hands.

The word Raskolnik means, literally, one who splits asunder, and
that is just what the Old Believer is--one who has split off from
the Orthodox Church.

Two hundred and fifty years ago Nikon, a friar of Solovetsk, an
island monastery in the White Sea, having quarrelled alike with
equal and superior, was set adrift in an open boat; he reached
the mainland at Ki, a small cape in Onega Bay, wandered southward
to Olonets, where he got together a band of followers, proceeded
to Moscow, obtained the notice of the throne, got preferment, was
soon made Patriarch. He ruled with an iron hand, made many enemies,
and when at last he obtained from Mount Santo, in Roumelia, authentic
Greek Church-service books, and, having had them translated into
Sclavonic, forced their use upon the Church, with the aid of the
Tsar Alexis, in the place of those previously in use, the revolt
began in earnest. In addition to the altered service book, Nikon
introduced a cross with but two beams, a new stamp for the holy
wafer, a different way of holding the fingers in pronouncing the
blessing, and a new way of spelling the name Jesus, to which the
Church was unaccustomed. 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. Those who
could not accept these reforms, or returns to older forms, took
up the name of "Staro-obriadtsi," or Old Believers, holding that
theirs was indeed the true old faith of their fathers. For them
began, in very truth a hard time; a time which has left its mark
most clearly upon their descendants to-day. Excommunicated and
persecuted under Alexis and Peter I., they were driven in thousands
from their village homes to seek refuge where they could, in forest,
mountain or island; a party reaching in the year 1767, even to
Kolgueff Island, where, as might be expected, they perished during
the following year from scurvy. To these brave bands of Old Believers,
setting forth under their banner of the "Eight-ended Cross," to
find new homes beyond the reach of persecution, is, in large part,
due the colonization of the huge province of Archangel and the
northern portion of Siberia. That it was not always easy for the
Raskolnik to get beyond the range of official persecutions is shown
by many an old "_ukas_," and by many an old entry in the bo