Joachim, the succeeding Patriarch, opposed Nikon's innovations, and held tenaciously to the customary practice and attempted to stifle schism by persecuting relentlessly. He forbade Catholics to worship, banished Jesuits, barely tolerated Calvinists and Lutherans, and burned to death Kullman the German mystic for proclaiming false doctrines. When he died in 1690 he besought Peter to drive all heretics and unbelievers from Russia--it is to him that Peter erected the chapel on the Srietenka. As in 1682 and earlier, the "old believers" had been cruelly tortured for not conforming to the innovations of Nikon, more especially the unfortunate and obstinate Boyarina Morozov and her sister Princess Urusov, so with the change of the head of the Church the people were condemned for such acts as they had previously been commended for performing, and now knew not whom to believe. With the accession of Peter to sole power, and the enforcement by him of practices foreign to former habit, the people associated all his innovations with those purely clerical ones which had recently met with opposition and caused persecution and suffering. It was impossible to stamp out opposition, exile but spread the discontent. When Peter quarrelled with the Church, the clergy were unable to cope with the popular reaction against the innovations of Nikon and his disciples. Peter was at last induced to persecute the noncontents, but these, disgusted with his secular innovations, fled into distant parts of the country and even abroad, where for long they were politically an element of grave danger to the state, but, the rule of Nikon was established and the old believers regarded as Raskolniki, or dissenters.
These, under persecution, and lacking adequate direction again split into two sections; one, the popovtsi, or those who acknowledge the priesthood and depend for their clergy upon schismatics from among the orthodox, who after ordination, find their practice preferable.
They are quite insignificant in comparison with the Bezpopovtsi, or those who do not have ordained priests, but are more powerful because united, whereas the bezpopovtsi number as many different brotherhoods as there are distinct dissenting sects in England. The best known among these are the _Dukhobortsi_, who deny the divinity of the Holy Ghost, strongly oppose civil authority, refuse to pray for their sovereign or the head of the orthodox church, and consider death by starvation or fire, so long as it is self-wrought, to be the highest duty. Nearly akin to them are the terrible _Skoptsi_ or mutilators, and the fanatic _Khlysti_, or Flagellants, and many others. To the orthodox church all who are not _slavopravni_ are alike. The civil government has always discriminated between the harmless and those whose tenets are opposed to the welfare of the individual and to the commonwealth.