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{{Traducere EN}}

Old Believers continue liturgical practices which the Russian Orthodox Church maintained before the implementation of these reforms. Because of the use of these older liturgical practices, they are also known as '''Old Ritualists'', especially by those who recognize the faith of the Old Believers as being identical with mainstream Orthodoxy.

== Introductory summary of origins==

By the middle of the 17th century Greek and Russian church officials, including Patriarch Nikon, had noticed discrepancies between contemporary Russian and Greek usages. They reached the conclusion that the Russian Orthodox Church had, as a result of errors of incompetent copyists, developed rites and missal texts of its own that had significantly deviated from the Greek originals. Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church had become dissonant from the other Orthodox churches. Later research was to vindicate the Muscovite service-books as belonging to a different recension from that which was used by the Greeks at the time of Nikon, and the unrevised Muscovite books were actually older and more venerable than the Greek books, which had undergone several revisions over the centuries and ironically, were newer and contained innovations (Kapterev N.F., 1913, 1914; Zenkovskij S.A., 1995, 2006).

* Old Believers use two fingers while making the [[sign of the cross]] (two fingers straightened, three folded) while new-style Orthodoxy uses three fingers for the sign of cross (three fingers straightened, two fingers folded). Old Ritualists generally say the [[Jesus Prayer]] with the Sign of the Cross, while New Ritualists use the Sign of the Cross as a Trinitarian symbol. This makes for a significant difference between the two branches of Russian Orthodoxy, and one of the most noticeable.

* Old Believers only recognize performing [[baptism]] through three full immersions, and reject the validity of any baptismal rite performed otherwise (for example through pouring or sprinkling, as the Russian Orthodox Church has occasionally accepted since the 18th century).

* Old Believers in principle oppose [[ecumenism]], despite many instances of good relationships and collaboration with other Eastern Orthodox churches.

Vladimir officially converted the Eastern Slavs to Christianity in 988, and the people had adopted Greek Orthodox liturgical practices. At the end of 11th century, the efforts of St. Theodosius of the Caves in Kiev (''Феодосий Киево-Печерский'', d. 1074) introduced the so-called Studite Typikon to Russia. This [[typikon]] reflected the traditions of the urban monastic community of the famous [[Studion Monastery]] in Constantinople. The Studite Typikon predominated throughout the western part of the [[Byzantine Empire]] and was accepted throughout the Russian lands. In the end of 14th century, through the work of St. [[Cyprian]], metropolitan of Moscow and [[Kiev]], the Studite liturgical practices were gradually replaced in Russia with the so-called ''Jerusalem Typicon'' or the ''Typicon of St. Sabbas'' - originally, an adaptation of the Studite liturgy to the customs of Palestinian monasteries. The process of gradual change of ''typica'' would continue throughout the 15th century and, because of its slow implementation, met with little resistance - unlike Nikon's reforms, conducted with abruptness and violence. However, in the course of 15th-17th centuries, Russian scribes continued to insert some Studite material into the general shape of ''Jerusalem Typicon''. This explains the differences between the modern version of the ''Typicon'', used by the Russian Orthodox Church, and the pre-Nikonian Russian recension of ''Jerusalem Typicon'', called ''Oko Tserkovnoe'' (Rus. "eye of the church"). This pre-Nikonian version, based on the Moscow printed editions of 1610, 1633 and 1641, continues to be used by modern Old Believers.

This charge of "Russian innovation" re-appeared repeatedly in the textbooks and anti-''raskol'' treatises and catecheses, including, for example, those by [[Dimitri of Rostov]]. The critical evaluation of the sources and of the essence of Nikonian reforms began only in the 1850s with the groundbreaking work of Nikolai F. Kapterev (1847-1917), continued later by Serge Zenkovsky. Kapterev demonstrated—for the first time to the wider Russian audience—that the rites, rejected and condemned by the Nikonian reforms, were genuine customs of the Orthodox Church which suffered alterations in the Greek usage during the 15th-16th centuries, but remained unchanged in Russia. The pre-Nikonian liturgical practices, including some elements of the Russian typicon, ''Oko Tserkovnoe'', were demonstrated to have preserved many earlier Byzantine material, being actually closer to the earlier Byzantine texts than some later Greek customs (Kapterev, N.F. 1913; Zenkovsky, S.A. 2006).

[[Category:Jurisdictions]]

[[Category:Old Believer Jurisdictions|*]]