e become a prey to the same license of opinion, to the
same individualism, and, finally, to the same anarchy.

Few religious revolutions have involved results so, complex as the
Raskol, yet few have been simpler in their inception. The countless
sects which for two centuries have had their being among the Russian
people took their rise, in general, from the revision of the liturgy.
One stock produced them nearly all: only a few sects (though these, by
the way, are by no means the least curious) date from an earlier time or
have another origin than this liturgic reform. The Middle Ages in
Russia, as elsewhere, were marked by the rise of heresies. Of these the
oldest may have arisen before the Mongol conquest, from contact with
Greeks or Slaves, particularly with the Bulgarian Bogomiles, the
ancestors or Oriental brethren of the Albigenses. Other heresies sprang
up later in the North, in the Novgorod region, from intercourse with
Jewish or other Western traders. Of most of these the name alone
remains: such are the _Martinovtsy_, the _Strigolniki_, the
Judaizers, and so on. All these sects were dying away when the Raskol
broke out; and it absorbed all the vague, embryonic beliefs floating in
the popular mind. Some of these antique heresies--the Strigolniki, for
instance--after having disappeared from history, seem to have come to
light again in the shape of certain sects of our own days; and one might
fancy that they had been for centuries running on in an underground
channel.

In the dim disputes of mediaeval times, however, one may make out with
some clearness the fundamental principle of the Raskol: it is a
scrupulous veneration for the letter--formalism, in a word. "In such a
year," says a Novgorod chronicler of the fifteenth century, "certain
philosophers began to chant, '_O_ Lord, have mercy upon us!' while
others said, '_Lord_, have mercy upon us!'"[004] In this remark the
whole Raskol stands revealed. Controversies like these begat the schism
which has rent the Russian Church asunder. Religious invocations have
for this people the nature of magical formulae, the slightest change in
which destroys their efficacy. The Russian clings to the heathen
feeling, though he hides it under a Christian veil. He believes in the
power of particular words and gestures. He still seems to regard his
priest as a kind of _chaman_, religious ceremonies as enchantments,
and religion in general as witchcraft. A fondness for rites
(_o