OLD BELIEVERS.

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Dialogues on Death and Repentance. An Old Believers' miscellany, with interesting annotations from a community in the village of Tolozhno, in the Okulovsky district, near Novgorod.Among the annotations is the 19th-century inscription "No passport", likely a reference to the Old Believers' resistance to owning state documents. Some Old Believers saw the very act of owning a passport as a sin, as equalling "the seal of the Antichrist" (Mon. Chr. Spec., p. 650). There is also an ownership inscription whereby Dariy Ivanovich gave this book to "the sweet" Katerina Mikhailovna. Old Believers' manuscripts typically blended the biblical, the hagiographic, and the didactic, canonical and traditional motifs, as well as scriptural, apocryphal, and popular sources. Generally, they saw printing itself "as a symbol of detested Tsarist authority" (Carey, p. 207), fostering a large manuscript production within local communities. This miscellany comprises nine dialogues, preceded by an introduction, on death and repentance, all based on the works of the most important Orthodox authorities, including the Greek and Syrian Church Fathers and the Saints of the Russian Church, such as John Chrysostom, Theophylact, Athanasius, Dorotheus, and Methodius of Patara. Archpriest Avvakum (d. 1682), a major opposer of Nikon's reforms, is also mentioned. The community of the Old Believers (Raskolniki) developed after the religious reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon in 1652, which advocated greater alignm

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