The book by I. A. Chistovich was not only the first critical research on the activity of Theophan Prokopovich, but the first critical research on the Synodal period of Russian Orthodox Church at all. Chronological frames of the work are till the early 1740-s. The author was the first scholar who got a permission to work in the archives of the Most Holy Synod, and his work was extremely important for the later publications in the same field.
The author described in details the struggle of the various parties in Russia in the epoch of reforms of Peter the Great, the interaction of ecclesiastic leaders and state authorities and representatives of young Russian science. In the supplement to the book, there are documents on the Russian ecclesiastic history of the Synodal period.