As regards doctrine, the Russian church may be regarded as identical with the com mon body of the Greek church (q.v.). With that church the Russian church rejects the supremacy of the pope and tii double procession of the Holy Ghost. All the great leading characteristics of its discipline, too, are the same; the differences of ceremonial which exist, although in many cases considered by the Russians' themselves of vital importance, being too minute to permit our entering into the detail. There is one point on which some explanation may be required. The liturgy of the Russian church is the same as that of the church of Constantinople; but it is celebrated not in the Greek but in the Slavonic language. The service books, however, are not in the modern Russian, but in the ancient language, such as when they were originally translated, with the exception of the modification which they underwent at the time of the patriarch Nikon (see RASKOLNIK, PIIILIPPINO, and the further revision under czar Peter. The discipline as to the marriage of the clergy is the same as that described for the Greek church; and in carrying out the law which enforces celibacy upon bishops, the Russians adopt the same expedient with the Greeks, viz., of selecting the bishops from among the monks, who are celibates in virtue of their vow.
Besides the established Russian church, there exists also in Russia a not inconsidera ble body of dissenters of various kinds One class of these has been already described under the head RASKOaNIas. But by far the most numerous dissenters are the -Roman Catholics, who are found chiefly in Poland and White Russia. At the partition of Poland
a special provision was made for the Roman Catholic people of Poland, under the new government, by the erection of an archbishopric in communion with Rome, at Mohilew, in 1783; and the organization was still more formally completed by the czar Paul. who established, in 1798, five bishoprics under that metropolitan see; and the arrangements of the congress of Vienna having somewhat deranged these ecclesiastical dispositions, a new arrangement was entered into by Pius VII. in 1818. But it cannot be doubted that the whole policy of the Russian government, in reference to the church, makes it almost impossible that they should permit free exercise of worship and of thought to the Catholics in communion with Rome. The direct legislation, and still more the practi• cal administration of Russia in Poland, in reference to marriage, to church property, to conventual establishments, and to ecclesiastical regulatious generally, has been a policy of repression and of compulsory proselytism. This policy has been more sedulously pursued since the recent reorganization of Poland. In 1867 the archbishopric of Warsaw was abolished, and all the Roman Catholics of the empire were made subject to the arch bishop of Mohilev.
According to the St. Petersburg calendar for 1876, the orthodox adherents of the -. Russian church were upward of 60,000,000; while the Raskolniks numbered over 1,170, 000. The Roman Catholics, including nearly 4,600,000 in Poland, amounted to about 7,500,000. The government's contribution for the maintenance of religion was upward of £1,350,000.