Russian archbishop and statesman, one of the ablest coadjutors of Peter the Great; 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. Notwithstanding 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).
