In Eastern Orthodox Church history, especially within the Russian Orthodox Church, the Old Believers or Old Ritualists (Russian: староверы or старообрядцы, starovery or staroobryadtsy) are Eastern Orthodox Christians who maintain the liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian Church as they were before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1652 and 1666. Resisting the accommodation of Russian piety to the contemporary forms of Greek Orthodox worship, these Christians were anathematized, together with their ritual, in a Synod of 1666–67, producing a division in Eastern Europe between the Old Believers and those who followed the state church in its condemnation of the Old Rite.