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Rh dent, and rigid in his devotion to the Church. A new favorite supplanted him at court. Feofan Procopovitch attracted Peter's attention by his eloquence, and ingratiated himself by his wily and insinuating address. He preached absolute submission to the monarch's will, advocated his reformatory measures, and defended his private character. In the grievous dissensions between Peter and the tsarevitch Alexis, he energetically supported the father, while Yavorsky sympathized with the son. Procopovitch had studied under the Jesuits at Rome, and his religious convictions had varied with his prospects of advancement; alternately Orthodox, Uniate, and again Orthodox, his latitudinarian opinions were suspicious to Yavorsky, who accused him of heresy, and arraigned him before a council of the Church. By the tsar's favor he issued triumphantly from this trial, and Yavorsky, in comparative disgrace, was ordered to remove to the new capital, St. Petersburg.

When Peter was at Paris, in 1717, the theologians of the Sorbonne made him proposals for a union of the Greek and Latin Churches. They dwelt at length upon the general accord of their doctrines and sacraments, and on the similarity of their ecclesiastical discipline; they made light of the dogma of the Double Procession, instancing the creed of the Uniates, which, with the pope's assent, ignored it; and they laid still less stress upon recognition of the pope's supremacy, adducing the independence and liberties of the Gallican Church.

Procopovitch prepared the reply to these proposals. It declared that the Russian bishops could not venture to decide alone so momentous a question, which concerned the whole Church universal; it should be submitted to a general conclave, in which the Eastern patri-