Birth of an Empire: Feofan Prokopovych and the Metamorphosis of Petrine Russia

IAS Residential Fellow Dr Andrey V. Ivanov delivers a seminar on their research -

What is an empire? Prior to 1721, the Latin title of “imperator” belonged exclusively to the  Western, Eastern or Holy Roman political entities  This monopoly ended with the Petrine proclamation of the world’s first non-Roman imperium, and later, with similar proclamations by Napoleonic France, Iturbide’s Mexico, Braganza Brazil, and Wilhelmine Germany. “Empire” lost its narrow legal connotation, acquiring broader multivalent meanings. But it was Ukrainian archbishop Feofan Prokopovych (1677-1736), who initiated the concepts that got us to this point. An erudite polymath, Feofan served as the chief ideologist of first, Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa, and then, Peter I. As the seminar will demonstrate, forging the new empire was a direct product of the archbishop’s versatile scholarly breadth. Prokopovych godfathered the empire’s birth through an interdisciplinary endeavor that engaged with the political theories of the early European Enlightenment, Boylean physics, Holy Roman imperial  jurisprudence, and Lutheran theology.

Arrivals from 11:45 am for a 12:00 noon start. For those joining in-person, lunch will be served after the seminar from 1:00pm.

This event is hybrid format, please use the required booking button at the bottom of the page to choose either in-person or online attendance.
(Please note that in-person spaces are limited and booking is required, so we can manage numbers for catering and also the space in the seminar room)

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IAS seminars are typically recorded, minus any Q&A sessions at the end, again to encourage contributions. The recordings are then uploaded to our website on a Fellows bio page and/or Programme page, along with our IAS YouTube Channel. If you are not able to attend a seminar live, please do still register as we will email everyone who registered to let them know once the recordings are made available.