The Petrine Instauration ─ Religion, Esotericism and Science at the Court of Peter the Great, 1689-1725

Historian Collis (U. of Sheffield) examines the reforms that Peter the Great proposed, and how they impacted the religious, cultural, and scientific attitudes prevalent at the court and throughout the country. The pivoting point is the concept of instauration--narrowly the restoration of Solomon's Temple, but more broadly the return of a prelapsarian state at the end of the time, when people would regain all the knowledge they lost at the Fall. He discusses Jacobite servitors Jacob Bruce (1669-1735), a scientific sorcerer at Peter's court, and Robert Erskine (1677-1718), an iatrochemist at court; Ukrainian clerics Stefan Iavorskii (1658-1722), an esoteric wordsmith, and eclectic thinker Feofan Prokopovich; Peter the Great's mission; and the role of religion and esotericism in shaping his vision of scientific reform. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Robert Collis, Ph. D. (2008) in History, University of Turku, is Leverhulme Research Fellow at The University of Sheffield.