The Old Believers in Imperial Russia

''Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth.'' So spoke Russian monk Hegumen Filofei of Pskov in 1510, proclaiming Muscovite Russia as heirs to the legacy of the Roman Empire following the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. The so-called ''Third Rome Doctrine'' spurred the creation of the Russian Orthodox Church, although just a century later a further schism occurred, wi...