2_Sermon on Royal Authority and Honour
(excerpt)
Context
- Author(s): Teofan Prokopovych
- Date of Publishing: 1718
- Historical Placement: After the defeat of Ivan Mazepa at the Battle of Poltava, Teofan Prokopovych (a bishop), who previously supported him, switched sides to Peter the Great, and condemned his former master. In his sermon, he then pleaded for greater powers to the Russian autocracy.
Summary
The Sermon starts off by connecting the Monarch, the state and God, as inseparable. By resisting one, one resists all. Thus, resistance against the Monarch is not just impolite, but a moral failure and an affront to God. It then goes on to praise Peter the Great's successes as Tsar, and warn about the consequences of ingratitude. According to the author, this lays the groundwork for a collapse of the old order, and therefore, blood and violence before a new one can emerge. According to the author, honoring the government's powers fully is the only way of facing this godly wrath, which as he notes, will not spare those who only comply out of fear, not out of conscience. He ends up by pleading with God, calling upon him to protect the Tsar.
Takeaways
- The text is mainly built on religious arguments and statements about the nature of the world justifying rights. Interestingly, it doesn't assign these rights to the people (as done in the 1_The Bendery Constitution), but rather allocates them to the Tsar.
- It makes an interesting, pragmatic argument about determining God's will, simply said, it is that course of action that leads to the least amount of suffering.
Source
Ralph Lindheim & George Luckyj (eds.), Towards an Intellectual History of Ukraine: An Anthology of Ukrainian Thought from 1710 to 1995 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pages (65-68) .
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