Archbishop Theophan (Prokopovich) of Novgorod and Velikie Luki was born on this day in 1681. St. Emperor Justinian (482-565), in his new constitutions (Novel 6), explained, "The greatest gifts among men, made by supernal kindness, are priesthood and sovereignty, of which the former is devoted to things divine, and of which the latter governs human things and has the care thereof." On a practical level, the symphony has meant that an emperor will dictate to a patriarch what must be implemented regarding the Church. For example, the same Justinian felt right to tell the bishops and priests how they should read liturgical prayers (the so-called "secret prayers" in Novel 137). Emperor Michael III (840-867) did not have a problem calling his jester a patriarch, clading him in ecclesiastical vestments, and playing a practical joke with his mother, St. Theodora. Emperor Leo VI (866-912) acted as a counterpart of Patriarch Photios; Leo even delivered sermons in Agia Sophia. In his homily on the consecration of Patriarch Stephen (his 19-year-old brother), Leo defended the imperial right to make the appointment: "For it is permissible for those who God charges with administrating the things of the world to put themselves above the law which is binding upon their subjects" (Homily 22. Cited from Jenkins, Byzantium: Imperial Centuries, 218). Leo's ecclesiastical actions were directed toward awareness of his exceptional power over ecclesiastical law, as expressed in his novel 47, where he explains that "now everything depends on imperial authority." Besides reforming church practice regarding the veneration of icons, Byzantine iconoclast emperors attempted to subjugate the Church fully, making it subordinate to the state. However, they never fully succeeded. In his famous words addressed to the iconoclast Emperor Leo V the Armenian (775-820), St. Theodore the Studite (759-826) expressed the Byzantine Church's self-understanding. St. Theodore explained that God appointed some church members as apostles and some as shepherds and teachers but said nothing about kings. Therefore, St. Theodore asked Leo to leave the Church order to the shepherds and teachers. Under Emperor Peter the Great, the Empire implemented its boldest dreams of Byzantine iconoclast emperors over the Church on Russian soil. At the age of 18, Peter established "The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters," which very much resembles the activities of the above-mentioned Michael III. Twenty-nine years later, in 1721, these playful activities (some argued that Peter ridiculed "papists") found realization in the foundation of the Most Holy Governing Synod, which one may see from its title became a substitute for the patriarch. The Russian monarch became "the head of the Russian Church," according to the official wording of the Supreme Laws of the Empire (1796). And the Russian Church was treated as a moral police arm of the state. For his reforms Peter needed new open-minded co-workers. Archbishop Theophan (Prokopovich) became the author of the ecclesiastical reform of the Russian Church. In his polemical writings, Theophan defended the transformation of the Russian Tsar into an absolutist monarch in the person of Peter the Great. Theophan authored the Ecclesiastical Statute [Dukhovnyi reglament], which, between 1721 and 1917, defined the status of the Church in the Russian Empire. In his Decree about Monasteries, issued in 1724, Theophan clearly used the rationale of Iconoclast emperors against the monks, arguing that Byzantium collapsed because there were too many monks and too few warriors. This all makes me think that any state is a beast in its nature, and it is only a matter of time before it begins to dominate the Church, especially in an Orthodox country, without rigid checks and balances protecting citizens from the govermental abuses. | 
