to find an absolutist theory for Peter 's time, since he was training for the generally liberal Russian juridical

profession, and saw Peter as the founder of the state under which he lived in 1915, that is, an absolute

monarchy tempered by a very recently established and limited Duma. Gierke 's interpretation of Grotius,

improbable as it was, provided him with an argument, for Prokopovich certainly approved of Grotius'

conception of state sovereignty. Gurvich also detected the influence of Samuel Pufendorf, who seemed to

provide another "absolutist", since Gurvich accepted Gierke 's interpretation in this case as well. Gierke

saw Pufendorf 's system as merely a moderate form of that of Hobbes.8 Gurvich was wrong here too, for

Prokopovich never cited Pufendorf and there is no evidence in the text of any of the German jurist 's

characteristic ideas, as opposed to those he shared with Grotius and other contemporary jurists.

Pufendorf was certainly known in Russia, for Peter had both his history of Europe and his 1682 popular

account of his political theories, De officio hominis et civis, translated into Russian. Unfortunately for

Gurvich Pufendorf was no absolutist either. His first major work was an analysis of the existing structure of

the Holy Roman Empire, which he saw as an anomaly, but did not wish to reform. He was quite happy to

serve limited monarchies (Sweden before 1682) as well as "absolute" monarchs (Sweden after 1682,

Brandenburg). He was also a great supporter of the English Glorious Revolution of 1688 and said so in

print. Pufendorf 's comfort with various forms of government was not opportunism: as Leonard Krieger

pointed out a half century ago, Pufendorf was an analyst, not a reformer. His conception of the nature of

the state and its sovereignty did not imply that one form of government was more desirable than another.

His history of Europe made that point very clearly. Rebellion and civil war were clearly bad, but the various

forms of European government are otherwise treated historically, with their various virtues and vices. On

6 O. von Gierke, Althusius, 151152, 17274.

7 G. Gurvich, "Pravda voli monarshei" Feofana Prokopovicha, 40, citing both Gierke and Jellinek; G. Jellinek, Allgemeine Staatslehre. 2nd ed. Berlin, 1905, 5658, 446447.

8 O. von Gierke, Johannes Althusius,72, 182186.



forms of government, Pufendorf was studiously neutral. Both Grotius and Pufendorf were unlikely

candidates for theorists of absolute monarchy, but Gurvich was looking for absolutists who influenced

Prokopovich. In this search he was considerably ahead of his time.

*

<6>

Absolutism came into its own as the dominant conception for early modern European history only after the

Second World War. Most surveys and textbooks of European history from the late nineteenth century until

the middle of the twentieth described the early modern era not in terms of absolutism but of "the rise of

national states" or avoided the question of state structure entirely in favor of a political narrative that often

stressed foreign policy. The national state was a useful framework, for it both justified the history of

France and Britain and provided a background for the national unification movements in nineteenth

century Germany and Italy. In Germany some historians (Reinhold Koser, Fritz Hartung) did use the term

before the 1950 's but it remained rare and was usually a reference to the "enlightened absolutism" of the

late eighteenth century. The first widely successful attempt to find absolutism, rather than national unity,

as the central feature of the early modern state came in the report of Roland Mousnier and Fritz Hartung

at the 1955 International Congress of Historians at Rome. From that moment on it spread rapidly, and was

the dominant framework for early modern European history by the 1960 's.

<7>

The history of political thought followed a similar rhythm. Historians of West European political thought, a

mixture of jurists, philosophers, and historians, also rarely employed the terms "absolutist" or "absolutism"

before the 1950 's, but there were exceptions, mainly German. Gierke had already used the terms in his

work on Althusius, and no less than Friedrich Meinecke used "absolutism" in the section headings for his

widely read 1924 work Die Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte. From Mousnier and Hartung

onwards historians of political thought began to look for absolutist theories, but it seems to be the case

that they were less enamored of the concept than their colleagues who wrote on the history of the state or

culture.

<8>

In the course of the twentieth century, the Russian state from Peter 's time onward came to be seen within

the conception of absolutism, both as a matter of practice and a matter of political theory, but this

conception came late for Western and Soviet historians alike. Pre1917 Russian historiography did not

use the term absolutism to describe either the Russian state of the eighteenth century and before. The



preferred term was the traditional samoderzhavie. In the Soviet Union, the story was rather complicated.

Soviet historians of Western Europe (mainly of France) debated the nature of early modern European

state and society through the 1930 's, with the final decisions made at a session of the Academy of

Sciences in 1940. From then on the label absolutism was a requirement for all Soviet histories of early

modern Western Europe. Russian history was more complicated. The Pokrovskii era had other concerns,

since his notion that the whole of Russian history from 1500 to industrialization was the rise of merchant

capital (torgovyi kapital). The state scarcely figured in his narrative, and when it did the term was the

traditional samoderzhavie. As the change in ideological orientation came in 1934 and new textbooks had

to be written, the authors often labeled the period of Peter "absolutism" in chapter titles, but the actual

texts said nothing about it. In the 1950 's Boris Kafengauz employed it on several occasions, citing

Gurvich 's book on Prokopovich as evidence of absolutist theory, even though Gurvich had long ago

emigrated and émigré historians were normally off limits. It was only at the end of the 1960 's, with the

discussion on absolutism in Russia on the pages of the journal Istoriia SSSR, that absolutism became the

predominant usage in Soviet historiography. So it remains today, in Russian historical writings about

seventeenth and eighteenth century Russia, and the Russians are not alone. Starting in the 1960 's most

Western historians of eighteenth century Russia used the term as well. James Cracraft, Paul Dukes, John

LeDonne, Isabel de Madariaga, and Lindsey Hughes all employed absolutism as an assumption and a

framework. Some, Reinhard Wittram and Marc Raeff, were more cautious, but absolutism remains the

most common label for the state structure and ideology of eighteenth century Russia. Most recently

Cynthia Whittaker continued the tradition of "absolutist" Russia, once again telling us that Grotius and

Pufendorf were theorists of absolutism who influenced the Russians through Prokopovich.9

<9>

For the historian today the problem is that the conception of absolutism in the West that came from the

work of Mousnier and so many other historians of his generation has collapsed. Most historians, French,

British, American, or German, have either abandoned it entirely or redefined it so extensively that it is

another concept. The basis of the Western absolutist conception was that the kings had sidelined the

aristocracies and created a state that was centralized, bureaucratic, and faced no other centers of power

(e.g. national or local assemblies). Its key features were a standing army and the ability to impose taxes

by royal decree. The historians of the last generation have shown that all these features were much more

limited than Mousnier and his generation believed, and that the kings worked with, not against, the

aristocracies both in formal institutions and through informal networks. The result was a state that was a

9 C. H. Whittaker, Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth Century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue, DeKalb (Ill.), 2003, 30; The author has been guilty of the same mistake. See P. Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: the Struggle for Power 16711725. Cambridge, 2001, 440441, corrected in idem, Petr Velikii: Bor'ba za vlast' (16711725), SPb., 2008, 448.



complex and ever changing machinery of compromise, shared power and only occasional and limited

assertions of royal power. It was a state different to be sure from the feudal monarchies of the later Middle

Ages, but nothing like the protomodern state imagined from the 1950 's to the 1990 's. Similarly the writers

on early modern Western political theory do not portray their subjects as advocates of absolutism.

"Absolutism", as they point out, was a word invented after 1815 to describe the extreme monarchist

conservatives of that era. Until then it did not exist and expressions like "monarchie absolue" were rare

even in the works of publicists such as bishop JaquesBénigne Bossuet, court preacher to Louis XIV in

the 1660 's and author of several works defending royal power. The identification of natural law theory with

absolutism is not found in standard works such as the 1991 Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450

1700. The emphasis is on the notions of natural law in relationship to religion and the church and the

position of the individual in society. Recent historians, such as Horst Dreitzel, have noted that Grotius and

Pufendorf 's theories could support unlimited or limited monarchy, as long as the state was sovereign.

Richard Tuck described the actual political views of Grotius, which were republican, as should have been

expected in a Dutchman of the time.

*

<10>

To Feofan Grotius was the most relevant author because the bishop was not writing a tract on political

thought, absolutist or otherwise. Grotius was a jurist, and the subject of Feofan 's tract was a specific law,

not the nature of the state, political power, or the virtues of one or another sort of monarchy. This was a

feature of the text that Gurvich ignored. Prokopovich produced a defense of a specific law, Peter 's

inheritance law of 1722, so the most relevant authors were naturally jurists. The first half of the text (ch. 1

9) is a discussion of the legal power of parents over their children based on Biblical precedent, historical

examples, and law. The second half (ch. 1016) concerns the power of monarchs over their children. It

repeats the earlier arguments, applying them to monarchs. In chapters 1012 he noted the duty of parents,

including monarchs, to bring up their sons as best they can, though he saw no obligation to make them

exactly resemble themselves, citing Biblical and classical examples. Only in chapter 13 does he discuss

the power of monarchs in general, and then finishes (ch. 1416) with a discussion of the application of the

preceding chapters to the issue of succession. In that connection the first part of chapter 15 contains a

brief discussion of the forms of government and monarchy. In other words, only a chapter and a half out of

the entire Prokopovich text formed the object of analysis in the work of Gurvich, the analysis that has

informed all subsequent discussion.



<11>

Gurvich concentrated all his attention on this relatively small part of the book, though Feofan stuck closely

to his task, devoting most of the text to the issue of parental power. This was a legal, not a political issue,

as he made clear in chapter three, calling on the reader to examine the three hundred law books that can

be found in St. Petersburg and going on to cite the Code of Justinian for the right of a parent to disinherit

his son. He then quoted Grotius in describing the power of parents to sell and even kill their children in

various societies,10 though he adds that these customs "ne ves 'ma dostokhval 'ny sut'." His summation,

that it is natural for parents to provide for their children, including by inheritance, and that therefore the

children receive it not by right, but by the good will of the parents, closely followed Grotius.11 So far Feofan

produced essentially a legal thesis, though he noted (ch. 8) that "political philosophers" agree with the

relevant laws and traditions.

<12>

Only in chapter 13, after the long discourse on parental right and duties did he take up the nature of

supreme power. The theme, Feofan declared, is "velichestvo" or in Latin "majestas". Prokopovich says

that it has two meanings, one a superior dignity and the other supreme power subject to no laws.

Maiestas, of course, was the Latin word Bodin used for "souverainté".12 Grotius seems to have used it only

in the sense of dignity.13 Feofan never referred to Bodin, however, and went on to quote Grotius "That

power is called sovereign whose actions are not subject to the legal control of another, so that they cannot

be rendered void by the operation of another human will." ("Summa autem illa [potestas] dicitur, cuius

actus alterius iuri non subsunt, ita ut alterius voluntatis humanae arbitrio irriti possint reddi.").14 He

interpreted the Dutchman 's expression "summa potestas" as "vysochaishaia vlast'" and inserted into the

quotation in parenthesis the explanation of that phrase: "velichestvo naritsaemaia" thus equating majestas

and potestas. Generally Grotius used the term imperium or potestas, not majestas, to speak of the

sovereignty of kings or other types of rulers over subjects,15 so Feofan was adding his own interpretation

here. Feofan understood Grotius correctly, however, that this supreme power, sovereignty, is not subject

to the will of another and its actions cannot be annulled by any other besides God himself. The justification

for this notion, Prokopovich continued, is natural reason: if a power is called supreme, it cannot be subject

10 H. Grotius, De iure belli et pacis [1625], ed. P. C. Molhuysen. Leiden, 1919, II, 5, 7.

11 Ibid., 8, 37.

12 J. Bodin, Les six livres de la République, I, 8.

13 H. Grotius, De iure belli et pacis, I, 3, 2122.

14 Ibid., I, 3, 7.

15 Ibid., I, 3, 12.



to another 's will. Therefore no one can judge or scrutinize (istiazati) the monarch. A long series of

statements from scripture and various church fathers demonstrated the same conclusion: the monarch

must be obeyed and not judged or scrutinized. He is therefore free from human law, though not from

God 's law. This section is the heart of the argument by Gurvich and all others ever after that the text

reflects an absolutist doctrine.

<13>

The second part of Feofan 's argument in section 13, that the monarch is not subject to human law, looks

very absolutist. The idea is more or less the same as that found in the ancient maxim from the Code of

Justinian, "Rex solutus legibus est."16 This maxim had a long history in medieval and early modern

Europe, but in the Middle Ages it was not taken by jurists to imply absolutism. Legal writers who defended

the rights of estate assemblies quoted it frequently. In the early modern era it appeared more frequently

as a defense of royal power, for example in France as a justification for extraordinary measures such as

the lettres de cachet rather than of normal legislation.17 The problem with this conception is that it was

irrelevant to Russian conditions. The idea was that the monarch was free to ignore existing laws, whether

written law or legal fictions like the French "fundamental laws", one of which was the law of succession.

Russia, however, had no such laws. The succession practices of the Kievan and Moscow princes were

entirely based on custom, and the content of that custom is to this day a matter of debate among

historians. The Romanov dynasty came to power by an election, and Peter himself was chosen in 1682 by

the boyars and the church over an elder brother. In 1713 Louis XIV tried to alter the law of succession,

thus overturning one of the fundamental laws of France. In 1722 Peter 's law of succession did not

overturn an existing law, it created a written law of succession for the first time in Russian history. The tsar

himself in the preface to the law stated that it was to supersede a harmful custom (obychai), not a law.

Why then, should Feofan want to argue that Peter could make such a law because the sovereign did not

have to obey human law? A closer examination of his text in the second part of chapter 13, however,

shows that he, like many interpreters of the maxim of Ulpian, meant something quite different from original

intent. All of his scriptural examples in the chapter are about obeying the king 's commands, not about the

king 's actions in relationship to law. The emphasis is that no one, least of all subjects, may oppose or

particularly may judge the king or call him to account for his actions. The idea that the monarch did not

have to obey human law had to have a new meaning in a country without a learned legal profession and

which was defining the powers of various state institutions in written law for the first time. Feofan either did

not understand the function of the idea in European law or he realized that in Russian conditions it had

16 Domitius Ulpianus, Corpus Iuris Civilis. I. Digesta,3, 31.

17 See F. Cosandey, R. Descimon, L'absolutisme en France: Histoire et historiographie, Paris, 2002.



different implications. For him the issue was obedience. Similarly the bishop took the idea of sovereignty,

an idea that was new to the Russians, but used it to buttress very traditional arguments for obedience to

the monarch. The notion of sovereignty as the intellectual basis of the analysis of the state was an

innovation, not the political conclusions that called for obedience to the monarch.

<14>

Feofan borrowed more from the natural law school than the definition of state sovereignty, even if on a

rather theoretical level. All governments, he continued, derive their origin from an original agreement

among the people. Once again he asserted a general principle, one held by most of the European lawyers

and theorists of the time. This agreement, in the case of hereditary monarchy, implied a desire on the part

of the people that the ruler should leave an heir in some fashion: that is the meaning of hereditary

monarchy. As the Bible teaches that all power is from God, then God has willed the agreement and its

details. In a monarchy then, the exercise of sovereignty means that the people must obey the monarch

and can neither depose nor judge him (he was thinking of Charles I, as he states), unless conditions were

laid down in the initial agreement. Thus the Polish constitution was perfectly legitimate, but in Russia there

were no such conditions. In Russia there were no such prior conditions so no one could dispute the

Russian monarch 's choice of an heir. He also argued that it is a mistake to assume that in making a

hereditary monarchy the people intended that the king should not have the power to name a successor.

The only case in which the people can have any role in determining the succession is the case in which

the ruler dies without making his wishes known. In this situation they are to try to determine his opinion of

his children or any other persons, so as to enthrone someone whom the king had preferred. Feofan 's idea

of hereditary monarchy implied not just primogeniture but also the option of testamentary succession, a

practice known also in the West, as in the case of the Spanish monarchy before the Bourbon accession.

<15>

The final chapter of the Pravda is an argument for hereditary (in this sense) monarchy against elective

monarchy. This section is the only part of the book that is political rather than legal. As a sort of appendix

Feofan provided fortyone examples from secular history of rulers appointing their successors, concluding

with the case of Ivan III, cited also in Peter 's law, and five from sacred history as well. He concluded the

work by ridiculing the idea that Peter 's succession law was bad because it was an innovation, and noted

once again that the example of Ivan III shows that in fact it was not an innovation. If Russia 's lack of

learning did not prevent the composition of a complete history, he suggested, there would be more

examples.

*



<16>

The Pravda, however, was not the only text in which Feofan expounded his views of politics, or rather of

the political literature of his time. At the behest of Peter he also translated by 1716 the work of Diego de

Saavedra Fajardo, then quite famous as the author of Idea de un principe politico christiano en cien

empresas (1640) usually known as Empresas politicas, a book of emblems explained to provide political

advice to rulers. The Spanish diplomat 's book was translated into Latin in 1659, and in that form acquired

a European audience that extended to Russia. In the preface to his (unpublished) translation Feofan

briefly surveyed the political literature which he knew. It was, he said, of three types. Aristotle and his

followers had written about the state, but they mostly talked about virtue in a philosophical manner and

said little about actual practice. Others, Plato being his example, analyzed politics po umyshlenii svoem,

but came up only with an abstract scheme not concordant with narodnye obychai. Still others tried to

make their difficult teaching acceptable by writing history – this was Tacitus—or in the form of stories.

Here his examples were Xenophon 's Cyropaedia and two early modern best sellers. One was the

sixteenth century Spanish bishop Antonio de Guevara 's 1529 Reloj de principes on Marcus Aurelius

(Feofan mistakenly said Marcus Antonius), widely read in Latin as Horologium principis. The other was

John Barclay 's Latin novel allegorizing the French Wars of Religion, Argenis (1621). Their works, said

Feofan, were clever and pleasing, but incomplete. The Jesuit writers Robert Bellarmine and Juan de

Mariana he rejected entirely, for they placed kings under the power of the Pope and advocated regicide.

The only writer who discussed all the important tasks for monarchs without the defects of the others was

Saavedra Fajardo. He had practical experience as an advisor to kings and provided advice for every

occasion, person, or customs that the monarch might encounter. His only defect was that he was

occasionally obscure and Feofan had tried his best to rectify this in his translation.

<17>

What is striking about Feofan 's description of European political thought is that there are no writers here

that are normally understood to be advocates of absolutism. Guevara and Barclay were certainly

advocates of strong royal power. Guevara, however, was mainly concerned with the moral personality of

the king, while Barclay 's main enemy was disorder and aristocratic faction. Though a Catholic, he

opposed the claims of the Pope to superiority over the king of France. The closest Barclay came to

"absolutism" was the defense of the royal prerogative to tax the subjects without asking them, the norm in

France in any case, but he did not advocate the suppression of assemblies and insisted that the king

should rule according to law.18 Feofan found Guevara and Barclay imperfect compared to Saavedra. The

Spaniard advised kings to avoid ambition:

18 J. Barclay, Argenis, 2 vols., ed. and transl. M. Riley and D. Pritchard Huber, Tempe (Ariz.), 2004, IV, 18.



"Inordinate ambition encourages the oppression of the liberty of the people, the humbling of the

nobility, the weakening of the powerful, and the reduction of all to royal authority, thinking that

the more absolute it is and the lower the people are reduced, the more secure it is. An illusion

which by flattery gains the will of princes and puts them in great danger. It is modesty that

preserves empires, correcting the prince 's ambition and maintaining within the bounds of reason

the power of his dignity, the rank of the nobility and the liberty of the people, for a monarchy is

not durable which is not mixed and is composed of aristocracy and democracy. Absolute power

is tyranny."19

Modern scholars recognize that, like the natural law theorists, Saavedra Fajardo was not an absolutist.20

*

<18>

Prokopovich did not advocate "absolutism" because it did not exist in either theory or practice in Western

Europe for Russia to borrow. To be sure the growth of royal power, at least in some European states, was

real and its "enemies" identified by the past historians of "absolutism" were also real. In Catholic countries

the Pope remained a rival to the kings. The kings also did contend with aristocracies, local and "central",

but they dealt with them not by wholesale suppression or by "taming" them but by making arrangements,

giving them offices and rewards and suppressing the few who remained recalcitrant or rebelled. Power

was in fact shared. They did try to expand the central administration, but in limited ways and not

eliminating the older structures, merely supplementing them. They also did not suppress assemblies of

estates: in France the Estates General may not have met after 1614, but nearly half the country remained

pays d 'états until 1789. The ongoing effort of French and other kings to establish permanent taxes and a

standing army was only partially successful, even in countries later labeled "absolutist". The absence of

"absolutist" theory is even more striking. The political and legal theorists of the time, a few royalist

pamphleteers aside, did not advocate unlimited power of the monarch. They believed that the state

possessed absolute sovereignty, but were neutral about the type of state: republics or limited monarchies

were sovereign as well as "unlimited" monarchies. Political leaders proclaimed "absolute" power for the

kings in certain situations, not as generalities. The Third Estate in the 1614 States General of France

asserted that the king 's sovereignty implied that no one could judge or oppose him, but they meant the

Pope, not themselves or the parlements. King Christian V of Denmark proclaimed "absolute power" in

1665/6, meaning that the throne was henceforth hereditary and the succession did not need to be

19 "El poder absoluta es tirania"; D. Saavedra Fajardo, Empresas politicas, ed. S. Lopez Poza, Madrid, 1999, 41, 512513.

20 C. Romanoski, Tacitus emblematicus, 277289.



confirmed or asserted by the estates, mainly the nobility. After the proclamation of royal sovereignty in

Sweden in 1682, the riksdag continued to meet.

<19>

Prokopovich, as a more careful examination of his writings demonstrates, understood all this. In any case,

Russia 's situation differed considerably from that of France or the Western monarchies. However powerful

the last patriarchs of the Orthodox Church in Russia may have been, they were not the local

representatives of a large and powerful international church. The Russian boyars in the seventeenth

century (and perhaps before) were not the representatives of any local noble community or territory. They

had always acted in concert with the Tsar even if they fought with one another for influence on him.

Russia also had no rebellious princes of the blood. If the tsar 's power had no legal limit, neither did that of

the boyars in the duma. Both followed custom, and custom could change. Only in Peter 's time did a short

lived opposition to monarchical power emerge among the aristocracy, but as the events of 1730

demonstrated, it was too small and too limited in aims to gain much support among the elite. The Zemskii

sobor was not trivial, but it did not deal with taxation or the army. What it did do was name the tsar (in

1598 and 1613) and that function was inherited after 1725 by the guards regiments, through which the

Russian elite continued to name its rulers until 1801. The centralized administration certainly grew in the

seventeenth century, and more from Peter 's time onward, but seventeenth century offices were headed by

aristocrats and after Peter, but the new composite elite emerged that soon saw itself as equally

aristocratic to the old boyars. The provinces remained notoriously undergoverned, and the weakness of

local administration in Russia had no parallel in the major European states. Russia had no intendants.

<20>

In the Russian situation the natural law theorists and other political writers in the West did have an

audience, but not because of "absolutist" theory, which they did not represent. It may have been their very

neutrality about forms of government, combined with the assertion of state sovereignty and insistence on

written law, which gave rise to their appeal to the Russians. Peter (and Prokopovich) wanted to create a

stronger state and base its actions on written law. Prokopovich as well as the tsar could rely on western

writers for arguments about the state in general, but for particular forms of administration they had to find

models in Western practice (such as the Swedish colleges), not in political or legal theory.

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Author

Prof. Paul Bushkovitch

Department of History, Yale University

Email: [email protected]



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