Saint Petersburg Theological Academy

The Saint Petersburg Theological Academy is a higher education institution of the Russian Orthodox Church, located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The academy preparing theologians, clergymen, singers and icon writers for the Eastern Orthodox Church and grants bachelor, master, candidate and doctorate degrees. It was founded in 1797 by Metropolitan Gabriel (Petrov) of Saint Petersburg, as part of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. At the turn of the 20th century the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy was one of four religious academies (with those of Moscow, Kiev and Kazan) of the Russian Orthodox Church. The class of 1898 had a total of 235 students regularly attending classes. History On July 11, 1721, Archbishop Theodosius (Yanovsky) of Novgorod, in pursuance of imperial decrees, ordered to "establish for the common benefit at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, for the teaching of young children reading and writing, a Slavonic school". In the autumn of the same year, classes began. Initially, the school studied the alphabet, writing, arithmetic, grammar, listened to the interpretation of the Decalogue, the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes. In 1726, under Empress Catherine I, the Slavonic School was renamed the Slavic-Greek-Latin Seminary. If the Slavic school provided only elementary literacy, then the seminary aimed to give future ministers of the Church both general and theological education. Its rector was Archimandrite Peter (Smelich), adviser to the Holy Synod, a Serb by birth, a former archimandrite of the Simonov Monastery in Moscow. Thanks to the efforts of teachers Grigory Kremenetsky and Andrey Zertis-Kamensky, the St. Petersburg seminary was competently organized. Those who completed the seminary course were entitled to the best places in the dioceses. According to the program of the Spiritual Regulations, in 1721, in St. Petersburg, in addition to the Alexander Nevsky Slavic School, Archbishop Theophan (Prokopovich) of Pskov, opened a second school, which immediately received the name of the seminary. It was located at the courtyard of the bishop on the embankment of the Karpovka River.