SLAVO-GRECO-LATIN ACADEMY

Titled in its first fifty years variously as "Greek School," "Ancient and Modern Greek School," "Greco-Slavic School," "Slavo-Latin School," and "Greco-Latin School," the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy was the first formal educational institution in Russian history. Established in 1685, the Academy became the breeding ground for many secular and ecclesiastical collaborators of Tsar Peter I. Its founders and first teachers were the Greek brothers Ioannikios and Sophronios Leichoudes. From its inception, the Academy followed the well-established lines of the curriculum and formal structure of contemporary Jesuit colleges. The Leichoudes divided the curriculum into two parts: The first part included grammar, poetics and rhetoric; the second comprised philosophy (including logic) and theology. The grammar classes were divided into three levels: elementary, middle, and higher. The middle and higher levels were themselves divided into sublevels. Instruction was in Greek and Latin, with an attached school that provided basic literacy in Church Slavonic. The Leichoudes authored their own textbooks, largely adapted from contemporary Jesuit manuals. As in Jesuit colleges, the method of instruction included direct exposure to ancient Greek and Latin literary and philosophical texts, as well as an abundance of practical exercises. Student work included memorization, competitive exercises, declamations, and disputations, as well as parsing and theme writing. On important feast days, students exhibited their skills and knowledge in orations before the Patriarch of Moscow or royal and aristocratic individuals.

Students were both clergy and laymen, and came from various social and ethnic backgrounds, from some of Russia's top princely scions and members of the Patriarch's court, down to children of lowly servants in monasteries, and included Greeks and even a baptized Tatar. Several of these students made their careers in important diplomatic, administrative, and ecclesiastical positions during Peter I's reign.

In 1701 the Academy was reorganized by decree of Tsar Peter I and staffed with Ukrainian and Belorussian teachers educated at the Kiev Mohylan Academy. Until the end of Peter's reign, the student body betrays a slight "plebeianization": Fewer members of the top aristocratic families attended classes there. In addition, many more of the students were clergymen. The curriculum retained the same scholastic content, but the language of instruction now was exclusively Latin.

Reorganized in 1775 under the supervision of Metropolitan Platon of Moscow (in office, 1775–1812), the Academy expanded its curriculum to offer classes in church history, canon law, Greek, and Hebrew. Finally, in 1814, the Academy was transferred to the Trinity St. Sergius Monastery and was restructured into the Moscow Theological Seminary.

See also: education; leichoudes, ioannikios and sophronios; peter i; russian orthodox church

bibliography

Chrissidis, Nikolaos A. (2000). "Creating the New Educated Elite: Learning and Faith in Moscow's Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy, 1685–1694." Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

Nikolaos A. Chrissidis