others in place of them, and by order of the tsar command the town and village popes to use the novel rubrics. Later on, when Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate and substituted for that semi-independent office his own nominated Holy Synod, and when the orthodox Church in Russia passed more than ever under the control of the State and its bureaucratic government, the dissenters who stood outside these movements came to represent to some extent the Free Church idea. They were not attached to the State; their services were not regulated by a government department.
The Raskol obtained new vigour from another source—popular resistance to Peter the Great's Western innovations. Here it was on solid ground. The European customs were novel to Russia, and many now rallied to the Old Believers. At first the movement had been confined to Moscow; now it spread all over Russia. Its flames were fanned by a breeze of prejudiced patriotism. Thus the Old Believers stood for Old Russia and Old Russian ways. They regarded Peter's novelties as portents of the approaching end of the world and advent of Antichrist.[1] This idea of Antichrist bulks largely in the Raskol. Some perhaps identify him with the tsar; but to the majority who believe in his presence he is a mysterious personage existing somewhere in the world, to whose malignant machinations the corruptions of the Church and the troubles of the nation are due. Formerly some maintained that the true Peter, "the white Tsar," had perished at sea, and that a Jew, a son of Satan married to a German wife, had usurped his place. Hence this German invasion!
Old Believers were found objecting to everything in the way of European innovations. They objected to the change of the calendar; they objected to the change of dress—Peter's substitution of European costume for the Oriental gowns formerly worn by Russians; they objected to the practice of shaving. This latter novelty was regarded as distinctly heretical, disfiguring man who was
- ↑ Leroy Beaulieu, part iii. p. 299.
