Father-ruler and patriarchal authority in the works of Feofan Prokopovich

The article is devoted to the formation of the image of patriarchal authority that took place in Russia during the 1720s. The main mechanism behind this process was the transposition of the paradigm of father-child relations onto the relationship between ruler and subjects. A particularly significant role in shaping this perception of domination and subordination was played by the political interpretation of the Fifth Commandment, «Honor thy father and thy mother». Following the Reformation this interpretation became widespread in both Protestant and Catholic catechisms, and later was reproduced in works published by Kyiv Metropolitan Petro Mohyla (Peter Mogila). According to this view, along with one’s biological parents, representatives of authority – primarily the sovereign, but also officials, clergy, teachers, etc. – were to be honored as paternal figures. During the Petrine era, this interpretation was taken up by Feofan Prokopovich, who devoted extensive passages to the sovereign’s patriarchal authority in his well-known catechism «A Child’s First Lesson», first published in 1720, as well as in his sermons. These texts conveyed to the subjects an ideal model of behavior requiring reverence and unconditional obedience to the ruler, while the latter, in turn, was to exercise «paternal care». The political reading of the Fifth Commandment represented yet another manifestation of the principle of «power from God», which lay at the heart of Feofan Prokopovich’s political theology. The image of patriarchal authority also gained popularity due to its compatibility with the concept of the “common good”. In Petrine ideology, the notion of patriarchal power served as a politico-theological foundation for the «well-ordered police state», enabling the equation of supervision and the meticulous regulation of subjects’ daily lives with the ruler’s paternal concern for their welfare. In the post-Petrine period, the image of patriarchal authority was transformed into the panegyric trope of the «little mother-empress», the «mother of the Fatherland». Thus, the ideal of patriarchal rule became an integral part of the political ideology of imperial Russia.

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