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

• 25 June 2025
• 12pm-1pm
• Event website

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IAS Residential Fellow Dr Andrey V. Ivanov will deliver 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 11.45am for a 12pm start. For those joining in-person, lunch will be served after the seminar from 1pm.