Collis, R. (2012) The Petrine Instauration: Religion, Esotericism and Science at the Court of Peter the Great, 1689 - 1725. Leiden, Boston: Brill. - 576 p. The new book by Robert Collis "Peter's Restoration: Religion, Esotericism and Science at the Court of Peter the Great, 1689-1725" will certainly be of particular interest to the Russian reader, not only because of its consistently popular subject matter, but also because the author's careful and attentive attitude to Russian history and culture would be an honor to anyone to a domestic researcher. But let me ask you why the "Peter's restoration"? Not reforms, not transformations, but restoration? And R. Collis gives an answer to this question literally on the first pages of the book, and then, after a detailed presentation of his arguments, he turns to it again, but in the last chapter devoted to the personality of Peter himself. An interesting feature of the book is that the author does not just present historical facts and analyze concepts; in the center of the story are images and ideas of people whose destinies are inextricably linked with the history of our country. Quirin Kuhlman, a follower of J. Boehme and a preacher of the fifth "Jesuit kingdom"; his supporter and "accomplice" Konrad (in the well - known tradition of changing names "in the Russian manner" - Kondrat) Nordermann; a merchant from the German settlement, who does not need special ideas, according to R. Collis, "a learned sorcerer at the court of Peter the Great"1, Yakov Bruce; a follower of Paracelsus, iatrochemist, life physician of Peter I and the first Russian archiatrist of R. Collis. Metropolitan of Ryazan and Murom, locum tenens of the Patriarchal throne Stefan Yavorsky; Archbishop of Pskov, an extraordinary and ambiguous religious thinker and philosopher Feofan Prokopovich-this is not a complete list of those whose deeds and thoughts created a specific uniqueness of the era, which is characterized not only by the rapid development of n ... Read more