JAVORSKIJ, STEFAN. – In Russian theology, he represents the Catholic tendency in opposition to the Protestant one headed by Teofane Prokopovič, a favorite of Pietro il Grande. S., a native of southern Russia, studied in Kiev and then, at that time a Catholic, in the Jesuit colleges at Leopoli and Poznania. Having returned to the schism, he became a monk in Kiev, where he also taught and became prefect of the Academy. In 1700 he became metropolitan of Rjazan and subsequently patriarchal exarch in Moscow, where he established, on the model of the one in Kiev, the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy, teaching there for some time. J. accepted Pietro’s political reform, extolling his deeds, but refused to accept his ecclesiastical reform and the interference of the civil authorities in ecclesiastical affairs.
J.’s principal work is Kamen' very (originally written in Latin: Petra fidei), divided into 12 treatises,
the most excellent of all works written by the separated Easterners against Protestantism (it depends heavily on Bellarmino and Becano). Other works by J. are Epistola ad doctos sorbonicos de Ecclesiarum unione (1720, published in Germany), Signa adventus Antichristi et finis mundi (1703, against the Old Believers who taught that Pietro was the Antichrist); Predicha (published in Moscow, 1804–1805), and Lectiones theologiae dogmaticae (Kiev, 1693–1697, remaining in manuscript). The dissertation by the Slavophile Jurij Samarin on Teofane Prokopovič and S. J., written under the influence of A. S. Chomjakov, is a classic.