Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/129

114 old forms and ceremonies of religious worship; they joined the outcry raised against the changes introduced into the Church service as being heresies, subversive of the true faith, and demanded a return to ancient custom.

In order to check the prevalent dissatisfaction, which ever and anon found seditious expression, the authorities consented to a public disputation upon the points in controversy. Nikita, formerly a priest, then a dissenter, and who, under threat of punishment, had recanted and again relapsed, led the popular side; but the meeting, convened with due solemnity in presence of the tsars and the regent, with the patriarch and clergy, ended in a noisy riot, put down with a strong hand. The Streltsi, overawed by display of force, and cajoled by promises, abandoned Nikita, with his adherents, to their fate. He, and many of his disciples, were executed and order restored. Notwithstanding vigorous measures of repression, the great mass of the people were infested with the poison of Dissent; sect after sect arose, each with its local following and peculiarities, but all professing, as their single common bond of union, opposition to reform and to the established Church, as having fallen away from the ancient and true faith.

As Peter grew to man's estate, a giant in mind and body, his haughty, imperious nature could ill brook a divided authority. Sophia was equally ambitious, and incited the Streltsi to rise in her behalf. Peter, warned in season, fled to the Troïtsa monastery, where already, when a boy of ten years of age, he had, with his mother Natalia, found protection against rebellious subjects. There the patriarch and his clergy, together with the loyal nobles, rallied to his support. The insurrectionary movement was checked and Sophia was deposed.

Ten years after, in 1698, this wild and undisciplined