RASKOLNIKS 243 



lished Church. At present they have, since the decree of 

 toleration in 1905, a well-established hierarchy in Russia, 

 with a metropolitan at Moscow, and bishops at Saratoff, Perm, 

 Kazan, Caucasus, Samara, Kolomea, Nijni-Novgorod, Smo- 

 lensk, Vyatka, and Kaluga. 



Their chief stronghold is the Rogozhsky quarter in Moscow, 

 where they have their great cemetery, monastery, cathedral, 

 church, and chapels. In 1863, at the time of the Polish insur- 

 rection the Raskolnik archbishop and his lay advisers sent 

 out an encyclical letter to the "Holy Catholic Apostolic Church 

 of the Old Believers," supporting the tsar and declaring that 

 on all main points they were in agreement with the Established 

 Church. This again split their Church into two factions which 

 last to this day : the Okruzhniki or Encyclicalists and the 

 Razdorniki or Controversialists, who denied the points of 

 agreement with the national Church. In addition to this the 

 Established Church has now set up a section of these Ras- 

 kolniks in union with it, but has permitted them to keep all 

 their peculiar practices, and these are called the Y edinovertsi 

 or "Uniats." A great many of the controversial section of 

 the Raskolniks are coming into the Catholic Church, and al- 

 ready some eight or ten priests have been received. 



Bezpopovtsi, or the Priestless, seemed to represent the de- 

 spairing side of the schism. They have their great stronghold 

 in the Preobrazhenky quarter in Moscow, and are strong also 

 in the Government of Archangel. They took the view that 

 Satan had so far conquered and throttled the Church that 

 the clergy had gone wrong and had become his servants, that 

 the sacraments, except baptism, were withdrawn from the 

 laity, and that they were left leaderless. They claim the 

 right of free interpretation of the Scriptures, modelling their 

 lives accordingly. They recognize no ministers save their 

 "readers," who are elected. Lest this be said to duplicate 

 Protestantism, one must remember that they have kept up 

 all the Orthodox forms of service as far as possible, cross- 

 ings, bowings, icons, candles, fastings, and the like, and have 

 regularly maintained monasteries with their monks and nuns. 

 But they had no element of stability ; and their sects have be- 

 come innumerable, ever shifting and varying, with incessant 

 divisions and subdivisions. The chief of the subdivisions are : 

 (i) Pomortsi, or dwellers near the sea, a rural division which 



