LIPOVENI. - Romanian name of a sect of the Russian "Old Believers" or "Raskolniki" who rejected the ritual reforms that the Patriarch Nikon of Moscow was authorized to introduce by his Synod of 1654. They arrived in Moldavia at the beginning of the 18th century with a leader of theirs, Filippo Pustoviat, from whom they took the name Filippoveni or, more briefly, L.

Under this name they also spread to Poland, East Prussia and the Baltic countries. Their center, however, remained in Bukovina, where as early as 1846 they even had a bishopric at Fântâna Albă (Belakrinitza). The first holders of this bishopric, Ambrose and Cyril, ordained bishops and priests also for the "Old Believers" who remained in Russia, where persecution did not cease until 1905.

The L. differ from the "Orthodox" not in dogma but in religious practice. They use liturgical books earlier than Nikon and are very austere, upright, fanatical, traditionalist.

Bibliography

BIBL.: C. Korolevski, Chez les Starovères de Bucovine, in Stoudion, 1927, pp. 123-37.

Petre Vălimăreanu

@incollection{ec7_lipoveni, author = {Vălimăreanu, Petre}, title = {Lipoveni}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {1405}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/lipoveni} }

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