prayers and dances, very like those in use among the Flagellants, the old man announced to his companion: ‘now shalt thou learn how sinners are made white as snow.’ And the young man, before he had time to ask a single question, was seized and gagged, his eyes were bandaged, he was stretched out on the ground, and the apostle, with a red-hot knife, stamped him with the ‘seal of purity.’ This happened to a peasant, Saltykov by name, and certainly not to him alone. He fainted away under the operation, and when he came to himself, he heard the voices of his chaste sponsors give him the choice between secrecy and death.”
Catherine II signed the first edict against this sect in 1772, but agitation was more or less constant until the Imperial government began vigorous prosecutions in 1871, and many were sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. When prosecutions were instituted, large numbers emigrated to Roumania and there took the name of “Lipovans.’’ Women, especially one of the name of Anna Romanoyna, have had a great share in the invention and diffusion of the doctrine. Not infrequently it is the women who, with their own hands, transform the men to angels.
In 1871 their number was estimated to be about 3000, in 1874 they numbered 5444, including 1465
