PROKOPOVICH, FEOFAN (TROFANE). - Ecclesiastic and politician, adviser to Peter the Great, standard-bearer of the Protestantizing tendency in the Russian Church and theology, b. at Kiev on 8 June 1691, d. on 8 Sept. 1736.
Born of non-Catholic parents, educated at Kiev in the Ecclesiastical Academy, he studied in Poland, became a Catholic, entered the Order of St. Basil and continued his studies (letters and then theology) in Rome at the Greek College of St. Athanasius. Having returned to his homeland, he abandoned the Catholic faith, from then on a decided opponent of everything Catholic, both in scholarship and in life. In 1707-11 he taught poetry, rhetoric and theology at the Academy of Kiev. For his pupils he wrote the tragicomedy Vladimir (with the aim of "enlightenment" against superstition). In 1711 he became hegumen and rector of the Academy. He was then called as a preacher and publicist by Peter to St. Petersburg (1716), appointed archbishop of Pskov (1718), adviser and principal assistant to Peter in the "reform" of the Russian Church, that is, in subjugating it to the State. All the important acts of ecclesiastical legislation passed through P.'s hands. He soon became the leading member of the Synod. In 1719-20 he composed, together with Peter, the "Ecclesiastical Regulation," and in 1725 he was transferred as titular to the archiepiscopal see of Novgorod. After the death of the Tsar (1725), to whom he was sincerely devoted, whose reforms he praised even in his sermons and on whom he wrote eulogies, the situation changed for P.; but then with Anna Ivanovna (1730-40) he again gained the upper hand, adapting himself, however, and becoming from an enlightened progressive rather a conservative. As a theologian P. is the father of Russian systematic theology; he separated dogmatic theology from moral theology. A friend of the German Lutheran theologians, he introduced into Russian theology a Protestantizing doctrine, especially regarding Holy Scripture as the sole source of Revelation and justification by faith alone.
He wrote in Latin 8 theological treatises, dreaming of 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 1772); Introductio in theologiam (Königsberg 1773); De Deo (ibid. 1774); De Trinitate (ibid. 1775); De creatione et providentia (ibid. 1775); De homine innocente (Moscow 1776); De homine lapso (ibid. 1776); De gratuita peccatoris per Christum iustificatione (Breslau 1779). The second complete edition, edited by S. Mislavskij, in 3 vols., was published at Leipzig in the years 1772-84 (vol. III was added by Mislavskij according to the plan of P. outlined in the prolegomena, and compiled from Protestant authors). In the division of dogmatic theology P. depends on the Lutheran theologian I. E. Gerhard (Methodus studii theologici, Jena 1654). P. adopted the Protestant scholastics instead of the Catholic ones, against whom, especially St. Thomas and St. Robert Bellarmine, frequent insults are found in his works. P. had no successors in his theology until the second half of the eighteenth century.
He wrote other theological works, both in Latin and in Slavonic, among which: De iugo intolerabili (1712: on the controversy of Paul and Barnabas with the Judaizers); Apologia fidei (on 12 disputed questions); Apologia sacrarum reliquiarum (in contrast with P.'s usual views); First Instruction for Children (1720: Slavonic, a catechism made obligatory by the Tsar in 1722, with a syllabary; it contains the 10 commandments, the Pater, the Symbol of the faith, the 9 Beatitudes; it is Lutheranizing: for example, opposed to the veneration of images); Little Book on Mixed Marriages (publ. in 1721 by order of the Tsar, for the religious freedom of the non-"Orthodox" party); Brief Christian Instruction (Slavonic; in the form of a dialogue, for the young tsar Peter II); Historical Disquisition on the Power of Christian Emperors (St. Petersburg 1721, Slavonic, defends the caesaropapism of the Ecclesiastical Regulation); The True Justification of Christians Rightly Baptized with the Baptism of Infusion (1724; Slavonic); On the Mention of the Names of the Patriarchs of the East in the Ecclesiastical Offices (no longer to be made in the independent Russian Church); Orations and Discourses (4 vols., St. Petersburg 1760-74); Examen Concilii Florentini (lost; composed before 1714); Ecclesiastical History (also lost); On the Antichrist (unfinished: P. wished to prove, as certain Protestants had already done before him, that the Roman pontiff is the Antichrist).
Besides the course of dogmatic theology, the other principal work is the Ecclesiastical Regulation, of which the edition by C. Tondini (Paris 1874) is well known, inserted in Mansi, XXXVII (a French translation made from the Russian text, with introduction, notes and with the Latin translation printed in 1785 at St. Petersburg). Important is the part dealing with teaching in the schools, academies and seminaries.