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Rh in 1591 confirmed this acknowledgement and gave the Patriarch of Moscow the fifth place, after Jerusalem. The classical number of five Patriarchs was now happily restored to the Orthodox, and they said that God had raised up this new throne of Moscow to make up for the fallen one of Rome. However, that state of things did not last long. The third epoch of Russian history is marked by the change of the centre of gravity to Petersburg. Kiev, Moscow, and Petersburg stand for the three periods. Peter the Great (1689–1725), as is well known, set up his capital on the Neva and reformed the whole administration of his Empire. Among other things he reformed the Church so as to bring it under the power of the civil government. For this purpose he abolished the Patriarchate of Moscow and established the Holy Directing Synod to rule the Church of Russia in 1721. Jeremias III of Constantinople had to make the best of it and to acknowledge the Russian Holy Synod as his "Sister in Christ." The constitution of this Holy Synod remains unchanged since its formation, and under it the Russian Church is the most Erastian Christian body in the world. No sovereign has ever been more absolutely master of a Church than is the Czar.

In the first place the Holy Synod decides every ecclesiastical question in Russia, the preservation of the faith, religious instruction, censorship of all books that concern religion, all questions of ritual. It is the last court of appeal for all questions of Canon Law, and all metropolitans, bishops, clerks of every rank, monasteries and convents, are under its jurisdiction. And the Holy Synod is the shadow of the Czar. It is composed of the Metropolitans of Kiev, Moscow, and Petersburg and the Exarch of Georgia (p. 305); the Czar then appoints five or six other bishops or archimandrites to sit in it at his pleasure; the