It was Peter's purpose to make the Russians again into Europeans. (p. 164) He rightly deemed it best to begin with externals, because they are the object lessons of changes. The Russian boyard was attached to the long caftan or tunic adopted from the Tartars, but above all he was devoted to the hair on his face. The beard was doomed by the czar. He could not play barber to all his subjects, but he imposed a heavy tax upon unshaven faces. Owners of beards paid from thirty to one hundred rubles, and moujiks had to pay two pence for theirs every time they entered a city or town.
The reform which had the most lasting influence upon Russia, was the abolition of the landed nobility as a separate class. They would be known as "_tchin_" or gentlemen, and any one who entered the service of the government, regardless of birth, was at once entitled to be classed among the _tchinovnik_. From that time the terms gentleman and officer, became synonymous. Every service, civil, military, naval, or ecclesiastic, was divided into fourteen grades. The lowest grade in the civil service was held by the registrar of a college, the highest by the Chancellor of the Empire; the cornet was at the bottom, the field marshal at the top in the army; and the deacon in a church was fourteen degrees removed from the Patriarch,--but all were _tchin_.
When, in 1700, the Patriarch Adrian died, the dignity was abolished by Peter who did not relish the idea of a rival power in the State. Instead he created the Holy Synod together with the office of Superintendent of the Patriarchal Throne. He gives his reasons in the ukase wherein the change is announced. "The simple people," this document reads, "are not quick to seize the distinction between (p. 165) the spiritual and imperial power; struck with the virtue and the splendor of the supreme pastor of the Church, they imagine that he is a second sovereign, equal and even superior in power to the Autocrat."
The Holy Synod consisted of bishops and a Procurator-general who represented the czar and as such could veto any resolution. This official was often a general. Every bishop had to keep a school in his palace, and the sons of priests who refused to attend were taken as soldiers. Autocrat though he was, Peter dared not confiscate the property of the monasteries, but he forbade any person to enter a convent before his thirtieth year. The monks were ordered to work at some trade, or to teach in the schools and colleges. At this time, the Protestant and Catholic churches of the West tried to make converts, and the _raskols_ were hostile to the national church. As a rule Peter did not favor persecution; so long as the church did not interfere with his authority, there was nothing to fear from him; but upon the slightest suspicion his heavy hand was felt. Thus, in 1710, he suddenly ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits. He used to say: "God has given the czar power over the nations, but Christ alone has power over the conscience of man." This did not prevent him from exacting a double tax from the raskols in Moscow, nor from punishing cruelly any Russian converted to one of the western churches.