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Updated: June 8, 2025
Up to the time of Nikon the patriarchs had laid hardly less stress on forms and on the exclusion of foreign ways than their future opponents of the Raskol, and had condemned shaving as "an heretical practice which disfigures the image of God, and makes men look like dogs and cats."
In principle the Raskol is conservative, not to say reactionary, but its attitude toward the Church and the State, and the habits engendered by two centuries of opposition and persecution, give it a revolutionary, or even an anarchical, character. A secret tie unites all the branches of public authority, and the rejection of one leads to the rejection of another.
But the Raskol rebelled not only against innovations and the introduction of foreign elements, but still more obstinately against the principle of the reforms and the modern method of state administration.
The Raskol, so to speak, was stillborn. Unless they retraced their steps, there were but two paths to take either to admit priests consecrated by a Church they had condemned, or to dispense with the clergy, who alone could celebrate the rites in defence of which they had revolted. There was little to choose between the two self-contradictory courses, and each had its partisans.
Russia is still in that stage of civilization which is naturally subject to attacks of feverish and mystical religion, but one day it will emerge from it; and the precocious skepticism of a large portion of its educated classes shows plainly that no inexorable fate condemns the national character to credulity and superstition. The Raskol is more than a morbid symptom or a sign of weakness.
Somewhat later they were allowed to practise freely all their old rites and customs, on condition of paying certain fines. With the accession of Catherine II., "the friend of philosophers," the Raskol,* as the schism had come to be called, entered on a new phase.
In each of these changes Nikon and his party really wished to go back to older and purer forms of Greek ritual, but many resisted the alterations, believing them to be innovations. Such was the beginning of Raskol; the end is not yet.
In the dim disputes of mediæval times, however, one may make out with some clearness the fundamental principle of the Raskol: it is a scrupulous veneration for the letter formalism, in a word.
These silly fables, and this incapacity of understanding how a pagan name or emblem can be used without falling back into paganism, betray one of the peculiar features of the Raskol namely, the realistic nature, of its symbolism, and its matter-of-fact determination to fill images, allegories and words with occult meaning.
During my intercourse with them I often heard them refer to the police as "wolves which have to be fed," but I never heard them speak of the Emperor otherwise than in terms of filial affection and veneration. Dissenters not to be Confounded with Heretics Extreme Importance Attached to Ritual Observances The Raskol, or Great Schism in the Seventeenth Century Antichrist Appears!
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