LIPOVENI. - Romanian name for a sect of Russian «old believers» or «raskolniki» who rejected the ritual reforms for which the Patriarch Nikon of Moscow had been authorized by a Synod of 1654. They arrived in Moldavia at the beginning of the 18th century with one of their leaders, Filippo Pustoviat, from whom they took the name Filippoveni or, more briefly, L.
Under this name they also spread into Poland, East Prussia, and the Baltic countries. Their centre, however, remained in Bucovina, where from 1846 they even had a bishopric at Fântâna Albă (Belakrinitza). The first holders of this bishopric, Ambrogio and Cirillo, ordained bishops and priests also for the «old believers» who remained in Russia, where persecution ceased only in 1905.
The L. differ from the «Orthodox» not in dogma, but in religious practice. They use liturgical books dating from before Nikon and are very austere, upright, fanatical, and traditionalist.