new-fangled religion, akin to Romanism or Lutheranism, and as a deadly attack upon the ancient Orthodox faith. The Church appealed to the State to enforce its edicts, and persecution increased fanaticism. Ten years later Nikon fell from his high estate, and, although the council which condemned him ratified the reforms he had inaugurated, his deposition seemed, to the people, a full justification for their opposition. The sanction and approval of the Eastern patriarchs served only to increase and intensify the popular feeling, by arousing the general hatred of foreign intervention, and added to the bitter contest the element of national jealousy and prejudice. What was, at first, merely an outbreak of religious discontent assumed by degrees the aspect of a political revolution. Dissent rapidly developed into schism; it became the Raskol, or the Rupture, and, once firmly established, was a power no longer to be summarily dealt with.
In all religious history no movement so serious and lasting has ever issued from such futile and trivial causes. The way of making the sign of the cross, its form, whether processions should march towards the East or towards the West, an additional letter in the name Jesus, the repetition of Halleluia twice or three times, the number of loaves upon the Holy Table, constituted the principal points of the controversy. Servile respect for the letter of the law, for the form only, was the very essence of its origin; but it must be remembered that, for the old Muscovite, Orthodoxy, Christianity, Religion itself was but ceremony and symbol, as embodiments of the fundamental dogmas of the faith.
The Dissenters, hitherto known as the Staroobriadtsi,[1] or Old Ritualists, assumed the name of Staroveri,[2] or Old
