Old Believers

Russian Old Ritualist religious dissenters

Old Believers or Old Ritualists (Russian: староверы, romanized: starovery or старообрядцы, staroobryadtsy) is the common term for numerous religious communities that 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 1656. 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.

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