PROKOPOVIČ, FEOFAN (TEOFANE). — Ecclesiastic and political figure, advisor to Peter the Great, forerunner of the Protestantizing trend in the Russian Church and theology, born in Kiev on 8 June 1691, died on 8 September 1736.
Born to non-Catholic parents, he was educated at the ecclesiastical academy in Kiev, studied in Poland, converted to Catholicism, entered the Order of St Basil, and continued his studies (humanities and then theology) in Rome at the Greek College of St Athanasius. On returning to his homeland, he abandoned the Catholic faith and from then on became a determined opponent of everything Catholic, both in scholarship and in life. In 1707–11 he taught poetics, rhetoric, and theology at the Kiev Academy. For his students he wrote the tragicomedy *Vladimir* (with an edifying purpose, aimed against superstition). In 1711 he became hegumen and rector of the Academy. He was then summoned by Peter to St Petersburg as a preacher and publicist (1716), appointed archbishop of Pskov (1718), and became the Tsar’s advisor and chief assistant in the reform of the Russian Church, namely in subjecting it to the State. All the important acts of ecclesiastical legislation passed through Prokopovič’s hands. Soon he became a leading member of the Synod. In 1719–20, together with Peter, he composed the Ecclesiastical Regulation, and in 1725 he was transferred to the archiepiscopal see of Novgorod. After the death of the Tsar (1725), to whom he was sincerely devoted and whose reforms he praised in his sermons and encomia, Prokopovič’s situation changed; but then, under Anna Ivanovna (1730–40), he regained ascendancy, though adapting himself and shifting from progressive Enlightenment views to a more conservative stance.
As a theologian, Prokopovič is the father of systematic theology in Russia; he separated dogmatic theology from moral theology. A friend of German Lutheran theologians, he introduced into Russian theology a Protestantizing doctrine, especially regarding Sacred Scripture as the sole source of Revelation and justification by faith alone.
He wrote eight theological treatises in Latin, aiming at a complete course but leaving it unfinished. The treatises (except no. 8, written in 1716) were corrected, completed, and published by others. First complete edition: *De processione Spiritus Sancti* (Gotha 1722); *Introductio in theologia* (Königsberg 1773); *De Deo* (ibid. 1774); *De Trinitate* (ibid. 1775); *De creatione et providentia* (ibid. 1775); *De homine innocente* (Moscow 1776); *De homine lapsi* (ibid. 1776); *De gratuita peccatoris per Christum iustificatione* (Breslau 1779). The second complete edition, edited by S. Mislavskij in 3 vols., was published in Leipzig in 1772–84 (vol. III was added by Mislavskij according to Prokopovič’s idea outlined in the prolegomena and compiled from Protestant authors). In his division of dogmatic theology, Prokopovič depends on the Lutheran theologian I. E. Gerhard (*Methodus studii theologici*, Jena 1654). He adopted Protestant scholastics instead of Catholic ones, against whom—especially St Thomas Aquinas and St Robert Bellarmine—his works contain frequent insults. His theological successors did not appear until the second half of the eighteenth century.
He also wrote other theological works, both in Latin and in Slavonic, including: *De iugo intolerabili* (1712: on the controversy between Paul and Barnabas with the Judaizers); *Apologia fidei* (on twelve controversial questions); *Apologia sacrarum reliquiarum* (contrasting with usual views); *Prima istruzione per i bambini* (1720: in Slavonic, a catechism made obligatory by the Tsar in 1722, with a primer; it contains the Ten Commandments, the *Pater*, the Symbol of Faith, and the nine Beatitudes; it is Lutheranizing, e.g., opposed to the veneration of images); *Libertà sui matrimoni misti* (published in 1721 by order of the Tsar, for religious freedom for the non-“Orthodox” party); *Breve istruzione cristiana* (in Slavonic; in dialogue form, for the young Tsar Peter II); *Disquisizione storica sul potere degli imperatori* (St Petersburg 1721, in Slavonic, defending the justification of Christians properly baptized by infusion); *Sulla menzione dei nomi dei patriarchi d’Oriente negli Uffizi ecclesiastici* (no longer to be done in the independent Russian Church); *Orazioni e discorsi* (4 vols., St Petersburg 1760–74); *Examen Concilii* (4 vols., St Petersburg 1760–74).
*Florentini* (lost; composed before 1714); *Storia ecclesiastica* (also lost); *Sull’Anticristo* (unfinished: Prokopovič sought to prove, as some Protestants had done before, that the Roman pontiff is the Antichrist).
Besides the course in dogmatic theology, his other major work is the *Ecclesiastical Regulation*, notable for the edition by C. Tondini (Paris 1874), included in Mansi, XXXVII (French translation made from the Russian text, with introduction, notes, and the Latin translation printed in 1785 in St Petersburg). Important is the section dealing with instruction in schools, academies, and seminaries.