CHAPTER VI.
Reunion of the Polish to the Russian Church.—Dissent.—Peter the Great and his Successors.—Substitution of the Holy Synod for the Patriarchate.—Absorption of the Unia by the Russian Church.—Reforms.
During Feodor's short reign energetic measures were devised to arrest the progress of heretical and dissenting opinions, which had taken deep root among the peasants and lower classes. Strong efforts were made for the dissemination of education, as the most efficient mode of combating false doctrines, but they ceased at Feodor's death, when the country was again plunged into confusion by the disputed succession.
The patriarch Joachim favored Peter, to the exclusion of his imbecile elder brother Ivan, and the bloody struggles of rival factions resulted in the joint government of the two, with their sister Sophia as regent.
The period of Sophia's regency was signalized by the reunion of the Orthodox Churches of Little Russia and Poland to that of the empire.
When Little Russia was brought under the sway of Alexis, its Orthodox clergy, and that of Poland, asserted their affiliation with Constantinople, preferring a nominal dependency upon a distant see to real subjection under a powerful neighbor. Anarchy and intestine strife in succeeding years, aggravated in Little Russia by Polish invasion, were accompanied by dissensions in the Church. Rival prelates, supported by
