STEPHEN

See also:

• STEPHEN YAVORSKY (c. 1658-1722)

YAVORSKY (c. 1658-1722)  , Russian archbishop and statesman, one of the ablest coadjutors of Peter the Great, was educated at the Kiev Academy and various Polish schools . Becoming a monk, he settled at the Kiev Academy as a preacher and professor, being appointed prefect of the institution and prior of the monastery of St Nicholas . He attracted the attention of Peter by his funeral oration over the boyar Shein, and was made archbishop of Ryazan in 1700 . In 1702, on the death of the last patriarch of Moscow, Yavorsky was appointed custodian of the spiritualities of the patriarchal see . Not-withstanding frequent collisions with Peter, and his partiality for the unfortunate tsarevich Alexius, Yavorsky was too valuable a man to be discarded . In 1721 he was made first president of the newly erected Holy Synod, but died in the following year . Yavorsky's chief works are his Rock of the Faith of the Orthodox-Catholic Eastern Church and Dogmatic, Moral and Panegyrical Sermons . See Y . T . Samarin, Stephen Yavorsky (Rus.) (Moscow, 1844) ; I . Morev, " The Rock of the Faith " of the Metropolitan Stephen Yavorsky (Rus.) (Petersburg, 1904) .