RASKOLNIKS 



RASKOLNIKS is a generic term for dissidents from 

 the Established Church in Russia. Under the name 

 Raskolniki, the various offshoots and schismatic bod- 

 ies originating- from the Greek Orthodox Church of the Rus- 

 sian Empire have been grouped by Russian historians and 

 ecclesiastical writers. Strictly speaking, the name Raskolniki 

 refers merely to those who have kept the outward forms of 

 the Byzantine Rite ; the others who have deserted its ritual as 

 well as its teachings are grouped under the general Russian 

 name of Sektanstvo (sectarianism). In the present article 

 they are both treated together, since either form of dissent is 

 but slightly known outside of Russia. The Raskolniks repre- 

 sent in the Russian Church somewhat the antithesis of Protes- 

 tantism towards the Catholic Church. Protestants left the 

 Church because they claimed a desire to reform it by dropping 

 dogmas, beliefs and rites ; the Raskolniks left the Russian 

 Church because they desired to keep alive the minutest rites 

 and practices to which they were accustomed, and objected to 

 the Russian Church reforming them in any respect. In doing 

 so they fell into the greatest of inconsistencies, and a section 

 of them, while keeping up the minutiae of ritual, rejected nearly 

 every doctrine the Church taught throughout the world. 



I. — True Raskolniks 



Even from the time that the Russians were converted to 

 Christianity there were various dissident sects among them, 

 reproducing in some respects the almost forgotten heresies of 

 the early ages of the Church. These are mere names to-day, 

 but the main separation from the Russian Established Church 

 came in 1654 when Nikon, Patriarch of Moscow, convened a 

 synod at Moscow for the reform of the ritual and correction 

 of the church books. At the time the air in Southern Russia 



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