At length, in 1722, he completed his new code, prohibiting all the judges, under pain of death, to depart therefrom in their decrees, or to set up their own private opinions in place of the general statutes. This dreadful ordonnance was publicly fixed up, and still remains in all the courts of judicature of the empire. He erected every thing anew; there was not, even to the common affairs of society, aught but what was his work. He regulated the degrees between man and man, according to their posts and employments, from the admiral and the field-marshal to the ensign, without any regard to birth. Having always in his own mind, and willing to imprint it on those of his subjects, that services are preferable to pedigree, a certain rank was likewise fixed for the women; and she who took a seat in a public assembly, that did not properly belong to her, was obliged to pay a fine. By a still more useful regulation, every private soldier, on being made an officer, instantly became a gentleman; and a nobleman, if his character had been impeached in a court of justice, was degraded to a plebeian. After the settling of these several laws and regulations, it happened that the increase of towns, wealth, and population in the empire, new undertakings, and the creation of new employs, necessarily introduced a multitude of new affairs and unforeseen cases, which were all consequences of that success which attended the czar in the general reformation of his dominions. The empress Elizabeth completed the body of laws which her father had begun, in which she gave the most lively proofs of that mildness and clemency for which she was so justly famed. CHAP. XXXIII. Of Religion. At this time Peter laboured more than ever to reform the clergy. He had abolished the patriarchal office, and by this act of authority had alienated the minds of the ecclesiastics. He was determined that the imperial power should be free and absolute, and that of the church respected, but submissive. His design was, to establish a council of religion, which should always subsist, but dependent on the sovereign, and that it should give no laws to the church, but such as should be approved of by the head of the state, of which the church was a part. He was assisted in this undertaking by the archbishop of Novogorod, named Theophanes Procop, or Procopowitz, i.e. son of Procop.