Holy Governing Synod

synod, Moscow, Russia

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June 29, 2026

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The Holy Synod was an ecclesiastical governing body established in 1721 by Tsar Peter I to lead the Russian Orthodox Church. It replaced the patriarchate of Moscow and was designed to bring the church under state control.1

Peter I created the Synod with representatives obedient to his will and appointed a secular official, the chief procurator, to oversee its operations. The Synod was responsible for persecuting dissenters and censoring publications, while Peter I used church property and revenues for state purposes. In 1917, a church council reestablished the patriarchate, but the Soviet government soon nationalized church lands. The Holy Synod is defined as the governing body of a national Eastern church.12

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Russian Empire
Church and education
…to the state through the Holy Governing Synod, a ministry of ecclesiastical affairs under the direction of a lay chief procurator. The church—in 1722 the landlord of about 1 million peasant families—was nationalized also in the economic sense: the income from its lands was passed on to the state. Thus…
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…to the state through the Holy Governing Synod, a ministry of ecclesiastical affairs under the direction of a lay chief procurator. The church—in 1722 the landlord of about 1 million peasant families—was nationalized also in the economic sense: the income from its lands was passed on to the state. Thus…
Read More

Russian Orthodox Church
…and replaced it with the Holy Governing Synod, which was modeled after the state-controlled synods of the Lutheran church in Sweden and Prussia and was tightly controlled by the state. The chief procurator of the synod, a lay official who obtained ministerial rank in the first half of the 19th…
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…and replaced it with the Holy Governing Synod, which was modeled after the state-controlled synods of the Lutheran church in Sweden and Prussia and was tightly controlled by the state. The chief procurator of the synod, a lay official who obtained ministerial rank in the first half of the 19th…
Read More