Church reform of Peter the Great

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The church reform of Peter the Great was a set of changes Peter I of Russia (r. 1682–1725) introduced to the Russian Orthodox Church, especially to church government. Issued in the context of Peter's overall Westernizing reform programme, it replaced the office of the patriarch of Moscow with the Holy Synod and made the church effectively a department of state.

Peter did not abandon Orthodoxy as the main ideological core of the state, but attempted to start a process of Westernization of the clergy, relying on those with a Western theological education, although he remained faithful to the canons of the Eastern Orthodox Church.