Old Believers
Old Believers or Old Ritualists is the common term for several religious groups, which maintain the old liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian Orthodox Church, as they were before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1653 and 1657. The old rite and its followers were anathematized in 1667, and Old Belief gradually emerged from the resulting schism.
The antecedents of the movement regarded the reform as heralding the End of Days, and the Russian church and state as servants of the Antichrist. Fleeing persecution by the government, they settled in remote areas or escaped to the neighboring countries. Their communities were marked by strict morals and religious devotion, including various taboos meant to separate them from the outer world. They rejected the Westernization measures of Peter the Great, preserving traditional Russian culture, like long beards for men.
Lacking a central organization, the main division within Old Belief is between the relatively conservative popovtsy, or "priestly", who were willing to employ renegade priests from the state church, maintaining the liturgy and sacraments; and the more radical bezpopovtsy, or "priestless", who rejected the validity of "Nikonite" ordination, and had to dispense with priests and all sacraments performed by them, appointing lay leaders instead. Various polemics produced numerous subdivisions, known as "accords". Old Belief covers a spectrum ranging from the established and hierarchic "priestly" Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church, to the anarchistic "priestless" Fugitives.
From the mid-18th century, under Catherine the Great, Old Believers gained nearly complete tolerance, and large urban centers emerged, the members of which had a leading role in Russian economy and society. Persecution and discrimination were renewed under Alexander I, and especially Nicholas I, from 1820 onward. Total freedom of religion and equal rights were granted by the Russian Revolution of 1905, followed by a brief golden age. In the beginning of the 20th century, demographers estimated the number of Old Believers to have been between 10 million and 20 million. The destruction wrought during the Stalin era decimated the communities, leaving few who adhered to their traditions, and a wave of refugees established new centers in the West. The movement enjoys a renewal in the post-Soviet states, and in the dawn of the 21st century, there are over 1 million Old Believers who reside mostly in Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, and the United States.
Belief and practice
Old Rite
While Old Belief is highly diverse, all its branches are defined above all else by the rejection of the liturgical and ritual reforms enacted in the Russian Orthodox Church between 1653 and 1657, and by strict adherence to the Russian rite and traditions which preceded them. Instituted by Patriarch Nikon, the reforms were intended to eliminate all differences between the Russian use and that of the Greek Orthodox Churches: wherever a certain detail in local custom was found to diverge, it was corrected to resemble the parallel Greek one. The reform was not concerned with theology, and in this respect, there is no real difference between the Old Believers and the official Orthodox Church. It did touch upon numerous matters of form, totaling hundreds of pages in details.Some of these changes are discernible and easily distinguish Old Believers from the "Nikonian" rite, as they term it. The best known, which became a symbol of contention, is the manner of crossing oneself: pre-reform Russian custom, retained by Old Believers, is to fold together the thumb, ring and little fingers, while holding the index and middle fingers upright, known as "crossing with two fingers"; the "new" rite is to fold the thumb, index and middle fingers together, in "three fingers". Old Believers recognize only baptism by triple full immersion, and eschew baptism by pouring, which is acceptable in the new rite; the symbol of the cross is always the eight-pointed Orthodox cross, not any other variant; the Alleluia after the psalmody is recited twice, not thrice; and during the Divine Liturgy, seven prosphora are served rather than five. The procession around the church is directed clockwise, not counter-clockwise. Old Believers perform numerous bows and prostrations, using a prayer mat called podruchik, mostly abandoned in the new rite.
Old Believers spell the name of Christ in Russian with a single I and not two, as Isus and not Iisus. The phrase "ages of ages" is rendered in the dative, veki vekom, and not in the genitive veki vekov, as in the new rite. In the Nicene Creed, the title "True", istinnago, precedes the words "Lord and Giver of Life", and the Kingdom "has no" rather than "shall have no end". Apart from those, there are countless liturgical and ritual differences, including the names of the saints and rulers mentioned during the Liturgy of Preparation, the wording of the Ektenia for the dead, and so forth.
Breaking with the official Church over the reform, the movement ignores all the innovations and decisions of Russian Orthodoxy since the mid-17th century. New saints canonized since, like Seraphim of Sarov, are not venerated by Old Believers, who have adopted new saints of their own, like Archpriest Avvakum. In the field of religious music, Old Believers retain the monophonic, unison Znamenny chant, which has its own distinct notation style, and do not employ the Part song imported to Russia from the Greek churches. In the field of icon painting, Old Believer artists carefully preserved the otherworldly style of the medieval Orthodox icon and eschewed Western-influenced realistic perspective or natural colours. Animalistic representations of the saints or certain styles of depicting Jesus, banned by the established church in 1722, continued to appear in the movement's icons. Old Believer clerical vestments do not include items of clothing that became fashionable since Nikon's time, like the Greek klobuk and kamilavka.
Traditionalism
The idealization and sanctification of the Russian past is an important pillar of Old Belief thought, buttressing their rejection of the reform. Old Muscovite culture was deeply religious and xenophobic, considering foreigners and foreign customs as barbarous and spiritually defiling. It was commonly believed that Russia was the sole bearer of authentic Christianity, after both Catholics and foreign Orthodox had fallen into heresy, Moscow being the Third and Last Rome. The 17th century schism marked the gradual opening of Russia to European influence, the secularization of society and acceptance of foreign customs, with the state dismissing the notion of "Third Rome". Old Believer polemics tend to portray the tsars, church and people of pre-schism Russia as living saintly lives of innocent devotion and simplicity, corrupted since and preserved only by themselves. The old rite, used by such illustrious figures, is therefore imbued with special holiness and nostalgia.The movement rejected the westernization promoted since the time of Peter the Great. Old Believers cling to the Byzantine calendar, which he replaced by the Julian calendar. European clothing and hairstyles were frowned upon, and the old Russian garb was retained in marked contrast to urban society. Old Believer men continued to wear untrimmed beards, embroidered shirts not tucked inside the trousers, and knee-long kaftan coats. Women kept the sleeveless sarafan dresses and the kokoshnik head covering, wearing their hair in a single braid before marriage and covering it afterwards. Though there is great regional divergence, the basics are the same. Even when modern clothing became more widespread among the adherents, traditional dress was obligatory at least during church services. Today, old garments are worn daily mostly in the rural and isolated settlements in Eastern Europe, and in the immigrant, highly traditional communities in the West.
All communities abjure men shaving their beards and the smoking of tobacco, two old Russian taboos which ceased to be observed widely during Peter's time. Many Old Believers also avoided potatoes, black tea, coffee and other foodstuffs imported in his reign, regarding them as "diabolical plants". Old Russian customs surrounding marriage, sex separation and other aspects of domestic life may be seen among rural Old Believers today. Suspicious of all new influences, the stricter sects of often avoided modern technology, and accommodated slowly to it. In the 1990s, an anthropologist who visited a community in Udmurtia noted that at first, it was not allowed to pray in a house that had electricity, later on electrical appliances had to be taken out and covered with cloth, and eventually the leader had a television set in his house. This traditionalism earned them both the reputation of primitive, backward obscurantists, and of authentic Russians preserving the essence of the nation's heritage.
Apocalypticism
The 17th century opponents of Nikon's reform, considered as founding fathers by Old Believers, were convinced that the new ritual was Satan's machination, heralding the Last Judgment, and they were living in the end times. Those accepting the "Nikonian" rite were deprived of true Christianity, and the Russian church and state, and the world at large, were ruled by Antichrist.This eschatological current is deeply ingrained in Old Belief thought. There are two strains concerning the nature of the Antichrist: the "material" doctrine, more in line with conventional Christian theology, held him to be a specific person, who will appear in a determined moment and will fulfill the criteria set by scripture. The "spiritual" doctrine understood him to be an allegory for an evil presence permeating the world. These two concepts were not necessarily exclusive, and communities and thinkers could be flexible in applying them. The "spiritual" Antichrist is associated with the more radical sects, enabling them to justify extreme religious positions, explained as emergency measures for Armageddon, without a time limit. The "material" theory allowed the moderates to conduct themselves pragmatically in the present, as no person could be identified as Antichrist; but during the most zealous phases in the movement's history, the title was indeed applied to a specific individual, mostly Nikon, Tsar Alexis or Peter the Great.
The apocalyptic strain flowed in times of persecution and ebbed at times of tolerance but never perished. A willingness or eagerness to confront the corrupt world led to explosions of radicalism from time to time, most prominently to mass suicide, especially by self-immolation, conceived as martyrdom in the face of the Antichrist's dominion. A general distrust of the authorities permeates Old Belief, and the more radical sects forbade their members to serve in the army, carry official documents or even touch money, considered marked by the Antichrist's seal. In 1820, after half a century of official tolerance, a police search conducted in the respectable Old Believer merchants' quarter in Moscow, found a portrait of Tsar Alexander I with horns, a tail and the number 666 on his forehead. In the 1980s, an anthropologist visiting a small Old Believer settlement in Canada noted that residents were engaged in daily speculations concerning the identity of the Antichrist.