with the administration of the interests of the community. Their first important establishment of this nature, and from which most of the others issued, was the convent of Vygoretsk, founded in 1694, near Lake Onega. From the earliest days of the Raskol the Bezpopovtsi have been very numerous in the region of the great lakes and along the shores of the White Sea. When, in the reign of Alexis, they were dislodged from their stronghold at Solovetsk, they spread throughout the country to the north and east under the general designation of "Pomortsi," or "Dwellers by the seashore;" at the end of the seventeenth century several of their detached colonies settled along the banks of the river Vyg, and within a few years they were united in one community by the efforts of two brothers named Denisoff, men of great administrative ability and earnestness, under whose wise government and direction they rapidly increased in numbers and wealth until their establishment at Vygoretsk became the most important centre of this branch of the Raskol. Divisions soon arose among them, as the inevitable result of the freedom they accord to personal opinion, and about 1732 a small number seceded from the main body under Feodoceï, formerly a deacon of the Church, and who died soon afterwards in prison. The immediate cause of the secession was a partial reconciliation of the majority with the State government during the reign of the empress Anna; they consented to acknowledge her imperial authority, and to make mention of her as tsarina in their prayers. This concession shocked the principles of the more fanatic, who withdrew, anathematized their weaker brethren, and maintained their opposition to the sovereign as Antichrist.
The stem enthusiasm of these Feodocians, so called
